PM GAMBLES ON TUITION FEE U-TURN TO HEAD OFF TORY COUP

May’s audacious bid for youth vote... as row between Boris and Hammond reignites

THERESA MAY has performed a huge U-turn on university tuition fees in an attempt to avert any coup against her at this week’s Tory Party Conference.

In a dramatic gamble, she announced a wholesale review of the controversial system that saddles students with debts of up to £50,000. She is to scrap plans for a £250 rise in the

£9,250-a-year fees and raise the annual salary threshold at which graduates have to pay back the loans from £21,000 to £25,000 from 2018.

The move will cost £1.2 billion in total over four years and leave a million graduates £360 a year better off.

Mrs May’s aides denied she was ‘dancing to Labour’s tune’ and insisted the tuition fee rethink showed she was determined to ‘take the fight directly into Jeremy Corbyn’s heartland’ – young voters. She made no apology for copying his eyecatching policy – and would show, that unlike Labour’s ‘ reckless’ proposal to scrap fees altogether, prudent Tories could pay for their measures.

Her announcement is part of a multi-billion-pound package of proposals, including an easing of the public sector pay cap, help for first-time homebuyers and new rules to protect private tenants, all aimed at boosting the party’s fortunes.

The moves come amid rumours that Mrs May could be forced to resign within weeks unless she gets a grip on her divided party and Cabinet.

Tory unity was at breaking point yesterday as Boris Johnson defied the PM again by renewing his one-man ‘hard Brexit’ crusade, mocked her for being a ‘slave’ to her advisers, and reportedly said she would be gone in a year.

The feud between Mr Johnson and Philip Hammond also reignited as the Chancellor, in a Mail on Sunday interview, denied he had backed Johnson for leader after Mrs May’s botched Election. And unlike Mr Johnson – who said the Brexit transition should be ‘not a second longer’ than two years after 2019 – Mr Hammond indicated it could be slightly longer.

The Chancellor also strongly denied last Sunday’s claim that he texted Mr Johnson at 4am on Election night pledging he was ‘100 per cent behind’ Johnson if Mrs May was forced to stand down. ‘I do not recognise the words or sentiment,’ said the Chancellor.

And in an extraordinary twist, a source close to Mr Johnson contacted this newspaper last night to say: ‘Boris received no text message from Philip Hammond – it didn’t happen’, but offered no explanation of why it took seven days for the Johnson camp denial to come.

Despite denials from Mr Johnson’s allies, many MPs are convinced he is determined to oust the PM. Calls for Mrs May to step down will increase if her main speech on Wednesday, which is expected to include an apology for the Election, is a flop. Some fear a repeat of the 2003 Tory conference, when Iain Duncan Smith appeared to have saved his skin, but was forced out weeks later.

In his interview, Mr Hammond said Mrs May had his ‘complete support’, and in a thinly veiled dig at Mr Johnson, said he was ‘happy being Chancellor’ and not on an ‘ego trip’.

Meanwhile former Tory chairman Grant Shapps also warned that Mrs May must show more leadership in the ‘speech of her life’ to the conference in Manchester.

Writing in The Mail on Sunday, Mr Shapps says Mrs May should replace party chairman

‘We risk looking desperate and silly’

Sir Patrick McLoughlin because of his role in the ‘catastrophic’ Election campaign.

In other policy moves, Mr Hammond announced an extra £10 billion to help 135,000 firsttime buyers get a foot on the housing ladder; senior figures including Mrs May signalled an easing of the one per cent public sector pay cap to help recruit extra teachers and nurses; and Business Secretary Sajid Javid is to unveil new moves to protect private tenants.

Mrs May’s tuition fee plan comes just months after she mocked Mr Corbyn’s pledge to scrap the charges, claiming the £ 10 billion a year cost would leave a ‘black hole’ in the UK’s finances. Her somersault is likely to prompt claims that Labour’s surprise Election success has panicked her into copying his policies.

But a source close to the Prime Minister said: ‘It shows she is listening to voters and we make no apology for that.

‘Labour’s promise to abolish tuition fees was irresponsible and uncosted. The Conservatives can do it in a sensible and affordable way that does not destroy the economy.’

Mr Hammond will explain how the reforms would be paid for in November’s Budget.

However, some Tory MPs were sceptical. ‘When Corbyn put forward this policy we said Labour was behaving as though there is a “magic money tree,”’ said one. ‘Now we appear to believe we can get money from the same mythical source. We are in danger of looking desperate and silly.’

NOW is the time for bold leadership. We need it for the Government to survive and for the country to prosper. And boldness means taking risks.

That is why the Tory attempt to copy Labour’s appeal to students, by freezing tuition fees and raising the threshold at which graduates must pay back their loans, makes some sense. It responds to genuine discontent over the excessive debt and absurdly high interest rates recently loaded on to students.

But it is something of a gamble. Such generosity, taken too far, could start to look too much like extravagance, at a time of austerity. It is justified only if it saves us from the far worse extravagance of a Labour government.

For this policy, plus more much-needed help for new homebuyers and a relaxation of public-sector pay limits, will make Tory MPs’ lives easier in marginal seats, now and later – which is no small thing.

But such advantages cannot be won at the cost of ceasing to be conservative. After years of rightly denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as irresponsible, the Tories cannot now move too far towards him.

As the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, points out in The Mail on Sunday today, prosperity and security for all grow out of the capitalism the Corbynites hope to strangle with tax and debt. And national wealth prospers only when there is a firm and fiscally responsible hand at the Treasury.

But serious action definitely does need to be taken, to win back support among the young and to hold this Government together. The Corbyn danger is now far greater than it was before, and the Tories are the only force in the country which can stop the Marxist John McDonnell moving into the Treasury, with all that this would imply.

Alas, from the way some Conservatives are behaving, you would not know that the danger was so great.

What, for example, does Boris Johnson think he is doing? Mr Johnson, a likeable, affable person, rose to Cabinet rank mainly by being a successful clown on national TV, rather than through years of hard work on policy and implementation. And it shows.

His current pose as the apostle of Brexit is a performance, by a man who once publicly said he supported Britain staying in the EU single market. Who knows what he might say or do next, least of all Mr Johnson himself?

Is it possible the Johnson joke has worn a little thin? It should have done. There would be nothing at all funny about a Corbyn-McDonnell government, an outcome which Tory division and dissent makes hideously possible.

The Prime Minister is in an undoubtedly difficult position this week and some of it is her own fault. But who will be helped – apart from Mr Corbyn – by making things worse for her?

For the sake of the country, serious Tories attending this week’s conference, and serious Tory MPs and Ministers, must sustain Mrs May through these tough times. It is their plain duty. Above all, they must keep their heads and let troublemakers know that those who cause damaging chaos now will never win the crown of power.