‘Unemployment is a price worth paying’ were the words that showed millions of Britons what the Tories really know about ordinary people. As unemployment rises again, and youth unemployment in particular is about to hit 1 million, my belief is that the people, and the Big Society, are better off when we are in work. It is especially important for young people to get a foothold in work and is certainly in the interest of both society, and HM Treasury to ensure that as many young people as possible can get work, or continue in further education.
There is a fundamental contradiction in Tory rhetoric about worklessness. At once they are carving a deep wound in our public services, and ‘cutting’ the jobs, and therefore the lives, of thousands of public sector workers. They cut the Future Jobs Fund, a vital programme which provided 18-24 year olds who had been out of work for six months with temporary employment. They abolished Education Maintenance Allowance, which provided thousands of less well off children the chance to afford further qualifications to help them compete in the labour market. And they quashed the opportunity for 10,000 young people to go to university this year. At the same time the benefit budget is slashed and the coalition promise to get people off benefits and back into work. Where will these jobs come from? And what do those unable to find work, or unable to work at all, do when their benefits are reduced?
The Tories believe the private sector will provide these jobs, that private businesses will create well over 2 million jobs in the next few years. When the private sector created little more than 300,000 jobs between 1993 and 1999, I think everybody can see this for the nonsense it is.
But what would Labour do? The pathetic Tory response to all the criticism has been to point at the lack of concrete policy detail from Labour. They might say that this was a tactic we used while in Government. The fundamental difference is that Labour showed the Tory manifesto up for what it was. Lies, dishonesty, manipulation and branding with barely a sniff of the horror that a Tory government would really unleash. Labour were right.
This is what Labour would have done. We would have kept Education Maintenance Allowance, as Michael Gove promised before the election, thereby helping thousands of young people stay in education and encouraging aspiration. We would have given those 10,000 young people the chance to go to university, the chance to better themselves and more than pay off the cost of their education to the tax payer. And we would have protected the Future Jobs Fund, a scheme which helped 50% of young claimants move off benefits after their placement, and which the coalition advisor Frank Field called “one of the most precious things the last government was involved in, a lifeline that no amount of ‘New Deal’ rhetoric ever offered the unemployed”.
The Tories don’t understand people. They don’t care about people. Otherwise they would realise that every job cut is an assault on a family, every child that has to drop out of college is a slammed door on the future of this country, and every moment a person spends fearful of their prospects will eat away at our ‘big society’.
Jake
Oh Christ just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. No im sorry the record high youth unemployment we see currently is Labours legacy NOT the Tories accumulated over 13 years. There is nothing the Tories have done since they took office that have created the record high youth unemployment we see today. That is YOUR legacy not ours. Lets look at the facts shall we about what Labour did and would have done;
1) EMA – Its true we’ve cut it as part of the austerity agenda which we have to implement because of the attrocious public finances we inherited from you lot. However that aside the effects of that EMA cut have NOT been felt yet as all those eligible will STILL recieve payments until the end of the academic year, it will only affect new applicants. So it is intellectually bankrupt to use that as a justification for the shocking youth unemployment figures we see today because the cut hasn’t taken effect yet to be able to judge. You can judge its effect in a couple of years time.
Also while we’re on the subject of EMA if I was Labour I would keep my mouth firmly shut because your lovely little rhetoric doesn’t match the reality as usual. Lets go back to the history books; Alan Johnson confirmed in 2007 that under LABOUR the school leavers age would be legally raised to 18 by 2013. So why does that matter you ask? Well EMA is essentially a bribe to get you to stay on in education. Raise the school leavers age and guess what? you no longer need that bribe because you are legally obliged to stay in school. You don’t believe Labour would have scrapped EMA? Ok, well Johnson said at the time, and I quote;
“The EMA is there as an incentive to stay on. We will not need to incentivise after 2015″
Well thats a bit strange isn’t it? Labour, the champions of those dear dear students who have been treated so terribly by the ‘nasty’ ConDem Government, had the idea to scrap EMA as far back as 2007?!?!?! Next you’ll be telling me they were going to raise tuition fees. Oh wait thats the next point…
2)TUITION FEES – “And they quashed the opportunity for 10,000 young people to go to university this year” I have no idea what you are alluding to with this I can only assume its a veiled attack on the tuition fee hike and budget cuts which would ‘put people off’ applying. Well again lets look at the facts;
* 1997 Labour CREATED tuition fees
* 2001 Labour PLEDGED in Manifesto; NO TOP UP FEES
* 2004 Labour introduce TOP UP FEES tripling the rate to £3000pa
* 2009 Labour commission the Browne Review with the intent of raising fees still further
* 2010 Labour manifesto contains NO commitment not to raise fees and ‘awaits findings of Browne review’
The fact is Labour WOULD have raised fees had they won the election. Thats the whole reason the damn review was comissioned… by you. So your sudden u-turn and selective memory is shameful. You can attempt to justify it by saying ‘we’ve turned over a new leaf’ etc etc but it was one Ed Miliband who wrote that manifesto and served in those governments so no it doesnt quite wash.
