However, the Government's employment strategy is not too hot for voters in the middle either. For most of us, the statistical chance of losing a job has not increased all that much. But the costs of becoming unemployed have increased considerably. No matter how skilled you are, and how excellent your qualifications, the chances are you will have to take a substantial salary cut in your new job if you lose your old one. If you are unlucky, particularly if you are over 50, you may find the demand for your brand of skills and experience has dried up. Stay on the dole for six months and you might qualify for a training scheme. But in the meantime you will not get much help with your mortgage, or other benefits, unless you were able to take out insurance.Policymakers have to realise that people need support to be flexible, and to cope with the rapid change around them.

That may mean the chance to get new qualifications, or help finding work, or even a subsidy to get them back into employment at all. And - particularly for those swing voters who feel their prosperity is just a bit too precarious - it means offering enough cushions that they will not live in debilitating fear of losing everything should they fall.None of these measures are incompatible with the kinds of things Mr Waldegrave said yesterday. Indeed, his speech confirmed that we now have a broad political agreement over the need for a free market in labour, backed with individual protection and aid The argument is over where we find the point of balance. Security for the workforce of the future will come not from job protection or deregulation, but through creating genuinely flexible workers instead.. But the political point remains: the public is now more willing to listen to the left's criticisms of the Government's attitude to workplace stress.

Job losses among the middle classes in particular, and the perception that available work is increasingly temporary, low paid and part time, are having an insidious effect on the economic confidence of swing voters.Enter Mr Waldegrave, charged with talking down the feel-bad factor. The nation is at least ready to listen (even if not to be convinced) to the kinds of arguments aired at the TUC this week. It is true that the TUC's chosen figure for the minimum wage (pounds 4.26 an hour) is far too high, and the employment rights they advocate are too restrictive and retrograde. Freedom and flexibility were the great buzz words in the employment field, credited with creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Eighties boom.

Why knock it, when the results for almost everyone seemed so good? If you lost your job then, you could get on yer bike and find one. Half a decade later, British voters are clearly not as impressed with the Government's employment record. Yesterday William Waldegrave, Chief Secretary, went to great lengths to convince us that the flexible, deregulated labour market his government has done so much to promote is really much better for the poor, the jobless and the anxious than everyone thinks Times have changed. Before the recession, few Conservative ministers would have felt the need to defend themselves in this way. People would always ask him: 'Did you really know the Beatles?' We joked that would be on his memorial. He still loved to play chess with his friends - but as in everything, he always played to win."Chris WelchRay Coleman, journalist and author: born Leicester 15 June 1937; married 1965 Pamela Rudd (two sons); died 10 September 1996.. He loved to sit in our 17th-century thatched cottage overlooking the sea near Land's End, writing and holding seven-hour phone conversations with Richard Carpenter and Paul McCartney.