Lord Neil Kinnock was interviewed by the Tribune at his home in Tufnell Park

• NEIL, Lord Kinnock is quite correct to describe the two-child cap on benefits as “appalling”, (Lord Kinnock: You can’t always say what you want to do ­– that’s part of leading a political party, June 21).

But he then makes excuses as to why Labour will not promise to remove it in government.

He says that Labour is right not to promise what it can’t be sure of delivering.

Fair enough, but the cap, which condemns hundreds of thousands of children to poverty, can be scrapped by any government that wants to scrap it.

To keep it in place is a political choice not an economic necessity.

Any economist worthy of the title including, presumably, the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, knows that governments can create money and spend at will, the main constraints being the reaction of the money markets and the labour and financial resources available to meet demand.

The economy is not the housekeeper’s purse, as Margaret Thatcher would have had us believe, but a delicate balance of supply, demand, interest rates, and international pressures and events.

If Kinnock is as keen on “truth”, as he claims in his Islington Tribune interview, why not start with being honest about the economy?

Or is that now too much to ask of either of our major parties?

DAVID BREWERTON, N1
Former Executive Editor, Finance, The Times