The tuition fee hike is certainly regrettable but again whilst the total rate of fee is higher the system itself re repayments is far better and it is too early to tell what impact it will have on application rates because again the policy hasn’t come in to force yet. Your attacks are pre-emptive.
3) PRIVATE SECTOR – “When the private sector created little more than 300,000 jobs between 1993 and 1999″ I don’t know where you are getting your figures from considering the fact that the ONS said that last year alone 308,000 private sector jobs were created :/ Furthermore the CIPD said last year it considers the private sector “perfectly capable of adding more than 300,000 net new jobs per year by 2015-16″ which will more than offset the 600,000 public sector workers who they expect to be cut over the course of this parliament.
So again youre on very shakey ground with that one and lets not forget that before all the budget cuts, before the full force of the recession was felt Britain inherited an unemployment rate of 2.5 million from Labour. So your record on unemployment is very shakey indeed. Particularly considering your own Chancellor promised, and I quote, “cuts worse than Thatcher” if it won the election. How did you propose to make cuts worse than Thatcher without job losses?
Look ive no doubt that you are young and well intentioned. I also have no doubt that you genuinely believe in the twaddle labour spout but their record does not match their rhetoric. There is nothing I have put above that is not fact. The road to hell is paved with good intentions…
Dan. As usual your comments are lengthy, but completely miss the point.
My blog is about the Tories ATTITUDE to unemployment. It is of course due to our vastly differing view of government. Mine being that government should seek to promote a equal, inclusive, positively free society in which everyone has the chance to succeed in life, while the neo-liberal perspective on the role of government certainly differs somewhat.
The central point is that unemployment is an inherently negative, divisive and damaging situation, and that government should do all it can to avoid it. The high unemployment is significantly a result of the global recession (as well as longer term factors), and the last Labour government worked specifically to prevent unemployment and provided funding and initiatives specifically designed to get people back into work. Most notably the Future Jobs Fund, mentioned above.
1)”it is intellectually bankrupt to use that as a justification for the shocking youth unemployment figures we see today because the cut hasn’t taken effect yet”
Missing the point dan. Scrapping EMA WILL hit thousands of young people intending to enter further education, and force many who are currently studying to abandon their courses. I never said that the cut HAS ALREADY increased unemployment, I was showing that this is another cut that will hit the aspirations of young people, and surely increase the numbers of young people who are trying to enter the job market.
2) Your assertion that Labour would have scrapped EMA when the school leaving age rises to 18 is either willfully ignorant, or just confused. Of course the incentive role that EMA plays would have to be reviewed when the school leaving age rose to 18. However, in many areas of the UK students have to travel to 6th Form Colleges for further education, rather than remaining in their schools. The fact remains that EMA is essential for these children and for the many others who currently have to afford expensive books and materials for their courses. This money would have to be moved into the schools budget otherwise.
3)”I can only assume its a veiled attack on the tuition fee hike and budget cuts which would ‘put people off’ applying.”
This was in FACT not what I was alluding to. I was specifically referencing the 10,000 fewer university places available to students this year compared to under Labour’s plans. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/may/24/ten-thousand-fewer-university-places (I know you all like quoting the guardian, but incidentally I first read this in the Times)
I opposed tuition fees from the outset, and family members have stopped supporting Labour over the issue. However, Labour’s motive in doing so was also to INCREASE ACCESS, and the decision to choose fees as the funding option was taken to insure the quickest and largest injection of funds possible to our previously underfunded and dilapidated universities. Also, the current Labour policy opposes the increase in fees.
This government is intentionally cutting access to higher education and despite your scathing attitude to the debt incurred by graduates, the prospect genuinely DOES “put people off”. Finally the repayment rates ARE far better, but the proposal to change the rules on interest rates will have a disproportional affect on those who are less able to pay off their loans quickly (with the help of mummy and daddy’s money for example).
4) The only sure way to ensure job creation from the private sector is through economic growth, and the confident climate that creates. Under Labour the economy was finally growing, under this coalition growth has stalled. Consumer and business confidence is low, and the cuts are only making this worse.
