I’m about to make myself very unpopular. As someone who opposes tuition fees I’m also about to make myself look very hypocritical. These are the thoughts going through my head as I begin to write this, no doubt they went through the head of Nick Clegg when he read the Browne Review as well. What I want to argue is that without Clegg and the Liberal Democrats we’d be in a lot more trouble than we are now.
The Browne review, if implemented in full, would have allowed fees in excess of £20,000 per year. What we are getting is a limit of £9,000. Compared to what we have now I don’t think this is right, compared to what we should have likewise. However, we should not kid ourselves here, and we should not blame the Liberal Democrats for Conservative policy.
The Lib Dems are in a coalition with the Conservatives and they are by far and away the smaller of the two parties. Thus, they have had to compromise. They have extracted an electoral reform referendum, succeeded in keeping the trident decision in limbo, prevented the deportation of people who have claimed asylum for reasons of sexual orientation and achieved a commitment to seek real guarantees abroad over torture of foreign criminals, not to mention the fact that the Human Rights Act will likely survive this parliament. Most, if not all, of these policies and a number of others would not be in place in a majority Tory government.
On tuition fees, let’s not doubt that the Tories would probably have implemented the Browne review to a much fuller extent. The job of the Lib Dems was damage limitation. They were never going achieve abolition in their position; they were never likely to keep the status quo either. What they’ve done is contain the problem as far as they could.
The Liberal Democrats will, I have no doubt, go into the next election with a pledge to scrap tuition fees. Chances are they will be accused of hypocrisy and being ‘too little too late’, though I hope not. What they have done seems to many to be a betrayal, I was one of the many to begin with. All I would say is that things could be a lot worse, and we should all be thanking the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg for limiting the damage as much as they have without also bringing down the government.
So let me have it, I don’t feel I’m accepting tuition fees or a Tory agenda. I don’t feel I’ve betrayed any cause or abandoned my plans for the future, but when I’m in the minority the best I can do is a compromise. Often, you know if you’ve compromised effectively by the fact that everybody is angry at you. The universities think it should be higher, students think it should be lower, looks like that has been achieved. If I’m writing as myself or as Nick Clegg in this paragraph I’m not sure, but either way we should not abandon our best shot at genuine free education.
An excellent post if I may say so, the student community needs to realise just how lucky they are to have a “like-minded” party in coalition to reign in the “worst” of the right wing Conservative policies.
I suspect that the Liberal Democrats will enter the next election in a much better state than they entered this last one, as they will now be views as a more “legitimate” party able to take hard decisions which may be painfully contrary to their ideals.
Pingback: Will the Yellow Bird soar again? « BenjaminDBrooks' Blog