I look forward to seeing such honesty in the next Labour manifesto.

If you bribe people now to support you later, they have no reason to support you. In those circumstances, gratitude is strictly ‘a lively sense of favours still to come’. Your bribe is ineffective.

However, parties can create reliable voting support (reliable at least for the time being) by helping people to manage their lives more in the way they want to. That is why the right to buy your council house was such a success. It is why creating the NHS was such a success.Just redistributing wealth – still less just redistributing income – is a weak and relatively ineffective way of doing that.

Redistributing while you tell people what to spend it on – the usual Labour recipe – will discourage all voters except those who agree with teh Labour leadership about what it is best to spend on. Labour have even more of a problem than you suggest.

“helping people to manage their lives more in the way they want to. That is why the right to buy your council house was such a success.”

I think you mean ‘replacing secure tenure with slavery to the bank, and thereby ensuring buy-in to Thatcherite ideas about work, productivity,etc.’

Right-to-buy was a genius policy, but it worked because it was evil and because its victims were stupid, not out of any kind of empowerment toss.

A citizens’ income is a good idea not because it creates client voters, but because it ends the benefit trap and provides incentives to work, dignity and an end to Government staff being paid to catch folk out.

It’s also only a policy of the Greens, and anyone holding their breath for Labour to propose it will have a short life expectancy indeed!

Labour won’t change significantly until after the next general election. Anything done now is a waste of time. Just try and achieve something lasting whilst in your last year of government for a while, instead of fretting about how to cling onto power. Move on. Learn the lessons from your mistakes, instead of rushing to make even more.

Labour’s biggest “client vote” is the anti-Tory vote. This is diminishing as the anti-Tory propaganda emanating from the media diminishes, the vocal anti-Tories in the media and the Arts are exposed as hypocrites and people generally grow up and become more mature and responsible. That’s why Labour and the Left are very keen on indoctrinating the young and extending the vote to 16yr olds.

You opinion that Thatcher created a client vote is not supported by the stats:

1979 13.7m
1983 13.0m
1987 13.8m
1992 14.1m

Many people vote negatively. They vote against parties/Govts they don’t like. In know from family experience that many traditional labour voters switched to Thatcher because of the decimated economy, continual industrial strife and the appeal of strong leadership.

John B:

That’s one way of looking at it, certainly, but in economic and electoral term what ‘right to buy’ did was turn a modest amount of state income into a much larger amount of privately owned wealth.

The interesting thing about council housing – and you can actually see this in the accounts of any new housing association created by a stock transfer from a local authority, is that the properties themselves have almost no asset value.

So, before right to buy, a council house was only actually worth the amount of rent that the council could extract from the tenant.

Selling off council houses turns them into assets against which the owner can borrow, using the property as collateral, which, on paper, increases the wealth of the owner – as long as house prices are rising – and the majority of the beneficiaries of right to buy were the lower middle classes and upper working classes; the C2s on which Thatcher built much of her electoral success.

Chris is perfectly correct in suggesting that Thatcher effectively bought the votes of the C2s by selling them their council houses.

What, arguably, made the policy ‘evil’ – if you prefer that term – wasn’t so much the loss of secure tenure as the refusal to allow councils to reinvest capital receipts from council house sales in new housing stock. That reduced the supply of social housing which, in turn, led to inflation in the private rented sector and in house prices, generally, by causing the demand to massively outstrip the supply. This created a housing bubble and encouraging increased levels of borrowing against the rising value of property…

…and so on and so forth, all the way to the point at which the bubble bursts, negative equity sets in and people who bought at the top of the market or over extended themselves with the borrowings against their property suddenly found themselves unable to keep up the mortgage payments.

Arguably, one of the main factors that did for the Tories support amongst the C2s during the and, eventually, for the Major government, was the housing market crash of the early 90s, which hit hardest the constituency that Thatcher had built on the back of council house sales – and that explains why ‘Basildon Man’ and ‘Worcester Woman’ switched to Blair in 1997.

Major achieved a higher votes than any of Thatcher’s previous three successes in 1992.

What, arguably, made the policy ‘evil’ – if you prefer that term – wasn’t so much the loss of secure tenure as the refusal to allow councils to reinvest capital receipts from council house sales in new housing stock

I wish you would stop repeating this rubbish , the money that was made from selling Council houses has nothing to do with Councils who put in the bricks and mortar .It was created by the rest of us getting our silly mortgages and driving up the price of locations . Withholding this property made that property even more expensive and so amounts to a tax on property ownership .
Why the hell should that be hypothecated against further council housing the policy had replaced No-one who has canvassed in mixed estates would ever say the policy has been other than a huge success .