I will also deal with another of your pointless insults. Why does it matter what age I am. I don’t know how old you are, but if you are much older than me then why are you spending your time stalking university society blogs?
Finally: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” While this may be true. I think you’ll find that wicked intentions get you there a lot quicker. I’m afraid that the point of the blog still stands, the Tories don’t care about unemployment (unless it is in reference to all those scroungers on benefits). The only thing worse than the ignorance of this governments path is the arrogance on which it is based.
Tories shouldn’t get into arguments about unemployment. The statistics are so clearly against you
All this post has done is pander to pathetic and ill informed stereotypes and misquotes regarding the Tories attitude to unemployment. Again lets look at the facts regarding the Tories “attitude” to unemployment;
Margaret Thatcher regularly refered to unemployment as “a tragedy” indeed watch her 1983 election broadcast and she devotes a large segement to it and explicitly calls it a tragedy that concerns her greatly. She also said in a later interview “if there was a button that would eradicate unemployment do you not think I would push that button this instant?!” Thatcher was not blind to or callous regarding unemployment but she DID believe that it was “a price worth paying” in the SHORT term IF those same industrial reforms that were causing all this unemployment could return the country to some kind of sustainable growth and employment in the future. She was right.
By 1997 unemployment was coming down by over 1 million and was roughly around 2 million and falling considerably year on year until it reached the record lows we saw under Blair – who still to this day credits Thatcher with providing the conditions to achieve that. The rate we inherited unemployment at in 1979 was 1.4 million and rising year on year proving that the post war consensus goal of “full employment” had failed.
Britain was on a downward spiral as the sick man of Europe in 1979 and it was on the up as one of if not THE healthiest in 1997 as a result of the tough measures Thatcher introduced. As Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown and even your own Jack Matthew have all stated; much of what Margaret Thatcher did was not ideological or a desire to deliberately make peoples lives more difficult, it was INEVITABLE and was a result of global social and economic change. You know how Labour always justify their woeful economic situation to the global economy? Well the same applies to Thatcher. Britain is not immune to global forces and if its alright for you to justify it as such why not for her?
Norman Tebbit – He famously and callously told unemployed people to “get on yer bike and look for work” didn’t he? WRONG. Again a total misquote attributed to him by the tabloids. What he REALLY said in a wider speech regarding unemployment was “I grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking ’til he found it.” That is a reasonable position justifiable by personal experience. What he is suggesting (not demanding) is that if you can’t find work in your area some people, like his father, went off and found it wherever it was. That is an attitude that many thousands of people in Britain also take and it is not insensitive to say so nor is it dismissive of the terrible effects unemployment has on the person concerned.
The Tories attitude to unemployment is exactly as Thatcher stated; its a tragedy. The difference between us and some Labourites is we are not blind to the realities of the world. We will do what we have to to get the economy back on track. Even your party at the last election stood on a platform which promised “cuts worse than Thatcher”. If you seriously think you could have accomplished that without substantial job losses you really do live in your own little world. The Labour Party recognised, like us, that Labour had overstreched itself and the public finances and whilst they may have been good intentioned at the time they were dilluded in their attitude that the boom times could last forever. Remember; “weve abolished boom and bust”? The current bust means that once again cuts, and thus unemployment rises, are inevitable. By ALL parties aggreement.
Also on a personal note I was not insulting you regarding your age although I can see how you would assume that. I was merely saying that you are young and the views you hold now will inevitably be challenged and developed in the course of your university education. That was certainly the case for me. Only the most dogmatic and dilluded of individuals still hold on to views that can’t stand up to scrutiny. Thats not a political position at all, its a predjudice.
I don’t have time to reply to this right now, but rest assured I will. I’ll just say for now that I have very nearly finished my university education, and my views have been carefully developed and researched, and will continue to be so. I am not yet entirely convinced on many issues, or entirely informed on many issues.
However, and I have told you this previously, it is deluded rather than dilluded.
haha whoops yes I confess my grammar isn’t the best although however I spell it the implication is the same, so you focus on the ‘style’ i’ll focus on the ‘substance’
As for your views Im sure they’ve developed and will, as you say, continue to develop. Its the sign of a rational mind to be able to challenge and critique your own views. I also want to state for the record something which I hope Max etc will verify; even though my tone in debate can appear somewhat ‘hostile’ and or ‘aggressive’ and my choice (and indeed spelling) or words can sometimes be unfortunate, I always try to make it a rule to keep debates political and not personal. I never take debate personally, no matter how heated it can get, and I hope that is reciprocated. I don’t see the need to make ‘enemies’ of ‘opponents’.