Left: Conservative Helen Whately criticised Labour for 174,000 young people unemployed under Labour, suggesting they have the policies to fix it Right: But under the Conservatives, there were 872,000 young people unemployed, because of Conservative policy My view: Helen Whately talks as though the Conservatives have just arrived to discover a problem somebody else created. They governed Britain for 14 years. They had 14 years to improve education, strengthen training and help young people into secure employment. Yet in the final full quarter before they left office, an estimated 872,000 young people were outside education, employment or training. Roughly one in eight. That is a record they must answer for. If their policies offer such convincing solutions now, why did their government leave so many young people without those opportunities? Whately cannot claim authority on fixing the problem while skipping over her party’s responsibility for tackling it when it actually held power. Fourteen years gave the Conservatives ample time to turn promises into results. Labour deserves scrutiny. But Conservative politicians demanding better outcomes should start by explaining their own failures. Losing an election does not wipe away 14 years in government—or turn the people who failed to solve a problem into credible experts on fixing it.