This is a lovely post . New Labour have indeed added 800,000 to the payroll created the Byzantine tax credits flop ,sold assets and borrowed and in everyway sought to bribe the electorate . They do have a constituency of Public Sector workers but the really funny thing is that they have paid them so much they resent being taxed
I think the fact that people are not grateful for hand outs and are grateful for assistance towards ownership should tell the left something about the country they want to change .

I’m in danger of almost agreeing with chavscum on one point – I don’t think it’s right for middle-class people who own their own home to tell working class people that they shouldn’t aspire to that. (I have no idea if John B owns his own home or not, but it’s a phenomenon I’m familiar with). It’s perfectly rational to want to own your own home – it’s not just a question of the asset itself but of control over your own environment. Who really wants six months of going to and fro with your local council to get your door repainted, or to wait five years to get a digital aerial installed. As long as you’re not overloading yourself with debt to purchase it, it’s a perfectly sensible move and it doesn’t increase burdens on the local authority until the point at which the ex-tenant moves and someone else buys the property – because the council would’ve otherwise continued to house the tenant in the same home anyway.

Interesting.

Haven’t seen recent data, but one of the most pro-Labour groups in recent years has been parents. There has been a huge expansion of the welfare state over the past ten years for parents from SureStart to Child Tax Credits, Child Trust Funds to parental leave.

It’s perfectly rational to want to own your own home – it’s not just a question of the asset itself but of control over your own environment.

…but why should it have been the one the council provided for you, rather than one on the open market, with the council unable to replace the housing stock it had sold off?

“I have no idea if John B owns his own home or not”

No, obviously not – if I wanted to bet all my personal possessions and more on massively leveraged financial speculation, then I’d set up a spread-betting account.

#13 – I agree that shouldn’t be people’s only choice. It may have been the only choice the Tory government gave them, but Labour has set up a variety of shared equity schemes to help people purchase a home of their choosing who wouldn’t be able to afford a traditional down-payment on a mortgage or who otherwise may have been tempted to go for a 100% mortgage. However some people are likely to want to stay in the home they know and have fond memories of, and stock replacement is imo a separate but related matter.

#14 – I don’t have a mortgage either – it’s not the right option for me. However I don’t think everyone who has one or who wants to buy their council house is stupid.

Unlike most policy suggestions to come out of this and other broadly left sites, Chris’s actually make sense. I disagree with them, but I think he has articulated the interests of a number of groups quite well. And he is quite hard-headed in realising that in the end, you win by appealing to a range of special interests (or more often you lose by running out of stuff to give your special interests).

A basic income, for example, would put Tories on the defensive rather like they are with the NHS. As it is a gift that keeps on giving, it would make a large swathe of the population dependent and thankful for a handout (not that it is necessarily worse than the current system of more specific benefits). Of course, the cost of the NHS is in the lives that would have been saved had it been constituted under a slightly less insane model (along the lines of Switzerland or the Netherlands, or even Germany). But hey, this is politics, not ethics that Chris is talking about and in that respect it makes sense.

Interesting.

Haven’t seen recent data, but one of the most pro-Labour groups in recent years has been parents. There has been a huge expansion of the welfare state over the past ten years for parents from SureStart to Child Tax Credits, Child Trust Funds to parental leave.

Yes but thats mostly women who came to the view that the Conservative Party were “Nasty”. This is an area where Cameron has made great progress . The family was always an unlikely Labour vote because that stage of your life leaves you with tight budgets and low disposable income even if the actual income is average or reasonable .It is then that the tax burden from which you see very little really hurts most .The Conservative Party has regained its traditional position as the Party of the family. The cultural attacks on the family especially the father but also the intrusion of the state is important here .
Its interesting that despite temporary factors like asset sales and oil not to say borrowing it is quite clear that this country is close to a tax payers revolt , the reaction to IHT was amazing . God know what will happen when taxes are hiked up and services cut which is what we have in store .

