Labour isn’t working. Thirty years after the Conservative party unveiled the poster that swept Margaret Thatcher to power, dole queues are lengthening. Rolls-Royce and AstraZeneca on Thursday joined the list of big British companies to take an axe to their employment rolls. At 1.82m, unemployment is already at its highest in more than 10 years and rising fast. But will the UK see a rise in unemployment more like the jump of the early 1990s or the savage blow-out of the early 1980s? The answer will depend on the depth of the forthcoming recession and the speed of recovery.