The only photo I could find of the invited audience at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry for John Healey’s first speech as Chancellor was from above and behind, so it wasn’t easy to pick out the apprentices with whom he ‘looked forward to spending time later’. Were they the four youngsters in work gear at the front? Or might they have included several balding blokes in suits, representing older trainees? Whichever, their small number, combined with Healey’s staging in front of a pair of robots, offered a metaphor of the state of UK industrial employment in a week when Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) at nearby Solihull confirmed 4,000 job cuts.
As robotics advance, workforces shrink; as Donald Trump’s tariffs hit manufacturers like JLR whose profitability depends on exports to the US, workforces shrink faster. This we knew. But hope for Neets (under-25s not in employment, education or training) who aspire to diminishing numbers of skilled factory jobs rests largely on apprenticeships – which have also atrophied. A decade ago, half a million of these on-the-job training opportunities were available each year. Now there are 340,000 and almost half are taken up by over-25s. The young are losing out and (as I’ve said so often) ‘uni’ is the least useful alternative.
How has this happened? I asked the chairman of an ‘independent training’ charity that provides courses for apprentices from smaller firms – but which has fallen into losses because apprentice numbers have plunged in response to Labour’s employers’ national insurance hike and increased workplace rights. He also runs an advanced engineering firm: ‘We hire only the people we need. To grow our workforce, including apprentices, we need to grow our business. Why wouldn’t we upskill older employees on apprentice schemes when we can’t afford to hire more youngsters? If ministers want us to do that, they should cut business costs, stop tinkering and actually encourage us to grow. That’s the bit Labour never understands.’
Among the few solid lines in Healey’s speech on Monday was a pledge to cut business regulation by 25 per cent. More vaguely, he mentioned growth, ‘the sustainable pathway [to] prosperity’, at least 25 times. Meanwhile, the British Retail Consortium (Tesco, Greggs, Pets at Home et al) will create 100,000 work placements for 18- to 24-year-olds; and Alan Milburn’s final report on what to do about one million Neets is due this autumn.
All of which leads to the key question for back-to-Westminster month. Can Andy Burnham’s Labour do serious, joined-up, problem-solving government – or, to paraphrase Kemi Badenoch, will it amount to no more than eyelashes, T-shirts, up-the-north and tax-the-rich? And given the recent tally of failed prime ministers, how long can Downing Street’s oldest apprentice last before the nation says: ‘You’re fired’?
Trickledown winner
A farewell wave to Chris Rokos, the London–born Old Etonian hedge-fund billionaire whose reading of the runes of Burnhamism has prompted him to quit the UK for Greece, where he’ll pay a flat tax of €100,000 a year on his foreign earnings in return for a modest investment in the local economy.
Among other contributions, Rokos is reckoned to have paid £330 million in taxes last year – making him Britain’s third-biggest taxpayer. He also spent £175 million to renovate a Grade I-listed mansion, Tottenham House in Wiltshire, and pledged £190 million to Cambridge University for a new school of government. In doing so, he overtook the US financier Stephen Schwarzman (who gave £185 million to Oxford in 2019) to become the greatest British educational benefactor since the Renaissance.
In trickledown terms, we might observe that the 55-year-old Rokos has already done more than his share. And The Spectator’s former chairman Andrew Neil has revealed that Rokos was a member of the Spectator-adjacent Addison dining club – surely another point in his favour. His exit has provoked low-tax campaigners to chorus: ‘No wonder the super-rich are all leaving.’ But with the UK in its current state, the truth is we’re lucky he stayed as long as he did.
Predictions of ruin
I’m intrigued by the rise of ‘prediction markets’ as the latest US gambling craze, particularly among young men, alongside crypto and unproven AI stocks. Peer-to-peer betting sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket (unauthorised in the UK but easy to access) now reportedly attract $24 billion a month in wagers on anything from the number of Truth Social posts this week to the release date of Grand Theft Auto VI. No surprise that the big winners are small numbers of accounts suspected of inside knowledge.
Libertarians say we should be free to do what we like with our money. Moralists say prediction markets are luring American punters to ruin and will do likewise if they spread over here, where regulated sites such as Smarkets, which has Labour winning the next election without an overall majority, and easyBet, which gives Badenoch the highest chance of being the next prime minister, are still relatively small-scale. Watch this space.
Chez Bruno
I’ve had complaints that instead of naming French restaurant gems discovered during my summer break, I just moaned about menu prices. So here’s a broad tip in recompense: ‘Auberge’ in the name is a reliable indicator of value as long as there’s no Michelin star attached. And my find of the year was L’Auberge, tout simple, at Catus a few miles north of Cahors, offering good, plain cooking at modest prices in a tree-shaded boulevard.
Bruno, the owner, told me he’d had his worst season in 20 years. There were rarely a dozen evening covers when he hoped for 30, as heatwaves and cost-of-living pressures kept diners away. If you’re passing, make his till ring and tell him I sent you.
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