Britain’ s unemployment crisis has deepened as the jobless rate climbed unexpectedly to 5% and vacancies slumped to their lowest level in five years. Responding, the Conservative Party branded the malaise as a damning indictment of Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’s economic record. Official stats showed the jobless rate had climbed to 5% as the Iran war pummels an already under-pressure job market.
Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said: “The current Government is on its knees. It may not be long for this world.” Those figures also showed another slowdown in wage growth, as vacancies tumbled amid a sharp reduction in hiring across hard-hit retail and hospitality sectors. The Office of National Statistics estimated that the UK had shed some 100,000 jobs during April, the biggest fall since the height of the Covid pandemic in May 2020.
Sir Mel seized on the figures to put Ms Reeves on notice, warning the UK is now paying more to borrow than any other major western economy. called it a “very significant premium” and branded the shock “a damning verdict by markets on the current government.”
Sir Mel said Ms Reeves’s decisions had “serious implications for all of us”, warning it was “costing us billions more in debt interests” and that “the chaos surrounding the leadership of the Labour Party” had only made the problems worse.
The Tory grandee also blasted the “Burnham penalty” – warning that panic and uncertainty around the Manchester Mayor’s run to be Prime Minister would cost taxpayers £5.4billion, or £300 for every family in the country.
He said: “Andy Burnham is already costing us all money before the by-election writ has even been served.”
At a speech in central London he warned of “a deeper problem with economic and fiscal policy in our country” where politicians “frequently complain about reckless borrowing, too often those same politicians have nothing concrete to say as to what they would do about it.”
Helen Whately MP, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: “This is further proof Labour have utterly failed in government. Labour came to office without a plan and are now in open civil war while the country cries out for serious leadership.”
She said Labour had “returned the country to the same negative trend they’ve driven since they came into power with unemployment rising month after month.”
On Mr Burnham she warned: “They can change their leader but it’s still the same old Labour Party.”
But the Government welcomed the figures, with a spokesman saying: “Today’s figures show there were 416,000 more people in work than there was this time last year. While this is encouraging, we know the conflict in the Middle East is casting a shadow on the labour market.”
He added: “Thanks to the choices we have made, we are in a stronger position to deal with the continuing volatility and costs of the war in Iran with our economy ranking as the fastest growing of any European G7 country last year.”