As one in ten of the population is reputed to have a disability this represents a large voting bloc within

As one in ten of the population is reputed to have a disability, this represents a large voting bloc within society. Sir: It is interesting to note that during the election fervour, presently gripping the country, no mention has been made about disability issues. Yes the Tories have shamefully abused the FCO but after serving in it for 23 years it seems to me plain silly to describe it as existing only to cover up “the inexperience of the political class”.JOHN GORDONLiberal Democrat ParliamentaryCandidate for Daventry ConstituencyDaventry. But Northamptonshire voters may be more realistic than Mr Gott in realising that whatever happens domestically after the election we are always going to need a ministry with relevant specialist skills.

This potentially allows for a serious debate on Britain’s position in the world, but perceptions all too often do not go beyond the crude “give us back our sovereignty” anti-Europeanism of much of the Tory press.Certainly there is no overt concern here about whether the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a future. But I have been encouraged by the number of electors who are challenging me and the other candidates on Britain’s policies towards developing countries.
More important politically will be the far greater numbers, mainly among the over-50s, worried about our position in Europe. No one (yet) is raising questions about the future of the UN system or of the Commonwealth in the hurly-burly of the campaign in this largely rural constituency. Sir: Richard Gott (“A British foreign policy? Forget it”, 2 April) is largely right in identifying foreign policy as a neglected issue of this election But not quite. That would do more to push back public cynicism than a cascade of stirring but cloudy speeches.. But one of these reforms is that we need a party in power that promises what it can deliver, and no more; and then delivers.

It is because its answer does not set the Thames alight that it is convincing We need political reform. Labour has set itself the test of what can be done, in the real political and fiscal circumstances of late-century Britain. Some we get to by inference: Labour’s pledge to cut class sizes will be popular if our army of under- achieving children start to do better on objective tests; spending more on patient care will please patients and their families if, and only if, it leads to reduced waiting times and better treatment.Nuts and bolts stuff, says conventional wisdom – lacking vision – a little disappointing Wrong, we think: this document is audacious in its modesty. Some are precise and will be easily checked after five years. This contractor knows budgets are limited and if the promises are not kept the contract won’t be renewed So the manifesto proposes clear measures. Its offered contract with Britain is conspicuously modest, almost as if Labour were a company bidding for a government contract, somewhat more elevated than street cleansing, but along those lines.

Gingrich came a cropper shortly after his American contract was launched, but he had over- reached and Tony Blair has learnt the lesson.Labour’s manifesto dismisses talk of revolutions and hundred-day turnarounds. It recalls what Bill Clinton said in his inaugural address earlier this year about the end of Big Government not implying the end of collective purposes realised through public institutions.But it is from the President’s Republican enemy Newt Gingrich that the Labour manifesto borrows its “contract with Britain”. Looking for a philosophical difference between Labour and the Conservatives? It lies in Labour’s conviction, still, that the state can do good especially by pursuing policies that help the excluded into the mainstream. It is not sentimental, either; it is more of a cool regret at the loss to UK plc cause by so much human potential going to waste. Yet the sentiment permeates much of the rest of Labour’s offering. It is “social exclusion” – the phrase that has come to cover the many ways in which people miss out – on mainstream income levels, jobs that pay a decent wage, education that will equip children to get those jobs, decent housing. But they will not get too far ahead: Labour is likelier to join the single currency, but not before British opinion has been consulted in a referendum.In the manifesto’s discussion of Europe, one fashionable term is missing.

But there is also no mistaking the difference in tone between Labour’s references to Europe and those in the Tory manifesto; Labour’s bespeaks a warm enthusiasm, ministers who want to lead the public towards a European destiny for Britain. The British path in Europe will, under Labour, continue to diverge from that of the core EU nations There is no federalist enthusiasm here. From this follow the party’s pledges to clean up Parliament’s act, to reform the upper house, to return legislative powers to the people of Scotland and to increase self-government in Wales, to re-enfranchise Londoners and to pledge citizens the individual recognition signified by the European Convention on Human Rights.Less obviously, from Labour’s concern for trust in government follows the party’s policy for Europe. It wants what government does and how it does it to change so that people trust the state and institutions of representative democracy more. It is in the “how” that the difference between the parties crucially lies.New Labour, to judge from this manifesto, has two principal objectives It wants to remake the link between people and government. Labour’s sense of what is inevitable is pretty much the same as the Tories’ – that commercial necessity will require Britain to adapt to world conditions in which the prizes will go to the flexible economies, quick on their feet.