Jobfinder-General Joins Conservatives

The Labour government has been left reeling by the shock defection of their key unemployment advisor, Sir David Freud, to the Conservatives.

The financier was initially recruited from the City by former PM Tony Blair to devise new sticks to beat the jobless with, and was subesquently rehired by new Work and Pensions Secretary Andy Burnham to write a green paper tarring all single parents and the disabled as feckless loafers. However, it is claimed that even the compulsive work-ethic addict Gordon Brown found the Jobfinder-General's more advanced suggestions hard to stomach - and when the Tories offered him a peerage, he decided the time had come to change his allegiance.

"[Sir David] feels very much that, through this recession, welfare is going to be one of the big challenges in the next few years," said a Tory source, "And he would like to be part of the destruction of it, hopefully in a Cameron administration."

"The Jobfinder-General has many interesting proposals which match traditional Conservative policies far more closely that those of this waster-friendly government," said shadow chancellor George Osborne. "For instance, never in a million years would those welfare-addicted socialists on the government benches even contemplate herding the disabled into glass tanks in fashionable West End restaurants so that diners can select the one they would like to eat."

"And only a Conservative government will deliver on a promise to use the entire population of Liverpool as an energy-rich fuel for a new generation of private-sector power stations," he added.

Mr Cameron is planning to give Sir David a place on the shadow front bench as soon as he has been elevated to the House of Lords. He is also expected to advise the party on economic policy - bringing to bear 20 years of banking experience as the architect of the taxpayer-cheating bargain-basement disposal of Network Rail to his City chums, and as the idiot who dreamt up the eternally-unpayable financing of the Channel Tunnel on the never-never.

It is, however, in his main role of Jobfinder-General that Sir David is expected to shine, with his fearful cry of "I smell... doleys!" set to strike terror into Labour MPs facing the prospect of long-term unemployment after the next general election.