by Tom Watson

They’re re-running Boys from the Blackstuff on the BBC. We all remember Yosser Hughes, who struggles to keep his children while unemployment erodes his mental health. And we tell ourselves that this is drama and not real life. And we tell ourselves that it is history. We know what unemployment did to a generation whose skills no longer matched the demands of the market.

But that was then. Those of us from Nick Clegg’s generation (he’s one day older than me) remember kids who left school assuming that work didn’t apply to them. There were no jobs for them to do.

Nick Clegg was 16 years old in 1983. I move in unusual circles but I’ve hardly met a 43 year old who’s a Tory. Even the toffs remember how bad it was in the formative years of their adolescence. Not Clegg though; he’s being “morally challenged” but still propping them up. I don’t know what he was doing in 1983, but he wasn’t living in the same England as me. (more…)