I've been a Liberal Democrat for pretty much all of my political life. I live in a Lib Dem constituency, and my local MP is Jeremy Browne. Since he's a Lib Dem, he signed the pledge saying he vote against any rise in Tuition Fees. Here he is, number 145 on the spreadsheet. Good for him.
Except he'll be voting in favour of raising the cap to £9,000 on Thursday. Here's his Facebook note on it, and if you can't click through, here's what he says:
This government is having to take dramatic steps to avoid a budget crisis.
The British government is already borrowing an extra £425 million every single day. We will soon be spending £1,000 million a week just on the interest on our debt – way more than the total education budget.
If we run away from this crisis it will make matters even worse. The budget for the NHS is being increased and the overall spending on schools is being protected. But other budgets are being reduced because Britain has to live within its means.
I wish the new government had inherited a budget surplus, but instead we are tackling a disastrous deficit.
The fact is that the Liberal Democrats did not win the election. Our manifesto contained the policy to end tuition fees over a six-year period, however that was not a policy we could deliver as the junior partners in a coalition with just 8% of the MPs in the House of Commons.
Instead, within very difficult budget constraints, we are making the new system of higher education funding as fair as possible. It would have been easy to stand on the sidelines and not get involved, but the right thing to do is to play a strong part in coming up with the best possible solution.
The Liberal Democrats have helped produce a genuinely fair and progressive system that will help people from poorer backgrounds go on to higher education. No one has to pay upfront fees. Graduates will make monthly payments based on their earnings and only after they are earning £21,000 (up from £15,000 today). These monthly payments will be lower than they are today in every case.
So for example, a care worker with a starting salary of £21,000 increasing to £27,000 in real terms over 20 years would pay an average of £7 a month over 30 years. Under the current system, they would be paying back at least £45 a month immediately.
Universities which have higher charges will have conditions placed on them to ensure that they reach out to children and families on low incomes. And we have created a much fairer deal for part-time students who have previously been discriminated against. Our reforms will actively encourage social mobility.
Everyone in Britain will need to contribute to reducing the ruinous budget deficit so we can get our country back on its feet. That is being done whilst protecting the excellence of out universities and ensuring fair access for all potential students.
Disappointed is not the word.
The Liberal Democrats have shown just how little they value their promises to constituents. It wasn't just a manifesto pledge, it was a signed pledge to the NUS, and a key identifying feature of Liberal Democrat policy, along with Proportional Representation and the abolition of Trident (how are those going by the way?). Instead, they place the coalition agreement and the promise of power over the voters who put them into government in the first place.
And it is the voters who have given the Lib Dems the chance to be in government. That 8% figure that Browne quotes (which, to be specific, is nearer 9% at 8.8%) looks tiny, but the other 92% is not all Conservative. In fact, it's less than 50% (47.2%), and that's why we have a coalition government, rather than a majority -- a coalition which the Liberal Democrats are part of. Take into account number of votes cast, rather than just MPs, and almost a quarter of the country voted Lib Dem (23%), giving them about 2/5 the popular vote in government.
And yet, they seem oblivious to this fact. They make it seem as if they're just making up the numbers of a Conservative government, and providing the convenient fall guys for the harsh reactions to the cuts -- ideological ones, rather than essential. I feel like it's a cliche to mention the banks at this point, but only because the countless cries to punish them for their mistakes, rather than the students who have done nothing towards this crisis (how can they? They're under 18!), seem to be falling on deaf ears.
I haven't even directly mentioned the proposal themselves yet. I feel I have little to add after Aaron Porter's 10 points comparing the government's scheme to that proposed by the NUS, other than to agree with him when he says that "It is ridiculous to assume that students won’t take the price of a course into account when choosing it". Simply the threat of £9,000 a year is enough to scare people out of Higher Education, because it looks like a gamble, and a lack of state support makes University Education appear an individual luxury, rather than the right, or the essential part of our society, that it is.
Jeremy Browne's constituency is marginal, and if recent polls are anything to go by, he will probably lose his seat, along with many other Lib Dems, in the next election. Why? Well, I voted Lib Dem expecting a difference should they get to power. I voted Lib Dem because of their stance on Tuition Fees, on Trident, on immigration. I voted Lib Dem because they weren't the Conservatives. Enough people felt like me to create a Hung Parliament, and I supported the ConDem coalition because the calming influence of the Liberal Democrats would take the sting out of the Tories. I was wrong. If the AV vote goes against them, there will be almost nothing to show for them except to expose them as spineless turncoats. How can I vote for a party I no longer trust?
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