Soaring unemployment is Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak refusing to inoculate communities against miserable joblessness.
Enthusiastic Government propaganda about a vaccine bounce back ignores lengthening dole queues officially forecast to stretch to 2.6million in a return to the misery of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
Others predict a total already up to 1.72m will climb even higher, particularly if the job-saving furlough scheme isn’t extended beyond the end of April when some lockdown restrictions will remain in place.
Updated unemployment figures will be released by the Office for Budget Responsibility with next month’s Budget yet the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer brushing over lost livelihoods in their recovery propaganda is telling.
Joblessness is a price that Tory Governments traditionally accept is worth paying by other people, twisting the knife by goading those in work to resent the workless relying on benefits to survive.
Gordon Brown, a Labour ex-PM with a deep work ethic, and concerned leaders from Wales’ Mark Drakeford to Mayors from City Halls across the country in the Alliance for Full Employment bang the drum as does TUC chief Frances O’Grady.
Johnson and Sunak’s response is criminally inadequate, schemes announced barely scratching the surface of what’s required.
The record 400,000 redundancies in a three-month period were a sign of terrible pain ahead if furloughing isn’t extended until all restrictions are over and the economy’s recovered.
Saving jobs and fighting unemployment will be a test of Red Wall Tories, a moment we discover whether they bite or merely bark.
The Chancellor straining to return to traditional Tory cuts to balance the books would dump hundreds of thousands on the scrap heap.
Levelling up by increasing unemployment everywhere would deepen economic failure by a Government with the worst record in the G7.
The undoubted success of Britain’s vaccination drive is on the corpses of Europe’s highest death toll.
Sacrificing workers isn’t economic recovery. It would be another catastrophe.
