Rachel Reeves can now add choking the UK jobs market to her economy-destroying checklist. Unemployment has reached its highest level for four years – when the country was still in the grip of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

This worrying news comes on the back of above target inflation, flatlining growth, crushed business confidence and humiliating spending cuts. The Chancellor’s employers National Insurance hike in October has been blamed for the rise in unemployment and the slowdown in recruitment. Economists predict the situation will get worse throughout the year as the double-whammy of Labour’s NICs and National Living Wage rises hit employers.

Throw Donald Trump’s tariffs into the mix and the economic outlook appears grim for the foreseeable future.

Labour supporters will no-doubt heap praise on Keir Starmer for sparing Britain the worst of the US President’s hammerblow.

But the fact remains that the UK is still worse off than it was before Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the economy was in good shape.

Instead, the Chancellor’s blunder budget has left it at the mercy of any domestic or global headwinds that come along.

Let’s not forget, less than a year ago, Sir Keir’s election manifesto proudly trumpeted that a Labour government would secure the highest sustained economic growth in the G7 with “good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country making everyone, not just a few, better off”.

The Prime Minister reiterated this during a reset speech in December in which he insisted sustained economic growth is “Labour’s first mission for government.”

“It means being pro-business and pro-worker. We are the party of wealth creation,” he said.

Six months later and millions of people are still grappling with unaffordable cost of living and are nervously staring down the barrel of an unemployment crisis.