𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

No Labour government has ever left office having reduced unemployment, historians tell us, which is pretty ironic for a party that claims to represent working people. Tragically, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are set to continue that record of shame. Today, in her Spring Statement, Reeves will tell us how wonderful she is and how she’s somehow stabilising or even rejuvenating the economy. There will no doubt be loads of guff about fixing foundations, conditions for growth and the right economic plan (we’ll have to stifle our laughter).

Yet quite how she’s going to gloss over unemployment hitting a ten-year high remains to be seen. The OBR was already predicting that unemployment would hit 1.8 million this year but is now set to revise that upwards towards 1.9 million – a rate we haven’t suffered since 2015 and a big increase since Labour came to power 20 months ago. Youth unemployment is particularly awful, at around 15%. In fact, it’s even worse than in the EU, which really is saying something.

I assume Reeves will blame everyone but herself, as always. She’ll blame her inheritance, she’ll blame 14 years of “Tory mismanagement” and she’ll blame global conditions, perhaps including Trump’s tariffs. But you don’t need to be an economist, even one who worked at the Bank of England, we keep being told, to know far better.

The truth is that it’s Labour’s own policies that are causing unemployment, just as they always do. If you hike employers’ national insurance by billions, you disincentivise job creation.

If you raise the minimum wage and corporation tax, you make it massively more expensive for companies to hire. If you pursue net zero to Labour’s absurd extent, and make industrial energy the most expensive in the G7, you hamper growth and jobs.

And that’s before you get to new employment laws that are ruinous for business, never mind the ramifications of renewed conflict in the Middle East.

No wonder economists expect unemployment to remain at this high level for at least the next couple of years, and probably beyond. And even that doesn’t include the millions more people who are out of work because of sickness or disability – numbers that keep rising all the time as GPs hand out more and more sick notes.

Incredibly, under this Labour government, 20% of all working age people in Britain are currently out of work. Yet Reeves has the nerve to refer to “conditions for growth” and “tackling the cost of living”.

The only silver lining to this black economic cloud is that by historic standards an unemployment rate of over 5% isn’t too awful. After the financial crash of 2008/09, it got above 8%. In the early 1990s recession, it was up to an eye watering 10%.

But it’s the direction of travel that should concern us. And under our current government that direction is towards anaemic growth, inflation way above target, more and more people out of work and higher taxes and borrowing.

Reeves can say all she wants, and no doubt she will. But none of us are going to be fooled.