Alan Milburn’s plan to reform benefits currently for young people not in education, employment or training comes from the New Labour archives. Its good in principle that young people will have a right to a job but the focus needs to be on the actual creation of decently paid entry level jobs. Far from increasing these may be declining in some sectors of the economy.
Milburn was however honest that it would take ten years for the changes he proposes to have an impact. Skinning a tiger claw by claw does indeed take a long time and may not work. The media which works on a 24 hours new cycle will struggle to understand why real change takes time. For a quicker change a revolution may work and Milburn when much younger was on that page.
Meanwhile we may reflect that both Stalin and David Bowie stuck to five year plans but perhaps more realistically socialist planning did tend to have a five year focus based on the electoral cycle. Ten years is a long time in politics and in people’s daily lives
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