Letter: Blair's `betrayal'

Blair's `betrayal'

Sir: God bless your "long-standing Labour backbencher" for his tears ("New Labour is heartbroken", 11 December) but God damn him for not obeying his conscience. God bless the Scottish Office minister as he retreats to the backbenches for his courageous rebellion over benefits for lone parents.

After years of waiting for the Conservatives to go away, we now have a Labour government but we still have a Tory Prime Minister. Those of us who felt so deeply for Neil Kinnock on the night of his defeat in 1992 and loved him for his speech about sorrow for the poor and under-privileged, will hate Blair for - I can find no other words - his treachery.

He has betrayed all of us who believe that government's first responsibility is to those who cannot make their way unaided in a modern world which increasingly makes demands which many cannot meet. This is what we voted for.

I am 73. In 1940, I put aside my Rupert Brooke poems and went to sea in the Merchant Navy murmuring, "Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with this His hour". We fought a just war, and won.

The latest "just war" also seemed to have been won. Now, dreams that I might be allowed to see, for my grandchildren, the dawn of a new age of reason and moral sensibility have been dashed.

DAVID SIMPSON

Barry, South Glamorgan