What is Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats thinking he is doing, by accepting the unpaid job of selling the Government’s unpopular higher education reforms to prospective students?
Hughes, who it is assumed is on the left of the LibDems, will tour schools and colleges to discuss the policy with the students and report their concerns to Clegg and PRDave.
In an admission that he is losing the propaganda war, PRDave, in his letter appointing Hughes, claimed there was a “material risk” poor schoolchildren would be put off by “misinformation” from applying to higher education institutions or staying on to study A-levels.
Hughes up to now has been a popular figure in the party and his acceptance of the new role is a sign of how seriously the leadership takes the fall-out from the tuition fees vote.
However Hughes has now opened himself to ridicule, because less than three weeks ago he threatened to vote against the policy he will now be promoting. It is unlikely that students will take Hughes seriously as a messenger of a Tory government that most young people despise.
Hughes by his unconvincing stance during the run up to the tuition fees vote and acceptance of this job is now in danger of losing the respect of those in his party and those outside it who consider principle to be at the centre of the political argument.
Over the Christmas period I had the opportunity to talk with two graduates. They both have student loans, ranging from twelve to fifteen thousand pounds. Both are now working and are repaying their loans back. One thought the loan he had was no problem, as the repayments are taken from his salary monthly. So it’s all done for him. When asked about the student fees being trebled, he was unable to see that forty thousand pounds plus would be a problem.
ReplyDeleteThe other graduate was a young woman; she had been working for some years now, and was still paying off the interest on her loans. But what really irked her was that she had recently discovered that monies taken from her salary monthly was being held in an account somewhere and accruing interest for someone, obviously not her. The money was only handed over to pay off the debt once a year. She is now even more aware of where her money goes as she now has a mortgage to pay.
In your article you say the government is sending a lovely Lib Dem into schools to explain to children that forty thousand pounds plus is nothing to worry about. It’s just a matter of understanding how it works. You don’t pay a penny, he will explain, oh good, says a kid in the front row, until you leave university and have a job that pays over twenty one thousand pounds a year. How long will it take me to pay that amount back asks a child, thirty years says the minister, but lets not focus on that, you won’t have to pay a penny until….
How much lower can the Lib Dems go, going into classrooms trying to persuade children to put their future into the hands of companies that deal in debt. Am I mistaken but isn’t that what got the world into the mess it’s in now.