Letters: In private schools, struggling children find the help they need

Growing problem

Sir: The first leading article of the year (‘Growing apart’, 4 January) points to the gap in economic growth between the US and the UK, while the first cover piece (‘Shift key’) identifies a shift rightwards in values and voting intention, in reaction to the bigger state model of Keir Starmer’s government. Sandwiched between the two is ‘Reeves’s new year’s resolution’, in which James Heale tells us of the Labour Growth Group, a WhatsApp group with 99 MPs that is only marginally more credible than a Turkeys for Christmas cabal. Have these Labour MPs studied the research cited in Jon Moynihan’s excellent Return to Growth? Has Rachel Reeves? Three chapters in particular go into great detail to show that: ‘The larger the government, the smaller the economic growth. The higher the level of tax, the smaller the economic growth. The greater the amount of regulation, the smaller the economic growth.’ If the Tories – who at least pretend they’re in favour of a smaller state, lower taxes and less regulation – stymied growth over the past 14 years, what chance has Labour ‘to spring Britain from its low-growth trap’?

Jon Wainwright

Comforting sign

Sir: Mary Killen’s reflections on visitors books (Notes on…, 4 January) brought to mind such a book at St Ethelbert’s Church, in a Suffolk hamlet. Its cover faded, the book lies beneath the current visitors book, sadly rarely signed, as the church hosts only occasional services. Intrigued by such an antique visitors book, I turned to its first page, from 1945. The second entry was by Harold Jeffreys, the third by Bertha Jeffreys. Google related that Harold, later knighted, had already discovered the structure of the Earth’s core, and that his wife was a world-renowned quantum theorist.