Tories must reject fantasy economics
The general election was a serious setback for the Conservatives in that they lost their overall majority in Parliament. But they won a bigger percentage of the vote than in 2015 and, indeed, than at any election for more than 25 years. Yet the lesson the party hierarchy appears to have drawn from this outcome is that Labour really won the political argument. This is precisely the political narrative that Jeremy Corbyn’s followers have sought to frame ever since June 8, when the party’s share of the vote went up by 10 per cent.
The Conservatives seem now to believe that the best way to spike Labour’s guns is effectively to offer a watered-down version of what they were proposing in a manifesto that the Tories, correctly, denounced as a hard-left programme for government. The message from senior Tories in recent days, the latest being Michael Gove, has been clear: austerity is over; cutting the deficit is now a flexible target; tax rises are openly being contemplated; and the cap on public sector pay should be lifted. Now we are told that a review of university tuition fees is also under way.
Damian Green, first secretary of state and de facto deputy to Theresa May, said at the weekend that if the Tories wanted to win over younger voters, they needed to heed what they were saying about the cost of higher education. Mr Green called for a “national debate” on the subject, as though we had not had just that for the past decade. No policy has been more fought over in recent years than tuition fees. Introduced by Labour, they were increased by the coalition, causing terminal damage to the credibility of the Liberal Democrats.
Mr Green is right to suggest that greater emphasis must be placed on value for money, since many students are getting poor teaching and pointless courses. But it is dangerous to give the impression that Labour could be right about tuition fees. Scrapping them would cost more than £8 billion and be a hidden taxpayer subsidy to students from better-off families. Moreover, to borrow the money would merely impose greater debt burdens on future generations.
Even if there are signs of a reduction in applicants in recent years, university remains popular with young people. Of course they would like it for nothing but it is the Government’s job to explain why this is not possible – not to cave in to Labour’s fantasy-land economic approach.