Grown up policies for grown up parties
Posted by liberalstranger on October 30, 2009
One of the more disheartening sights at this year’s Lib Dem conference was that of Nick Clegg being ripped apart by the party faithful for having the temerity to suggest we might reconsider our stance on tuition fees, given that, y’know, it’s a bloody expensive policy and there’s a not a whole lot of cash around at the moment. Outrage was not too strong a word for the response. The policy, Clegg was told in no uncertain terms, had “served us well” (meaning, I presume, won student votes) and must on no account be changed. Oh yes, and it’s good for poor people too, right? Faced with vociferous, if largely vacuous, opposition, Clegg folded. The LibDem student vote is secure.
Or is it? Interesting to note that today’s Youth Parliament debate in the House of Commons was ambiguous at best on the subject of tuition fees, despite being conducted entirely by people the majority of whom presumably plan to attend university in the coming years. The young people of the UK, it seems, have realised that expecting ordinary tax payers to foot the bill for an education that will help its recipients get higher earning jobs in the future is hardly a progressive approach. There is no such thing, as one of them pointed out, as a free lunch.
In other words, they know what all the other ordinary voters know: you can have all the nice policies you like, but someone has to pay for them and that’s got to be justified. The fact is that the Liberal Democrats’ stance on tuition fees is not justified. As Julian Astle has powerfully argued, the party’s policies will not attract more poor people to university - since education inequalities have already become entrenched years before the age of 18 – and represent a significant redistribution of resources from poor to rich.
But all of this aside, this whole issue illustrates perfectly why the Liberal Democrats struggle to be taken seriously in UK politics. Clegg’s point was a very simple one: if we want to be accepted as a potential party of government, we have to have policies that reflect the financial restraints governments face, particularly in the current climate. There’s not enough money to scrap tuition fees, so we have to change the policy. It’s a no-brainer, frankly.
But apparently not. Never mind that the policy is flawed, unfair and unaffordable: it has “served us well”. How utterly politically cynical and navel-gazing, and how patronising to students to think they can’t tell the difference between a generous policy and a feasible one. If we want to be in government, then treating the voters – including students – like adults might “serve us” even better.
