2.5m unemployed.So this is "Caring Conservativism"?

News today that unemployment has increased by 49,000 will come as no surprise to observers of labour market statistics. Grayling and Duncan Smith will, of course, focus on the slight reduction in the number of people claiming benefit. They will ignore the fact that close to 1m young people are out of work and many of these have never had a job.

Here in the West Midlands, we have seen how the present government ignore local needs. With statistics showing the total number of people unemployed in the region, between September and November 2010, was 264,000, an increase of 48,000, we can only hope predictions of inflation levels of 5% and beyond are without foundation.

Once upon a time, in what now seems a distant land, many of these unfortunate people could have relied on local support to find employment through the Working Neighbourhood Fund. Unfortunately, David “I believe in modern, caring Conservativism” Cameron and his cohorts chose to axe this support some months ago.

No doubt the Tories will make great play on the fact there were 480,000 vacancies in the three months to December - an increase of 18,000 from the three months to September and fourteen thousand higher than a year earlier. Unfortunately, this increase is purely due to the recruitment for the pending official census, who began employing temporary collectors and enumerators in preparation for data collection in October. As the ONS has already stated:

“Excluding the Census vacancies, there were 456,000 job vacancies in the three months to December 2010, down 6,000 from the three months to September 2010.”

This only leaves Cameron with his mantra of ‘the private sector will grow and help the unemployed back to work’. The argument is getting weaker by the day and even the Jobs Editor at the Daily Telegraph is starting to question its ‘truth’. Today, when writing about the latest statistics, she said:

“It is the latest sign that the private sector is struggling to create enough jobs to offset the number of people being made redundant in the public sector.”

She is not alone, Howard Archer, at IHS Global Insight was quoted as saying:

“Major job losses will occur in the public sector as the government slashes spending, and we doubt that the private sector will be able to fully compensate for this. Indeed, we suspect that firms will become increasingly cautious in their employment plans, reflecting slower growth and concerns that the intensified fiscal squeeze will hold back economic activity for an extended period. There are also likely to be significant job losses in private companies supplying services or goods to the public sector. In particular, many firms are likely to try to meet any increase in business through making greater use of the workers they have already or through using part-time staff, and they are likely to be reluctant to take on any more permanent staff unless they are really convinced that sustained improvement in their business is probable.”

Whilst Ian Brinkley, associate director of the Work Foundation argued:

The labour market recovery has come to an abrupt halt as accelerating job losses in the public sector and lack of overall growth in jobs in the private sector start to bite. Women's employment has been especially badly hit. The consequent rise in unemployment would have been worse but for the fact that many women have become "economically inactive" and stopped looking for work.

Now, given all these people are experts in their field, with many years of experience, how come Cameron can deny all the available evidence? Doe he know something we don’t? Does he have some kind of hotline to God allowing him to predict the future more accurately than some of the top economic minds in the country? Or, is his incalcitrant behaviour reminiscent of the uncaring Toryism of the Thatcher years, where unemployment reached 3 million and mortgage rates hit a staggering 15%!

We should not be surprised – the evidence of Cameron’s modern Conservativism was made evident when Osborne stood up for his ‘Emergency’ budget back in June 2010. Since then, things have only got worse and now, as the snows of December thaw away into the recesses of our mind, we are set to face a new ‘Winter of Discontent’, where the ‘haves’ protect what they have, whilst the ‘have-nots’ look in from outside.

Today the Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves, but I doubt they will give it more than a passing thought. In their eyes, these figures are little more than a hiccup in their overall plan to change Britain. One can only fear what the next five years will bring and what this country will turn into if they have their way.