Starmer quits: The economic statistic that will haunt his legacy

Cast your mind back to the summer of 2024 and Labour's election landslide.

The party was back in power after 14 years and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was promising a return to stability after the chaos of the previous government.

Yet, just weeks after that historic win, his message to the British public was suddenly new: that things would get worse before they got better.

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He and his chancellor explained that "tough" decisions would now be needed in Rachel Reeves's first budget because of an alleged £22bn hole they had uncovered in the public finances.

It did not inspire confidence.

The guarantee from both, however, was that "working people" would be protected from the pain to come.

Yet, this chart clearly shows how the unemployment rate has risen under this government.

How did this happen?

A one percentage point rise in the jobless rate equates to around 350,000 people.

It stood at 4.1% when Labour took office and peaked at 5.2% in the three months to January.

If the private sector was worried about the economic outlook ahead of the first budget at the end of October 2024, it certainly took fright when the "Halloween budget", as it was later dubbed, was delivered.

It included a 6.7% increase to the National Living Wage and a rise in employer national insurance contributions designed to raise an additional £25bn a year.

The budget was hardly an incentive to hire, let alone retain, staff.

The run-up to the second budget last November was similarly frantic, not just with months of speculation and trepidation but U-turns on policies that had not even been announced.

The most memorable such moment was the 2p rise in income tax that was briefed but then withdrawn.

We had welfare reforms that were cancelled in advance of an obvious need to restore some headroom to the public finances.

Business feels it was missold the Labour project. There is anger there. Trust, many argue, that was established before the election, was broken after the government took office.

It argues that you can't invest when your cost base is being forced up by policy.

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Young people in particular, mainly in the retail and hospitality sectors, have paid the price. Almost one million of them not in employment, education or training.

Labour put public sector growth at the heart of its economic strategy. It employs approximately six million people.

The private sector, which employs more than 28 million, says the imbalance of focus has to be addressed if all "working people", and the economy, are to be better off.

(c) Sky News 2026: Starmer quits: The economic statistic that will haunt his legacy