There was praise for Keir Starmer who he stabbed in the back, and praise for Rachel Reeves. And, naturally, attacks on the Conservatives, including David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. There was even a sideswipe at Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, who he called “Liz Truss with a Bitcoin account”. But it was the Reeves section that got me most. Healey praised her achievement as Britain’s first female chancellor, while largely ignoring what she actually did. I could do a 40-minute speech about that myself, but the bit that really got me was youth unemployment. He blamed it all on the Tories. When the latest surge is squarely down to her.
The fact that almost a million so-called NEETs are neither in education, employment nor training is a national tragedy. I agree with him on that. But here’s an inconvenient fact. When Labour took office in July 2024, youth unemployment was 14%. The latest figures show 751,000 16 to 24-year-olds are unemployed, giving a rate of 16.4%. The numbers have increased by 109,000 in the last year alone. Under a Labour government. Not the Tories, Labour.
Listening to John Healey, you’d have thought youth unemployment had plunged since Rachel Reeves became our glorious chancellor. In fact, you might wonder why such a talent was no longer in office. Youth unemployment has shot up under Labour. Can he even count? Or would he rather just fiddle the numbers and try to fool us?
The increase followed Reeves’s ludicrous decision to slap an extra £25billion on the cost of employing people by hiking employer National Insurance contributions. As well as hiking the rate, she also reduced the salary level at which employers start to pay it, from £9,100 to just £5,000. Which hits young people taking part-time jobs particularly hard. No wonder they can’t find them.
Combined with Angela Rayner’s Employment Rights Act, which handed workers full sickness rights from day one and scared employers stiff, Labour has made hiring people more expensive and far riskier. And Healey spent half his speech pretending Labour was the solution.
This was an absolute sickener. All the more so when it was wrapped in more sentimentality about miners’ lamps and a coal industry Ed Miliband would shut down in a heartbeat.
From time to time Healey raised the spectre of fiscal discipline, knowing the bond market was listening. The room went quiet every time, as if a stern teacher had threatened an entire classroom with the cane. Healey didn’t give us any details. That would have caused a riot. The bond market was unimpressed. This was his big chance to work gilt yields down. He fluffed it. Ten-year gilt yields ended where his speech where they began, at a record high 5.4%.
Then came the biggest cheer of the speech: news that Healey was going to revive the Union Learning Fund. I had to look that up. I’m sure most voters couldn’t care less.
Apparently the Tories abolished it and Healey is going to revive it. Conference erupted. And that was it. His big new idea. All wrapped up in a load of sentimental blather for the comrades. Given Healey’s rate of delivery, his Budget speech could last several hours and be mostly fluff. I’m looking forward to it even less than before.
