SIR – Ed Miliband has made much of his break with New Labour’s Blair/Brown past, but in fact he is continuing their discredited policy of going along with the Tory agenda.

When Blair was elected, he said he would stick with the Conservative spending plans, and Miliband now says he is going to continue the Con-Dems’ austerity package, instead of developing alternative economic strategies.

If he wanted to break with the past, he would:

* Examine the examples of Brighton, Newcastle and other local authorities who are not falling for the Tory propaganda that there is no alternative;

* Cancel expensive and unnecessary expenditure like the £97 billion Trident nuclear submarine replacement programme and instead develop a Non-Deployed Strategic Force as suggested by the Royal United Services Institute;

* Bring the troops home from Afghanistan and announce that Labour will not engage in any future colonialist adventures;

* Institute an effective attack on tax avoidance which costs the UK economy £69.9 billion every year, which represents 56 per cent of the UK total healthcare spend;

* Bring the Bank of England back into democratic control;

* Take Britain out of the EU, which would not only save £65 billion a year, but would make it easier to control immigration from within the EU, which is much greater than that from non-EU countries.

All of these would not only help deal with the deficit without targeting the poor and disabled, but would be certain vote-winners.

Karl Dallas, Church Green, Bradford