Labour’s achievements are something to be proud of

More evidence to buttress Seumas Milne’s scorn of Tory-Lib Dem “recovery” propaganda (Comment, 18 September). Output in the US and German economies rose above pre-crisis levels in 2011. In Britain GDP is still 3% below its 2008 peak. Our recovery is three years behind America’s and Germany’s.

The UK economy began growing again under Labour in 2010 but that was choked off by George Osborne’s budget cuts. His savage squeeze has meant that the UK is taking six years to achieve what our two major trading partners did in three, at terrible human cost and economic waste. The much trumpeted last-quarter “recovery” is barely a third of the US equivalent because Obama invested where Osborne cut. At our conference next week, Labour should be making these arguments with much greater vigour and confidence than we have been.

Published in The Guardian, 19th September 2013: Letters