When did the moral crusade turn into a plateful of Brownies?

Gordon Brown must have been at his happiest in Opposition, delivering sermons about how Labour would deliver employment to cure the Tories’ wicked devil-take-the-hindmost approach. In launching the New Deal in Feb98, he had this to say: “Young people are our future. Yet unemployment among the under-25s is twice the national average”. It was true then. But the OECD data flagged up by David Willetts shows it is now a shameful four times the national average. Ten years ago, Brown called the unemployed young people “Major’s children.”  Major, of course, had a recession to contend with – last year, after a decade of growth, youth unemployment rose above the level Brown inherited. So whose children are the NEETS? Success, as the saying goes, has many fathers.

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Simon Cook

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