Osborne's Full Employment Pledge - Will Labour React?

After announcing radical reforms to the UK's private pensions industry, George Osborne has now announced that a future Conservative government would reach full employment in the UK.

The Chancellor channelled Churchill during his pledge to fight for full employment in Britain, and modified a riff from ex-Chancellor Norman Lamont, who said in 1992 that rising unemployment was "a price well worth paying" to defeat inflation.

"Jobs matter - mass unemployment is never a price worth paying," said Osborne.

But Osborne didn't offer a definition of "full employment", giving him wriggly room in the future.

The Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility have suggested that once the labour market's "equilibrium rate" for unemployment is reached, then full employment is achieved.

It just so happens that the OBR has estimated that the "equilibrium rate" will be met in 2018. It's worth noting that the UK's lowest recorded level of unemployment was 215,800, or 1%, in July 1955.

That seems a few universes away from the most recent figures this year, which puts the unemployment rate at 7.2% of the population and more than 900,000 young people out of work.

However, Osborne's move could be a blow to Ed Miliband's Labour Party ahead of the general election next year. According to an Opinium poll for the Observer, Labour is only on 33% to the Tories on 32%.

With Osborne's full employment pledge charging straight into Labour's traditional territory of work and employment, it will be interesting to see how Ed Miliband will react.