Letter: Labour breaks the Golden Rule

Sir: I read your leading article (7 April), "Labour starts off with slippery leadership", with interest. Those of us who can remember life before the Tories may recall that it was the Labour Party who started the campaign of privatisation we have seen over the last two decades.

It may have been left to Mrs Thatcher's administration to make a virtue of a necessity, but it was Dennis Healey who floated at least one tranche of BP shares in the late Seventies.

JOHN DRAKE

Edinburgh