The Dutch have a secret, and Westminster wants it. Their youth unemployment rate sits at 5.1%. Ours? 11.6%. The gap is a chasm, and ministers are now openly eyeing the Dutch model as the magic bullet.
I have been down at the department, listening to the whispers. The key, they say, is the 'learning-working trajectory.' It is an apprenticeship on steroids. Young people get a job, a training plan, and a mentor. The state pays their wage for the first year. Companies get a subsidised worker. Everyone wins. Or so the theory goes.
But this is Britain. We have a habit of taking a good idea and drowning it in red tape. The Dutch system is built on trust. Employers design the training. The government stays out. Can you imagine that here? The Treasury would want control. The DfE would want targets. The unions would want guarantees.
Yet the mood in Whitehall is shifting. I hear the Prime Minister is 'interested.' That is code for 'we are desperate.' The youth unemployment numbers are a ticking bomb. Every month, another cohort of school leavers joins the dole queue. The usual levers have failed. Kickstart was a sticking plaster. The Apprenticeship Levy is a tax, not a policy.
So the Dutch call is a Hail Mary. A delegation of officials is flying to The Hague next week. They will ask how it works. They will take notes. But the real question is whether they have the stomach for it.
The Dutch model requires a cold-eyed acceptance that not everyone is university material. That is a hard sell in a country where half the population thinks their child is a genius. It means telling young people that a vocational path is not a consolation prize. That is the cultural shift no policy paper can deliver.
Still, the pressure is building. The CBI is lobbying hard. The Chancellor is looking for a win. And the opposition is circling. Every shadow minister is sharpening their lines. 'Fourteen years of failure,' they will say. They will be right.
I caught a civil servant in the lift this morning. He looked tired. 'We are going to pinch it,' he said. 'But we will call it something else. Something very British.' I wonder what that will be. 'The British Dream'? 'Our Future'? The name does not matter. What matters is whether it works.
Keep watching the polling. If youth unemployment does not start falling soon, the Dutch model will not be the only thing imported. A new government might be.
Reporting from Westminster. Eleanor Rigby.
