Marks & Spencer, that grand old bastion of British retail, has announced a new traineeship for 1,000 young people. The aim, they say, is to combat youth unemployment. How noble. How Victorian. It seems the nation’s high streets are now to be rebranded as vocational training grounds, a sort of modern-day apprenticeship scheme for the aspiring sandwich artist.
Let us not be churlish. Any initiative that gets young Britons off the dole and into the world of paid employment is, on the surface, a welcome one. But scratch the surface, and you find the same old patter. This is not a solution to the structural crisis of youth unemployment. It is a plaster, a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. The wound is the decimation of the industrial base, the hollowing out of the middle class, and the relentless march of the gig economy. M&S is offering a few hours of shelf-stacking and customer service, a brief interlude before the inevitable return to the dole queue.
The numbers are telling. One thousand places. That is a drop in the ocean when youth unemployment in some parts of the country is north of fifteen per cent. And what of the quality of these traineeships? Will they lead to permanent jobs? Or are they simply a way for M&S to get cheap labour? The company will no doubt trumpet its corporate social responsibility, its commitment to the community. But let us not be fooled. This is a public relations exercise dressed up as social policy.
We have been here before. The Victorian era saw the rise of the charity organisation societies, the settlement houses, the endless schemes to improve the poor. And what did they achieve? They papered over the cracks of a deeply unequal society. Today, we have the same cycle: a crisis, a well-publicised initiative, a brief flurry of optimism, and then the slow return to the status quo. The underlying problems remain untouched: the lack of affordable housing, the crumbling educational system, the obsession with university degrees at the expense of vocational training.
The real issue here is not M&S. The real issue is a government that has abdicated its responsibility to create a proper industrial strategy. We have no plan for the future of work. We have no plan for the integration of artificial intelligence. We have no plan for the retraining of millions of people whose jobs will disappear in the next twenty years. Instead, we have a sprinkling of traineeships from a supermarket chain.
Do not mistake me. I am not arguing for the abolition of private sector initiatives. I am arguing for a sense of proportion. This is not a solution. It is a gesture. And gestures are the currency of a decadent age. We clap for the NHS, we cheer for the volunteers, and we pat ourselves on the back for a few thousand traineeships. Meanwhile, the empire crumbles.
So, yes, by all means, let M&S do its bit. But let us not pretend that this is anything other than what it is: a tiny, well-intentioned, ultimately insignificant response to a monumental problem. We need more than this. We need a revolution in our thinking about work, about welfare, about the purpose of society. Until then, enjoy your sandwich. And remember, the Romans had bread and circuses too.
