SIR – With her anti Labour Party rant, Susan Drake (T&A, March 20) demonstrates much of the economic (and social) myopia recently displayed by George Osborne in his budget.

Firstly, to see what the various governments have borrowed over the past 50 years, have a look at historical government charts (gov.uk) You will discover immediately, that since the war, Labour have managed the UK economy much, much better than the Tories.

Under Gordon Brown (as Chancellor) the account was in surplus after one year of Labour and remained in surplus for several years.

Following the charts along, you will also see that the Labour government’s modernisation of the NHS and education infrastructure in the mid 2000s, saw an obvious spike in government borrowing, but the real borrowing was to come in 2007 to 2010 when Gordon, unwisely in my view, decided to bail out the banks and the City of London.

After the election of 2010, the coalition inherited a national (errr...mostly bank) debt of £700billion. In five years the Tories have more than doubled that to £1.6 trillion and the figure continues to rise (as do the payments on it).

The real figures are there – one only has to look!

Christopher Hindle, Osterley Grove, Bradford