Conclusion :Things may look bad for Labour but this could well be nothing compared to what is in store . I see the Liberals as the main opposition soon , Labour are facing the possibility of the end over the next two years and they will be amazed how little difference the army of spinners make when the media circus has simply moved on

“this country is close to a tax payers revolt ”

Overwhelming the BBC’s Have Your Say server does not constitute a revolt.

Incidentally, I would be very interested to know what Chris (and Unity as he has looked at this before too) make of this claim, that poverty fell under Thatcher: http://blog.iea.org.uk/?p=310 when a fixed threshold for poverty, adjusted for price inflation, is used.

Using a fixed threshold seems like a bit of a cheat, but it’s certainly true if you didn’t lose everything under Thatcher, you did alright out of her.

David: If you bribe people now to support you later, they have no reason to support you. In those circumstances, gratitude is strictly ‘a lively sense of favours still to come’. Your bribe is ineffective.

Not necessarily true. American politics works exactly on this model – where both parties look to build a coalition of interests while appealing to the centre for the extra swing votes.

Chris Dillow is right – Labour doesn’t have a client base any more. The working class don’t see it as addressing their needs anymore. The Middle Classes are less loyal than earlier generations.

2. Worker’s ownership. Do not think the unions will be happy. Once employees start to think like owners and plan over the long time and only pay themelves what the business can afford, then it will remove much of the union power.

3. The only assets from nothing are patents which people want to buy. Part of the problem we have now is that Acorn , Lehman Brothers et al and Brown thought that assets could be made from nothing.

Of course Labour could be radical and actually decide to develop policies attractive to the skilled working class, self employed and those who want to better themselves through their abilities and hard work through wealth creating activities. If Labour could turn Britain into Germany with it’s abundance of skilled workers producing high value goods the developing economies want to buy, then they deserve to win elections.

A Labour Party full of Lord Bill Jordon, Frank Field and Kate Hooey type MPs and councillors would probably win handsomely.

Nick:

It depends what you’re trying to achieve.

If what you want to do is try to understand how Britain changed during the Thatcher years then the conventional relative poverty measure give by far the better picture, but only if you’re not planning to rely solely on measurements of poverty to arrive at your conclusions.

The simple version of the story is that under Thatcher:

a) a minority of people did very well and became quite wealthy, for the most part because they were in the right place at the right time to capitalise on opportunities created as the economy changed.

b) a large number of people in the middle did fairly well – these are the people who managed to ride out the recession of the early 80′s without failing into long term unemployment and who were then well placed to get in early with then economy began to turn and who benefited from policies like right to buy, and

c) a smaller group of people who missed the boat entirely and became an underclass.

The increase in relative poverty under Thatcher is a function of the creation of this underclass and the growth of a clear economic divide between it and the rest of society, a divide that’s certainly reflected in the poverty data but, arguable, much more readily explained and understood if you look at things the labour market statistics, internal migration and the overall ‘shape’ of the economy and how different sectors altered over time.

A fair appraisal of Thatcher would be one which suggested the she mistaken, but for genuinely reasons, failed to appreciate and understand the impact that her economic reforms would have, and did have, on the social fabric of the family and the local community in areas which fell behind, economically, due to the changes in the economy. In that she’s very much a product of her own upbringing and life experiences is so far she would have honestly believed that these social structure were more robust than they actually turned out to be and that the pain of the recession would engender something akin to the ‘Blitz spirit’ that would see people pull together and ride out the hard times without everything falling apart.

That’s the thing that you invariably find when retrospectively reviewing the career of the politician – the one thing they can never legislate for is the law of unintended consequences even though that very often shapes the way in which their career is perceived by others, particularly political opponents.

That’s basically why its said that all political careers eventually end in failure.

Sorry, Chris, but the phrase “government create the right people” has too many sinister overtones. Some of what you say is valid, but some smacks of creating new cohorts who are dependent upon NewLab. Independence (but with a social sensibility) and that includes independence of thought should be what is encouraged.

@ Sunny (21). And that is a shortcoming of US politics (look at the pork-barrelling that goes on, and can’t be defended). If you get power by bribing, you have to keep on bribing to maintain that support, and the votes are for the bribes, not for glossy policies, sound-bites, or God forbid, principles.

“That’s the thing that you invariably find when retrospectively reviewing the career of the politician – the one thing they can never legislate for is the law of unintended consequences even though that very often shapes the way in which their career is perceived by others, particularly political opponents.”

