With every passing week comes more sobering economic news - unemployment at a 14-year high, inflation rising more than three times faster than wages, while business confidence and household spending plummet.
A growing chorus of economists and businesses have joined the TUC in calling for a new economic strategy, given that the current plan of deep, spending cuts is so clearly not working.
But rather than change course, the Government has decided to change its arguments by blaming our economic woes on Europe, conveniently forgetting that the UK recovery fell flat long before the Eurozone crisis, and bringing out the old 'slash employment rights' textbook and re-branding it as some kind of strategy for growth.
The latest proposal that Whitehall are supposedly considering is the rowing back of rights against unfair dismissal. It's worth having a quick recap of what this is, in order to assess whether it really is holding our economy back.
Introduced 40 years ago, the protection of employees from being dismissed unfairly is one of the oldest pieces of employment legislation.
The clue to how it works is in the title. It does not prevent an employer from dismissing an employee, as long as it is for one of the stated 'fair' reasons - conduct, capability or performance.
Not everyone is protected by unfair dismissal - employees have a one year qualifying period unless it is linked to another issue such as sex discrimination or whistle-blowing, and those without contracts of employment are not entitled to it at all. Furthermore, the government is consulting on whether to extend the qualifying period for two years from April next year.
Businesses claim that this protection holds them back getting them stuck in employment tribunals. But most employers treat their employees fairly and will not need to worry about unfair dismissal claims. And in fact the number of employment tribunals claims is actually low as a percentage of the labour force.
The evidence that that these basic protections are holding back our economy is pretty thin on the ground. Only this month, the government's own business barometer survey asked businesses what issues they considered to be barriers to growth. By far the largest concern - with 45 per cent of businesses agreeing - was the state of the economy. Regulations were well down the list of concerns, with just six per cent of businesses mentioning it. This tallies with recent OECD research that found no link between employment protection and growth.
So why is the government obsessing over employment rights when there are far greater economic problems to deal with? Our best guess is that the same business lobbyists that have always opposed basic employment rights - they also opposed the minimum wage and better maternity leave and pay - scent an old battle to win, and ministers find it easier to bang on about this than admit their economic strategy is failing.
Our plea to ministers is to focus on evidence, rather than the volume of business carping, and ensure that basic employment rights are there to improve living standards and let everyone benefit from economic growth.