Letter: Labour vs capital

Sir: The penny still hasn't dropped for Labour's 44 MPs who decry Tony Blair's abandonment of traditional Labour values (report, 30 June). Blair, like any other politician of whatever party, in whatever country, is constrained to pursue only those policies that will not displease world markets. Neither New Labour nor Germany's Green Party nor any other party in government can buck the right-of-centre stance the markets demand.

The perfectly rational traditional Labour policies of higher taxation to promote social cohesion called for by these 44 MPs have already been vetoed by the threat of devaluation, inflation or capital flight. They are not within Tony Blair's power to give.

The deregulation of world markets and competition between nation states that they engender limit the freedom of the nation state, of political leaders and of the people to choose from a political right, left or centre. What we now have is a pseudo-democracy. The world kissed true democracy goodbye in the 1980s.

JOHN BUNZL

London SE3