Over a month has now passed and progressives across the country are still coming to terms with May’s general election. Up and down the country Labour members are getting back on the horse, setting out the plans to keep Labour elected locally and prepare for a return to government with a new agenda built for this new decade.
However, it hasn’t taken the new ConDem government long to show its hand. One move in particular has had frightening consequences. The cutting of the Future Jobs Fund, around £1 billion aimed at getting young people back into work, shows just how little this government cares about tackling the causes of both long-term unemployment and the deficit they are so desperate to slash. By cutting support to stop young people becoming long-term unemployed you potentially create a life on benefits.
The fact that startled me is the cost of a life on benefits, estimated to be £430,000 per person.
I take Nottingham, the city I live in, as a perfect case in point. The Future Jobs Fund has successfully got 961 formerly unemployed young people back into work. The system in Nottingham was very popular, and it was so successful that the Labour-run city council topped up its funding.
But as soon as the announcement was made that funding would no longer continue, a summons from Number 11 and Chancellor Osborne, the brakes were applied. The moment the cut came applications had to be stopped and young people, keen for work, looking for support, once again found themselves out of a job and with little help on hand.
All parties agree that the deficit needs to be tackled, but a savage cut that stops young men and women into work is a whole other level.
To cut this deficit we need to be smart. Preventative spending is not only the most pragmatic way of tackling the problem but is also the progressive way. Stopping problems before they mount to a whole lot of money and creating better life chances is right. But this cut is one of short-sightedness, built for tomorrow’s headline. Let us never forget that the way in which a ConDem government minister reads the headline of £6.2 billion in savings is very different to how a 19-year-old in Nottingham just wanting a job will read it; and their life is where our politics really matters.
Labour and progressives are still coming to terms with being in opposition. And in the last 13 years Labour has not faced the strongest of opposition (IDS, Howard and Hague being cases in point). However, a central task of opposition, and sometimes a failure of Labour in government, is to shout from the rooftops about your successes, bang the drum when the opposition get it wrong and fly the flag high for a better society.
Thus far the sad fact about the Future Jobs Fund is that the working class man in Nottingham who decided not to vote last month because he didn’t think politics mattered to him and benefitted from the Future Jobs Fund couldn’t have told you it was a Labour’s creation and properly will never know that it’s the Tories & Lib Dems who have taken it away.