Evening Standard Comment: London’s lagging recovery needs urgent addressing

You did not need to read the full Office for National Statistics release on employment data this morning to know that Britain is still coming to terms with two economic shocks: Brexit and Covid-19.

From soaring energy costs, restaurants poaching each other’s staff to missing items on supermarket shelves, this is a bumpy moment for the economy — and London in particular.

The number of job vacancies across the country from July to September reached a record high of 1.1 million. But the capital is the region of the UK furthest behind its pre-pandemic levels of payrolled employees, and for the three months ending August 2021 had the highest unemployment rate in the country. Brexit has clearly weighed on our economy.

As freedom of movement ended, EU workers left and many others did not arrive. The pandemic too disproportionately impacted the capital, a metropolis reliant on commuters, tourism and nightlife.

These dual shocks have brought into sharper focus a skills mismatch, while the pandemic has led some to reevaluate what they want from their lives. But the Government needs to take responsibility for its actions.

Boris Johnson crows he has ended “uncontrolled immigration”, yet despite ending decades of free movement, there is no new labour market strategy to deal with the immediate effects of this.

We must, as leading Brexiteer Lord Wolfson wrote in these pages recently, adopt a non-ideological approach to immigration as well as invest in skills at home.

Otherwise, that high-wage, low-inflation economy with shelves brimming with food will be another Brexit mirage. Never mind the feared rise in inflation, stalking Rishi Sunak’s nightmares.