How the coalition hopes to fix Britain’s economic dysfunction

The largest welfare-to-work programme on the planet is launched today by Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the future of this country — and, perhaps, David Cameron – depends on its success. The lead article of this week’s Spectator looks at it, and we used various metrics — some of which puzzled David Smith of the Sunday Times. He understandably challenged our claim that 81 per cent of the new jobs created are accounted for by immigration. We had a Twitter “conversation” about it earlier this morning, but some things you can’t explain in 140 characters. So here is my argument: complete with data, sources and assumptions. It’s a long post, but this is — in my view — one of the most important debates in British politics and worth the length.
 
The 81 per cent figure

Cameron’s nightmare is that the economy recovers, but does so by sucking in immigrant labour rather than shortening British dole queues.