Youth unemployment has surged to 16.1%, meaning that one in six young people want a job but can’t find one. It’s no surprise when some estimate that half of the over 200,000 jobs lost since Labour took office have been among the youngest.
For those who don’t recall, the expression “Labour Isn’t Working” was the banner of a Conservative Party election campaign of 1979, and while unemployment rose sharply in the early term of office of the Thatcher period – that was also a period of the monetarist squeeze against inflation – the devastating impact on the Labour Party of being associated with unemployment – and union mayhem and inflation cannot be overstated. Even today, the shame of a party that used to bang on about the “dignity of labour”, when many working-aged adults aren’t in employment or seeking it, should be far higher than it is. But as we seem to be reminded almost daily with this clanking and sanctimonious government, a sense of shame appears to be absent. Being a socialist, it seems, means never having to say you’re sorry, and never having to understand that incentives matter.
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