Politics

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 18th March 2009

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Once a week, about half of the Cabinet make the rather pointless journey into an underground bunker in Whitehall to learn just how quickly the British economy is disintegrating. This is all to humour Gordon Brown, who calls them his ‘National Economic Council’ and has them meet in the nuclear-proof room as if they were at war with the recession. After six months of such meetings, it is depressingly clear to all concerned that the recession is winning, and in ways that they never really thought possible.

Given that almost everyone in Westminster is trying desperately to read the politics of the recession, those summoned to the Brown bunker have at least one clear advantage. They are learning about its character: how, for example, the City of London’s pain is being shared in unlikely satellite towns such as Bournemouth, which had grown a mini-financial services industry. They know there is no sign of Mr Brown’s stimulus making a blind bit of difference anywhere. Among developed countries, only Iceland’s economy is contracting faster than Britain’s.

Just as economic growth was not shared evenly — being disproportionately generated in the south — so too the recession is uneven in its impact. This was shown in a stark briefing prepared for MPs last month by the House of Commons library, reproduced here. While unemployment is certainly rising in such places as Liverpool and Glasgow, it makes relatively little difference to the overall picture. But in the south of England, things are changing at a dizzying pace.

A list of the areas that have experienced the sharpest rises in unemployment include Buckingham, Christchurch, Wantage and Wiltshire: of the top 75 constituencies where unemployment has doubled, 49 are Conservative-held seats. Of course, in such locations the figure tends to be rising from a small base. The claimant count in Blaby, Leicestershire, soared from 581 in January last year to 1,263 in January this year. The figures may be comparatively small. But the psychological impact on such places will be all the more acute: communities that have barely known joblessness in the last decade now find it rising, and vertiginously so.

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Ken

March 19th, 2009 11:48am Report this comment

"Labour has failed, utterly."
...Poster that slogan all over Britain.

Labourboy

March 19th, 2009 12:43pm Report this comment

Only Iceland contracting faster? I could swear that Japan's economy has just contracted at an annualised rate of 10%, the USA at over 6%, and Germany is also faring worse than us. Just as France is about to enter a recession, Ireland is collapsing and Spain is too.

Simon Stephenson

March 19th, 2009 12:50pm Report this comment

"... Twycross Zoo in Warwickshire last month where 3,000 people queued for just 150 part-time jobs ... In the constituency of Bosworth, home of the zoo, claimant unemployment has almost doubled to 1,500 over the last year. Surveying that queue, one could tell that the number out of work, and still resisting signing on — presumably for reasons of pride — is much greater."

Or, perhaps, one could suspect that not all the 3,000 in the queue resided in the constituency of Bosworth. Or even that some in the queue were looking to supplement their incomes from employment by additional, part-time working at week-ends?

Wouldn't you want to rule out these possibilities before concluding that the Twycross queue was firm evidence of an understatement of the unemployment level?

richard

March 19th, 2009 7:18pm Report this comment

Apart from a mention of Liverpool you wouldn't know that northern England exists from your piece.

Hopefully the Conservative leadership wont make the same mistake as there is scope to make greater gains than in southern England, gains that the Conservatives need to make to get a majority.

And incidentally the economic sector which is losing the most jobs is once again manufacturing.

Mrs Rigby

March 21st, 2009 1:33am Report this comment

"... Twycross Zoo in ... where 3,000 people queued for just 150 part-time jobs. ... Surveying that queue, one could tell that the number out of work, and still resisting signing on — presumably for reasons of pride — is much greater."
Wrong!

You are forgetting the tortuous rules for claiming benefit. If your partner/husband/wife is in work it is unlikely that a claim for benefit will be successful. If you have savings over £16k you will get nothing until your savings have gone.

elfraed

March 21st, 2009 9:21am Report this comment

The economy has failed, not government.
Yet, it sounds as though the enfeebled shall be voting for which species of political vulture to dine on its carcass.
In the States, lax oversight contributed to the sudden revelations of insolvency, but the crash was/is still coming irregardless of party politics.