James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, is trying to take the sting out of the fiery suppository of impending mass unemployment. His grasp of reality remains impeccable:

When asked how the middle classes would cope with unemployment, Purnell said he was optimistic that £100m of government money allocated to helping the recently-unemployed retrain would smooth the transition.

A whole £100 million? Wow. That works out at, what, a whole sixty quid for each person currently out of work. So what are people going to retrain as with all that cash? Purnell’s got a list…

“They may want some retraining to become a driving instructor or there may be people who are in banking that want to go into another form of banking and [the training will] help them make a quick change,” Purnell added.

The bankers (nice to see someone in the government is thinking of the bankers, the poor neglected souls) are going to retrain as … bankers and everybody else is going to be… driving instructors? You have to admit it’s brilliant. The banks might have got themselves a whole economic war cabinet but why would the unemployed need one when we’ve got a Field Marshall Montgomery-like strategist in the form of James Purnell?

It might have escaped the master tactician’s notice, however, but we’re facing years of people not being able to afford cars, let alone driving lessons. Yet Purnell clearly sees an increase in demand for driving lessons. Does he have a secret plan? What else do you think he might suggest? Pilates teachers? Truffle gatherers? Will sixty quid pay for training to be an orchid grower, do you think?

Of course not. Job satisfaction is out the window:

The minister announced fresh measures to cut red tape to help people move in and out of employment, signalling the government expectation of a choppy job market over the next few years. [...] The government hopes this will make it easier for people to take up short-term work in the future.

In other words, repeat after me: Do you have a Nectar card? Fries with that? Have you thought about changing your energy supplier? The middle classes are about to get a very real insight into how much contempt the government and employers have for the lower orders. This is what Gordon Brown means when he talks about ‘flexible labour markets’.

Still, it’s not all bad news - we’ll still be making more of a contribution than the work and pensions secretary. I’d suggest Purnell could do his bit by employing a team of people to slap him around the head every time he comes out with this kind of crap. Imagine the torrent of applications he’d get. He deserves an especially large whack for this about the unemployment service:

“People have a memory of lots of bits of paper on the wall, lots of queuing, actually it’s very like a bank now. It is very customer focused.”

Comparing the jobcentres to the banks probably isn’t the best comparison to make right now. I’m not sure how much reassurance it’s going to inspire in the soon-to-be unemployed. We all know just how ‘customer focused’ the banks are. You want to know how ‘customer focused’ jobcentres are? About the same. Be afraid.

Still, it’ll be interesting to say the least quite soon to see the minister demonising, villifying and bullying the previously employed and affluent (and, most importantly, voting) middle classes as feckless, lazy and sofa-bound wasters - ‘there would be no retreat on plans to tie benefits more tightly to the condition that claimants search and prepare for work’. I wonder if gutter press readers who lose their jobs will be as hateful of dole scroungers as they are now.