More questions than answers on not such a 'better day' for Brown

IF RECENT opinion polls have lulled Prime Minister Gordon Brown into a sense of invincibility, events yesterday will have brought him back to earth with a bump. He came under renewed fire for the Labour Party's close links to Unite the union at the heart of the looming BA strike due to start at the weekend. The union funds almost half the Cabinet, including Mr Brown and international development minister Douglas Alexander.

This has opened Labour to charges that its condemnation of the strike is at best half-hearted.

And the Prime Minister made a rare admission of error yesterday, saying he would correct his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq war after accepting that defence spending had not risen in real terms every year under Labour as he had initially claimed. This can only intensify public scepticism over the figures deployed by Mr Brown in defence of his actions in other policy areas.

However, this should have been a better day for the government. The latest unemployment numbers might have provided some encouragement. The fall in the UK claimant count in February was the largest one-month fall in more than a decade. Total unemployment stood at 2.45 million for the three months to January, down 33,000 on the figure for the previous three months. This would seem to offer some relief, in particular to Chancellor Alistair Darling, with the Budget now just a week away.

But the headline figures mask some worrying trends. Long-term unemployment, covering those out of work for more than a year, rose by 61,000 to 687,000. And the number of people in work actually fell in the quarter, by 54,000 to 28.86 million.

A growing number of people are being classed as economically inactive. Some 149,000 people have dropped out of the jobs market altogether. Of this total, some two-fifths comprises students reporting that they were no longer in the market for paid work.

There were also big increases in the numbers taking early retirement – and choosing to stay home to look after family. This suggests we could be on course for a jobless recovery.

Meanwhile, Scotland experienced the biggest rise in unemployment during the quarter, up by 16,000 to 205,000. While rates of employment and economic activity in Scotland remain better than the UK average, the recovery signs here are fragile, allowing the SNP to sustain its attack that Labour is not doing enough and that it should resist pressure to withdraw fiscal stimulus.

Another reason to be wary of hailing these figures as an unambiguous sign of recovery is that public sector jobs growth continues to flatter the picture.

The number of public sector workers grew by 7,000 between September and December, while the private sector workforce shrank by 61,000 over the period.

With job losses already being announced in town halls, and much more to come in the years ahead as the deficit is tackled, this is not a trend that can be expected to last. Thus, a "better day" ended with the Prime Minister facing more searching questions than ever.