THERE only a glimmer of truth in David Clarke's letter regarding the cause of Britain's recent economic problems (Labour's Legacy, Review, May 1) in the sense that both Robert Black (Clear Account, Review, April 3) and myself (Economic Competence, Review April 23) agreed that previous governments had unwisely allowed the City to "regulate" itself and that the Vickers Commission reforms need to be implemented now.

But he largely misses the point – neither allowing banks some freedom of action nor deregulating the City made it compulsory to behave irresponsibly and the circulation of dodgy derivatives based on toxic debts was a product of reckless US banks.

Nor, whatever Money Week's journalists may have claimed after the global financial crashes in 2008, did they or anyone else make much noise over the dangers before hindsight kicked in. My point was that blaming the UK economic problems solely on the Labour government, by a Coalition government which immediately on taking office had brought the 2008-2010 recovery to a shuddering halt, was, to put it bluntly, a lie.

A look at the economic statistics – and even George Osborne's remark during his last Budget speech – show: that Alastair Darling's 2008 Budget was bringing the economy back to life, that the extreme austerity budgets over 2010-2012 killed it and that only by returning to a Budget like Darling's did it begin to revive again.

So it has been the Coalition government that showed economic incompetence – a view restated recently by a much more eminent writer than myself, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Klugman.

– David Norman, Blaisdon.