War of words over jobs crisis

No wonder David Cameron and Ed Miliband were content to trade insults, rather than substantive policy ideas, as this confluence of foreboding economic news formed the bleakest of backdrops to Prime Minister’s Questions.

That Mr Miliband seemed oblivious to the scale Labour’s legacy, and Mr Cameron in denial about the spike in youth unemployment, did not inspire confidence – the marked slowdown in growth should be prompting co-operation rather than confrontation or strikes, due to start on the day after the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, and which are likely to achieve little.

There should be no exclusivity on the best ideas on how to stimulate new jobs – this will not happen by Mr Cameron or Chris Grayling, the Employment Minister, simply dismissing the jobless figures as “disappointing”.

However, while jobs remains the most pressing issue, the squeezing of disposable incomes is now having marked consequences, as illustrated by the pensioners struggling to heat their homes or the sacrifices that columnist Jayne Dowle, a Barnsley mother-of-two, sets out on the opposite page.

These difficulties are not helped by the failure of successive governments to get to grips with inflation, or an acceptance that many of the most serious problems are in those northern towns and cities that Margaret Thatcher and John Major, the last two Tory premiers before Mr Cameron, took for granted. And while community co-operation in North Yorkshire is leading to the advent of renewable energy schemes to offset some price increases, such schemes are not practical in every street in this county.

Rather than mastering the art of political knockabout, perhaps the PM needs to answer this: what more is he going to do to help the elderly heat their homes this winter, or the out-of-work school leaver gain an apprenticeship?