Playwright Sir David Hare

• SIR David Hare’s brush with coronavirus certainly seems to have had an undesirable side-effect, a scant regard for the truth, (We deserve honesty from government, Forum, April 30).

He writes of enduring years of austerity but those on the left are pretty good at choosing to forget just what a basket case our economy was a decade or so ago.

Had governments since 2010 not attempted to bring the national accounts into some order, we’d surely find that the chancellor’s largesse for lockdown could not have been so generous.

He also seems to forget that voters rejected Labour in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019, and this one-nation Tory is certainly grateful to the electorate for that.

Gordon Brown was a pretty useless prime minister and his time as chancellor was not as clever as he would have us believe.

Playwright Sir David writes of the government’s not being honest, accusing ministers of a range of misdeeds such that he says he has never seen public life sink so low in his entire lifetime. A bit over the top methinks.

The media plays up to people such as Sir David, gives them far too much time and space, column inches too, yet the arts is but one profession and there are many other professionals who might have something interesting to say were hacks to seek them out.

I, too, would like to see all in public life more willing to be honest but the adversarial nature of our politics does make presentation of the facts more of a challenge.

Certainly, it would be a surprise were this government, elected only in mid-December, and one focused on Brexit and floods in the early weeks, not to make mistakes when dealing with this pandemic.

Those who think we should have had stockpiles of the items necessary to fight a pandemic might have baulked were, some years ago, the government to have told us there was less money for something right now because it was investing in items to fight a pandemic that might not happen.

Life is a risk and government has to take risks. I wish the government well, for all our sakes.

LESTER MAY
NW1