That is an interesting position and one I am coming round to with respect to Thatcher. The radical changes of neo-liberalism directed from the centre are actually quite open, ironically, to a Hayekian critique of their own: basically the tremendous peril of suddenly destroying so many social institutions that people had come to rely on. The fact that these institutions were bound up with the state did not make individuals involved immune to the dangers of radical change that libertarians/conservatives always complained about when it come to revolutionary changes that diminished the institutions of civil society in the first half of the 20th century.

Of course, I wouldn’t hold the actions of Thatcher as responsible (even causally) for all of the damage. Much of it could be traced back to the way coal, for example, was nationalised years before and the way that some unions had a fairly radical revolutionary agenda of their own. This made the political situations more one of pitched conflict rather than of careful negotiation that typifies union/company behaviour in Europe. Anyway, lot to think about.

New Labour sems to have gone out of its way to annoy its base of support, and to try to appeal to groups who are unlikely to support Labour in the long run. The assumption has been that the base of support has nowhere else to go. This assumption has been proved to be erroneous so the strategy hasn’t worked.

“This Times opinion poll shows the abject failure of New Labour. It shows that only 26% of public sector workers support the government. Which means that the billions of pounds the government has thrown at them has not won it much support.”

Which suggests that throwing money at people to crate client groups is less effective at buying votes than you might think.

Sunny: Alisdair Cameron,

The basis of coalition building in the USA is identifying groups who want things done or not done; producing the impression that you are committed to doing (or as the case may be, not doing) many or most of these things; and producing a believable narrative which says that you can achieve the means to do or not do these things; if they give you sufficient support. Two bases of maintaining your coalition are not delivering all you ‘hoped’ to deliver – i.e., keep them looking for favours still to come – and entrenching, via seniority rules, pork barrelling etc., the believability of your narrative.

I agree that Labour does not have its broad, old client base any more. Part of it was taken apart by Mrs Thacher. Part was and is being eroded by the LibDems. Part has gone awandering BNP and UKIP- wards. But Labour still has a considerable base; a base which it is and has been maintaining by depicting the Tories as bogeymen intent on harming Labour’s clients. Given that Labour’s client’s are getting an increasing suspicion that they may be threatened with unemployment because of Labour policy, the Tories look comparatively less bogey-like. Labour do badly need, and lack, a positive appeal to somebody. It is just that I very much doubt if reversing themselves to be in favour of simple redistribtion would appeal much.

Since we are making comparisons with the USA, it is worth remembering that the narrative of believability that you can deliver always crumbles over there. I have been noting recently the crumbling of Labour’s believability narrative. Too many initiatives have faded away. Economic competence looks increasingly like an illusion -and Cable going on offering an alternative of believable competence does not help. Data bases are fumbled and refumbled, in public. The tangle of Brownian complexities is more and more visible and frustrating (Conscious of that from filling in a 14 page from for a badly off friend who has been entitled to a small ‘Credit’ for about five years but has only just heard about it.) The fudge which allows the government to largely dominate the Lords is coming apart. Labour have been forced to finally concede individual registration for voters which they resisted for so long as against their electoral interests, etc., etc. The lesson from America is that once your believability narrative has gone, you have to start from scratch with your coalition building. That has never been possible from government; only from opposition. The electorate has always obliged with a spell in opposition

Right now for the Tories, the next UK general election is theirs to lose. They still have strong election-losing capabilities; but they will find it difficult to lose to Labour in 2009 or 2010

23. Unity . You ignored technology . Computer aided design and manufacture reduced the number of unskilled and semi -skilled employed. Introduction of containers reduced the need for dockers.
British industrywas overmanned with regard to unskilled and semi -skilled labour before Thatcher. Irrespective who was in power, the introduction of computer aided design and manufacture, small excavators in the construction industry , decline in the productivity of British coal mines with regard to coal mines in the USA would have resulted in in the large scale reduction in the employment of the unskilled and semi -skilled. In the case of printing newspapers, computers removed the need for printers as only electricians and instrumentation technicians are needed.

No political party has appreciated the impact of technology on this country and tried to train a populace with the skills to survive in a high tech society. The real power in this world are those who develop new technologyn and know how to use it. In fact, Murdoch has appreciated the power of technology far better than any politician which is worrying. De-regulation in the City of London would not have been so powerful without the development of computer technology in the early 80s. If Labour wants to help people at the bottom end of the social and economic scale , then the best way is to ensure they have the correct technical skills and attitude to compete in the 21st century.

