Perhaps more intriguing still, are some of the other fraught conversations that have been taking place at the top of government these past few days…
The ‘Big Re-set’, as it is being called, when the government will make a concerted effort to get back on the front foot, is planned for early in the New Year. (There is, it is accepted, little point trying to cut through in the frantic few weeks leading up to Christmas when everyone has already mentally switched off for the year).
However, there is now a growing dread that the immediate post-Christmas period is going to be carnage in the retail and hospitality sectors as the big employers use this traditionally slackest of months to jettison thousands of part-timers and hourly paid full timers, prior to wage and employers’ NI increases from 31 March.
(Whilst private polling has shown that there is undoubted affection in the country for farmers, it all feels a bit complicated and remote to most people, will quickly be forgotten and is unlikely to effect voting intentions drastically).
However, many of those likely to be hit hardest in the retail and hospitality sectors are either young people in their first job - or single parents working flexible ‘school hour’ friendly shifts. The type of people who will find it very hard to get another job and the type of people who sit squarely in Labour’s core support.
So once the Treasury have finished trying to sort out GPs, care homes and farmers, next on the To Do list apparently is trying to estimate what the likely increase in Universal Credit claims will be when the NI increase results in fewer people employed and more people claiming state-funded support.
As a weary mandarin who has had their forthcoming weekend ruined by yet more unpaid number-crunching was heard to witheringly observe, “Rachel understands all about actions but very little about consequences.”
The ‘Big Re-set’, as it is being called, when the government will make a concerted effort to get back on the front foot, is planned for early in the New Year. (There is, it is accepted, little point trying to cut through in the frantic few weeks leading up to Christmas when everyone has already mentally switched off for the year).
However, there is now a growing dread that the immediate post-Christmas period is going to be carnage in the retail and hospitality sectors as the big employers use this traditionally slackest of months to jettison thousands of part-timers and hourly paid full timers, prior to wage and employers’ NI increases from 31 March.
(Whilst private polling has shown that there is undoubted affection in the country for farmers, it all feels a bit complicated and remote to most people, will quickly be forgotten and is unlikely to effect voting intentions drastically).
However, many of those likely to be hit hardest in the retail and hospitality sectors are either young people in their first job - or single parents working flexible ‘school hour’ friendly shifts. The type of people who will find it very hard to get another job and the type of people who sit squarely in Labour’s core support.
So once the Treasury have finished trying to sort out GPs, care homes and farmers, next on the To Do list apparently is trying to estimate what the likely increase in Universal Credit claims will be when the NI increase results in fewer people employed and more people claiming state-funded support.
As a weary mandarin who has had their forthcoming weekend ruined by yet more unpaid number-crunching was heard to witheringly observe, “Rachel understands all about actions but very little about consequences.”
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