Cathartic as the current circus might be, the root of this government’s problems does not lie in something so happily inapplicable to the Right as Peter Mandelson.
Our deputy editor joins Miranda Green of the Financial Times on Sky News’ Press Preview.
Once the applicant is offered a place, and takes out a student loan to fund it, universities have near-certainty that they will get paid. All the risk is borne by young people and the taxpayer.
Whilst we must be serious about the real issues facing our country and tackling them and we can learn lessons from our sister parties across the world, many of whom are doing well by winning the younger generation over.
The Labour Party manifesto with its vague promises of “change” has now required the Prime Minister to set out his Plan for Change, which actually reads more like a letter to Father Christmas; it’s a wish list.
This is the minimum necessary to avoid a real financial crisis in higher education. The real debate is how much more universities need to offer a good service to their students and what can be expected from them in return.
So long as the Conservative attempt at appealing to young people consists of national service presented as punishment battalions, they’ll never win them over.
The danger is that Labour consolidates its support with these voters as they get older, whilst continuing to win over successive cohorts of young people to whom the Tories appear to have little to offer.
There is a very real risk that, at least in the short-term, New Zealand’s economy, faltering due to the loss of so many skilled workers, gets stuck in a doom loop which fails to draw people back.
Why is it that the party believes British children should be taxed whilst foreign students at British universities are exempt?
Last week, Jeremy Hunt took important first steps toward solving three serious problems: the system’s anti-family bias, too much disparity in how earned and unearned income is treated, and absurd marginal rates.
Now that Labour has ceded the ground by deciding not to abolish tuition fees, the Conservative Party is uniquely positioned to steal a march on their opponent.
The Prime Minister showed the resilience indistinguishable from shamelessness which all PMs require.
Risk and income sharing agreements allow institutions and students to become partners and shift losses on poor-value courses away from taxpayers.
Above all, we must put an end to the damaging lie that not attending university makes someone less intelligent.