@ Charlie

Absolutely bang on. Only now are politicians in this country even ‘waking up’ to this phenomenon.

@ Charlie, 22

Why have you selected Bill Jordan, Frank Field and Kate Hoey as admirable Labour politicians?

And in regards to “If Labour wants to help people at the bottom end of the social and economic scale , then the best way is to ensure they have the correct technical skills and attitude to compete in the 21st century.” what schemes do you think will actually achieve this?

School choice, oh and fast tracking school leavers as Frank Field suggested last year.

OHOC

They command respect from a large swathe of people embued with common sense. A Labour Party run by these sorts of people would mean the Conservative Party would be reduced to representing probably not more than 100 very wealthy seats, largely in SE England.

1. Introduce high quality trade training in schools from the age of 14.

2. Reduce school size to a maximum of 1000 and introduce houses and competition in schools. It is no longer the big eat the small but the fast eat the slow. We live in the most competitive economy the World has ever seen. School from the age of 5-16 is survival training for life as an adult in the world of employment. Train hard fight easy. The Chinese do not say someone is bad at a subject only that hey are mentally weak. The success of China, Japan , Germany and India are a result of dedication to achieving academic excellence through hard work. Exams to be the toughest in the World – bring back old fashioned O Levels and A levels . Sack useless teachers, especially those who cannot keep control in classes.

3. Re-introduce reform schools to remove troublemakers . If 25% of a class or a school are trouble makers teachers are not involved in education but riot control. Compulsory language , maths and double science for all pupils until age of 16. At public and grammar schools the best pupils used to take O Levels at 14-15, a year yearly. A teacher cannot explain calculus when pupils are disruptive and some of them cannot cope with basic arithmetic.

4. Re- introduce special schools to help with dyslexia and other learning difficulties.

5. Move 75 % of expenditure on post 16 humanities education to technical training . Basically only fund humanities education in top 20 universities. Only 4% of undergraduates read engineering, even less enter the profession. 0.8% of Cambridge undergrads drop out in first year, 38% of one former poly drop out. It would appear too many people go to university who are not suitable.

6. Re – introduce evening, weekend and short holiday learning at universities to enable people to study for Council of Engineering exams so they can become technicians and chartered scientists/engineers. Re introduce the old style polytechnics but free from local authority control.
Not all people want to study at school until 18 and then go to university. Often the best engineers first completed an apprenticeship and then studied at polytechnics in the evening to become technicians ( HNC standard ) or Council of Engineering Part II exams which are equivalent to a degree. When someone has acieved a degree level education, combined with relevant experience then they can become chartered engineers/scientists.

7. Shakespear, Bronte, Austen, Dickens , Kipling, Orwell, J Conrad all became greater writers without a degree. What is important is that by the age of 16 a pupil has mastered the grammar and syntax of the english language so they can write in an elegant, clear and precise style.

8. Anyone who achieves 3 grade A Levels in maths, further maths, chemistry, physics, biology and physical geography/geology and who wishes to study science or engineering does not have to pay any tuition fees.

9. Move expenditure from humanities to science, engineering and technology; from white collar to blue collar; from management to craftsmen, technician, scientist and engineer; from government employment to manufacturing and wealth creation.

10. Any one on welfare to have their education assessed. If anyone lacks English and Maths , then they are to have compulsory education. Britain cannot afford 20-30% of the population to be uneducated, unskilled and unwilling to be educated and trained. There is no point in forcing people off welfare if there are no jobs but there is no reason why someone on welfare should remain uneducated. Even if they never work they can help their children.

11. Britain needs the same attitude to education and training in science, engineering combined with manufacturing which Germany and Japan displayed after WW2.

I agree with Chris that Labour needs to redefine who they are for, but as others have pointed out, a citizens income is a once only policy and giving workers control of their company has been tried. Just ask a Northern Rock bank clerk who saw their deferred wages destroyed in the collapse of the bank.

What you have got to identify is the needs of the masses over time. Jobs, security, the means to get to work and most importantly housing.

On housing, Thatcher did gain from right to buy, but this requires a continual process of building new council homes. New labour went the Clinton route: mortgages for all. In retrospect both of these policies were giant ponzi schemes.

So, if you want to appeal to the mystical C2s, who cross all the boundaries of class, ethnicity and regions, you want to devise a way of combining Thatcher and Brown’s ideas for getting people into their own homes. If you have nothing but your own labour, then your home becomes something of great importance.

