Alan Milburn‘s review into Britain’s economically inactive youth (or NEETs) makes for extraordinary reading, but will the government act, asks Eliot Wilson It is a testament to Sir Tony Blair’s legacy that in contemporary politics we can still use the word “Blairite” and it has instant meaning and intelligibility.

After all, Blair resigned as Prime Minister nearly 19 years ago and Sir Keir Starmer is the seventh premier since then.

Yet there is a cadre of leading lights from that era who have continued to hold considerable influence in Labour circles until now: Jonathan Powell, Peter Mandelson, Paul Corrigan, Michael Barber.

Alan Milburn was one of the most formidable of all.

By some margin the best health secretary of the last 30 years, he brought to that bed of nails vision, clarity of purpose, determination and an ability to discard the velvet glove when the iron fist on its own was more effective.

Last December, the Prime Minister appointed Milburn to conduct a review into young people and work; in particular, he was asked to examine why there is a large and growing cohort of 16- to 24-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training, dubbed “NEETs”.

Britain’s ‘lost generation’ Last week, Milburn delivered an interim report.

He emphasised the scale of the problem: the number of NEETs is now nearly 1m, one in eight young people and the rate has hardly fallen below one in 10 for the past 25 years.

More alarmingly, 60 per cent of NEETs – more than half a million young people – have never had a job, and are not just unemployed but are not looking for work.

This is not just a matter of current economic output and prosperity.

Milburn is blisteringly frank on the deeper problems: “Behind the statistics lie individual lives: aspirations thwarted, opportunities lost, futures placed on hold… today Britain faces a generational fault line.

We are at risk of a lost generation.

That is a moral crisis.

It has economic consequences.” There are two elements to this.

The first is the obvious effect on the country’s economy.

Milburn’s report estimates that the cumulative annual cost of 1m NEETs is £125bn, and points out that challenges like labour shortages, low growth, rising welfare costs and pressure on public services are all exacerbated by the number of young people who are economically inactive.

Alongside that, Milburn is not afraid of making a clear moral argument which sometimes sounds as if it could have come from the grocery shop and Methodist chapel of Grantham.

The review, he says, “unashamedly extols the virtues of work… good work”, and he sets out its importance: “Work is not only about income,....