Labour leader pictured at a recent party conference in Lancashire. PHOTO: Bianca McLeish
In amongst their many promises Lib Dem members signed the following: ‘I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative’. Well we all know how that turned out.
Why do I reminisce over a broken promise? As each party strives to show themselves as being the slightly better option, the Labour party boldly claimed that they would reduce the tuition fees cap to £6,000 if they were in power. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? However, Ed Miliband has even less reason than Nick Clegg to stay true to his words, with Miliband avoiding any real commitment to this proposed policy.
In a BBC interview where Miliband was grilled by Andrew Marr he managed to unskilfully dodge questions as to whether this is a policy he would stand by or not. His answer, it is something he ‘would do now’, which is a moot point considering the Labour party aren’t in power. Asked whether this will be a policy used in the Labour manifesto he dodged and said, ‘the manifesto is three and a half years away’. Not really helping public confidence in you or your policy, Mr Miliband. So the status of this policy is unknown, but this is more likely just a weak attempt at scoring points off of his coalition friends.
Miliband has rightly taken heat for his sudden change of agenda. Originally he was supporting a graduate tax, a way of working our fees into tax after we have achieved a degree. Add to this that Labour was shown to be against any rise in tuition fees during the vote. Though you have to wonder if that was yet just another political ploy to win over the public.
It is disheartening knowing that the politicians who are making decisions on how our universities handle fees are those who went to university for free. Most of these politicians cannot comprehend the idea of being in financial difficulty with many coming from public school backgrounds. The distance between the rich and the poor are astronomical in the UK, you have to wonder how detached from society our leaders are.
The claim of reducing fees does unfortunately mean that Labour have reached the conclusion that higher fees are here to stay. We can take something positive from this though; at least tuition fees are still high on the political agenda, even if it is being used as a tool to sway public opinion.
January 28th, 2012 at 12:05 am
Just wanted to point out that the general feeling among Labour students was that this was a cop out, we will definitely still be pushing for lower tuition fees