@ 34. Charlie

Anyone who implemented that programme would get my vote. Even if they were labour.

David @ 29 – I’ll agree with all that. My only point was to say that its not necessarily true that voters forget what you’ve done for them, or that you cannot build an emotional connection with a group of voters through the right policies, and they reward you.

I just think Labour have completely forgotten the point about good policies for a wide range of interests – and have survived only by constantly demonising the Tories. That can only work for so long, as Cameron demonstrates. The party needs fresh ideas and policies at a time it doesn’t have any.

My God, your three ideas would be one hell of a programme to keep the Labour Party in electoral Siberia. Carbon permits?! GDP derivatives?! The Tories would be in heaven over talk like this. Why not elect Harriet Harman as leader and seal the deal?

#34 Charlie

Some very good ideas and I agree with a lot of them. But I’d like to pick up your point about restricting humanities education to the top 20 universities. Keep in mind that more and more people attend their local university and live at home (to keep costs down), particularly working class students.

Your proposal would mean that most students, and the vast percentage of working class students, would not have access to a humanities education.

Similar point – the top 20 universities are VERY middle class. This means that, over time, anyone who holds a humanities degree is very likely to be middle class too. Think what that would do to the country’s media and arts over a decade or two?

Finally, not everybody has an aptitude for maths, science and engineering. There is a danger that your proposals would mean shoving a lot of square pegs into a lot of round pegs. The country won’t get the best out of its population making people pursue science and maths when they might excel at something else.

But, as I said, a lot of what you said makes sense.

39. Al Thank you. Dickens was working class. We have to produce scientists and engineers. China , India and Singapore put money into science , engineering and technology. Too many people are dropping out out of the ex- polys and too many undertaking arts degrees with little or no academic content. There is not the money for humanities. Coming out of an ex-poly with a debt of £15k with a degree in humanities is going to help people make money. By the age of 22, an electrician can have done 1 year post completion of apprenticeship training and have money in the bank . Tthey then can go on to do further training at night school in their 20s. The reality is that many people from ex-polys with a humanities degree are going to go into poorly paid insecure work with a £15K debt- if they are lucky. They are not going to become the Moscow correspondent for the BBC. Toby Young , dep Ed of Spectator is advising people not to go into journalism .

There is no reason why a writer cannot have an engineering degree- Somerset Maughan read Medicine. The vast majority of humanity degrees are an indulgence we can do without. People can read and write in their own time . What people need is thorough training in the English language followed by interesting experience.

We need technical people for our modern media age. Graphic designers need to be able to use computers not make brushes from sable. The Chinese have the attitude anyone can be achieve competence , all that is needed is mental strength. Buffet is describing the situation as an economic Pearl Harbour. What we need are vast number of craftsmen trained up to the old OND/HND level . Craftsmen who understand contractural law, project mangement, finance , marketing and sales- enought to run a business.

There is a vast over-production of humanity degrees from ex-polys and very few people will obtian well paid and secure employment. How will people save up for a deposit for a mortgage?

Lloyd George, Churchill , and Major and Wellington all became Prime Ministers without a degree. and Ernie Bevin is considered out best Foreign Secretary since WW2.

Actually, I am not sure there is that much evidence that formal education (scientific or not) plays that big a role in terms of international competitiveness. If it did, then Eastern Europe would have been thrashing us (and the US would be doing terribly!). Our competitiveness is more or less a function of how well our legal and political institutions permit trade and protect property. Educational needs more or less fulfil themselves given that institutional background.

“Redistributing while you tell people what to spend it on – the usual Labour recipe – will discourage all voters except those who agree with teh Labour leadership about what it is best to spend on.”

Says David Heigham.

“Move 75 % of expenditure on post 16 humanities education to technical training . Basically only fund humanities education in top 20 universities. Only 4% of undergraduates read engineering, even less enter the profession. 0.8% of Cambridge undergrads drop out in first year, 38% of one former poly drop out. It would appear too many people go to university who are not suitable.”

Says Charlie.

Speaking as someone who is studying in the social sciences, nice to see that true to the spirit of modern Toryism, Charlie is not depriving people of their chosen career paths. Hang on what’s that top quote all about? Oh thats right, David Heigham accuses the left of ‘telling people what to do with their money’. People in glass houses….