In my part of the country, we have a saying; “ ’Gob can say ‘owt”. Meaning that there is often a big difference between what people say and what people do.
In the case of Andy Burnham, the gap is proving to be very wide. Burnham made big promises to address the issue of Youth Employment, yet his announced response is both pitiful and worthy of contempt.
Yesterday (26-8-2026) Burnham said of young people;
“They have been let down by a system that told them there was only one route to success, and then left them without the opportunities to get their foot in the door anywhere else…The youth unemployment crisis has been ignored for too long.
That ends now.”
So, what is Burnhams magic solution to youth unemployment?
In conjunction with the supermarket company, Sainsbury’s, Burnham will create 10,000 ‘work experience opportunities’ over the next year for young people through its new programme, ironically named, ‘KickStarter’. All that is being offered, in fact, is workfare.
Sainsburys is a company that donates to all the major political parties, including Labour, (including a donation from Lord Sainsbury of almost £165,000), and it has recently shed thousands of jobs (3000+) over the last year as part of a massive £1 billion cost-saving initiative. Bear in mind also that a good proportion of its staff are likely to be already low-paid enough to be in receipt of Universal Credit, (across the UK, roughly 32% to 38% of all Universal Credit claimants are actively employed (in-work claimants). Retail and hospitality are among the sectors with the highest volume of part-time, flexible contracts that qualify for benefit top-ups.).
So, Burnham’s big initiative to help young people into work, is to offer them to Sainsburys as cheap labour.
Burnham’s great strategy will be to ‘kickstart’ the careers of our young people by forcing them to stack shelves, working for nothing, in exchange for their benefits, and in all likelihood, have those benefits removed if they refuse.
This is nothing better than indentured servitude, a work practice that should have been assigned to history long ago. Our young people deserve much better than this. They deserve proper employment, apprenticeships with good training, jobs with decent wages and conditions. The kick start they are getting, is a kick in the teeth from this Labour government.
The manifesto of the Socialist Labour Party lays out the case for decent jobs and training for our young people.
“Full employment and equal pay policies are necessary to help achieve a fair chance for all Britain’s young people. Such policies would help rebuild Britain’s industrial and manufacturing base – provided there are policies to restore Britain as an industrial and manufacturing nation.
It is essential to establish proper apprenticeship schemes, paying a full wage during the period of apprenticeship.”
What our young people need are real jobs and apprenticeships;
They need work not workfare!
Allistair Lomax (Socialist Labour Party)