Steer clear of the zealots

The EU is flexing its political muscles as D-day for the Lisbon Treaty approaches, with the Irish referendum scheduled for October 2. But the Times reports that Brussels is in a panic because the Czech government is planning to delay signing the treaty for up to six months even if Ireland approves it second time round.

The controversial Czech President Vaclav Klaus is apparently manouvering to upset the referendum, which will see fundamental changes in the way the EU operates, such as the introduction of increased powers for the European Parliament. The six-month Presidency rotation among member states would change to a two-and-a-half year period, allowing countries to more effectively stamp their authority on their time in charge.

Without doubt, the treaty is controversial. It smacks of arrogance - beaurocrats in Brussels dishing out laws with greater ease to an increasingly Europhobic popoulation whose disillusionment with the Union is increasing markedly. Lisbon also makes provisions for the position of EU Council President - a role Tony Blair is said to be tipped for, and a proposition the Liberal Democrats have rightly denounced for a multitude of reasons.

But there are differences when it comes to opposition of the EU.

The original rejection by Ireland of the treaty was the culmination of protests by a variety of organisations and political camps who viewed it as fundamentally undemocratic. This argument has foundations in a fear for the democratic rights of EU citizens whose involvment in EU decision-making is limited because members of some institutions such as the Commission are not elected.

The Czech opposition, however, is very different. President Klaus is a fervent climate change denier and has been embroiled in corruption scandals - indeed, his privatisation projects in his home country have been linked to a rapid spread of corruption. His opposition to the treaty is clearly influenced far more by a selfish opposition to its moderate proposals on tackling global warming than any genuine concern for the democratic rights of his people.

The problem with criticism of the Union in the member states is that it is dominated by nationalist zealots who generally make selfish proposals that serve only to fuel their own political agenda - UKIP is a prime example. There is undoubtably a need to address the democratic shortcomings of the EU, but groups aiming to do so must be wary of being led astray by the fanatics.

The education bloodbath

Published in Student Direct, 21st September 2009

The summer has been a sizzler for universities and their government cronies. As the burden of debt looms large over this year’s crop of freshers, the wheeling and dealing that has become the trademark of New Labour’s Higher Education policy has swung into motion.

Behind the scenes, vice-chancellors are salivating over the prospect of squeezing students to the tune of £20,000 a year in tuition fees – an astonishingly incompetent proposition that ignores the financial reality confronting students in the recession.

For prospective students, the financial outlook is bleak, with the impending review of tuition fees hanging like a black cloud over their studies. The recession has been shamelessly used by university vice-chancellors and politicians as an excuse for the latest round of fee increases. Last year saw sporadic demonstrations breaking out on campuses around the country as students reacted in horror to the lunacy of the government’s proposals.

Aside from ignoring the sheer financial implication of having to pay up to £60,000 for three years at university, the proposals reveal the increasingly bullish stance taken by the political establishment on the issue of higher education funding. The NUS president Wes Streeting has slammed the arrogance of vice-chancellors who are “fantasising about charging their students even higher fees.”

But this arrogance is nothing new. In 1997 Tony Blair boldly promised “Education, Education, Education.” Labour, he said, would uphold the interests of youngsters at school and university. Gone were the days of Conservative cuts in education funding. The party would right the wrongs of the previous 18 years and restore commitment to education as the lifeline to a successful career. But in reality, the government’s corrosive education policies have turned common sense on its head.

Instead of upholding its pledge to the electorate – and more importantly, to students – Blair and Brown have successively taken an axe to the equality of opportunity that should naturally give any young person wanting to go to university the chance to do so. An obsession with targets and performance saw Labour make the incredible suggestion that 50 per cent of school leavers should attend university shortly after it took power.

In its desperate attempt to be seen as the party of ‘equality’, Labour opened new universities and cobbled together new degree programmes at breakneck speed. Throwing caution to the wind, courses were set up simply for the sake of it, with minimal consideration to the financial implications that duly came in the form of crippling tuition fees, demanded by universities in order to fund these aptly named ‘Mickey mouse degrees’ – anyone for Surf Studies or Golf Management?

The government’s record reveals a staggering degree of incompetence and disregard for the views of the student population. In 2001, David Blunkett assured students that “there will be no levying of top-up fees in the next parliament if we win the next election.” Yet in 2004 they were introduced, and by 2006 universities were already pressuring the government into increasing fees, claiming they needed more money.

This policy of misinformation has not been limited to the Labour party, with the Conservatives readily jumping on the bandwagon. In 2003, then party leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “we will scrap university tuition fees – a tax on learning. The fees have penalised hard-working families who simply want their children to get on.”

In 2004, David Cameron assured his party that it would act as a bastion of opposition to the fees, and yet in 2006 bluntly announced a U-turn, claiming, “the money’s got to come from somewhere.” The repeated sell-out of students by the political establishment suggests that in terms of importance, young people are as usual bottom of the pile.

If the government would momentarily depart from its fantasies, it would realise that fewer student attending university is not necessarily a bad idea. Reduced numbers of students would reduce the need to charge students for the privilege of obtaining a degree. Whilst the higher education system creaks under the financial strain of Labour’s ludicrous targets, the skilled trades such as plumbing are crying out for recruits. Less students attending university would divert badly needed funds into apprenticeships and training schemes.

Meanwhile the crippling cost of education has meant that whilst more youngsters now choose to attend university, poorer students are increasingly discriminated against in the process. 20 years ago, a potential medic or barrister from a working class background could count on a reasonable grant to see them through the university process. Now, thanks to Labour’s education catastrophe, that same working class applicant may well decide that the cost of their training simply isn’t worth it – a trend that is seemingly confirmed by the House of Common’s spending watchdog report earlier this year that confirmed there was little to show for the whopping £329m spent on tempting poorer applicants to university.

The coming academic year promises to be a bloodbath. The evidence so far has shown the government’s blatant disregard for the student voice on the issue of fees. With the discontent growing, alternative plans are hastily being wheeled out: UCL Professor Malcolm Grant’s suggestion that fees should be replaced with a graduate tax, payable varying to students’ future earnings, at least suggests that some in the academic world are thinking on their feet.

But piecemeal opposition to Westminster’s bullying is futile – and the government knows it. Grant claimed in The Guardian that: “We have moved a long way from the ideological divide…but…people are increasingly nervous about debt because of the recession.” Yet the reality is that ideological division is essential if the student body is to take a stand against the profit-driven agenda of the political establishment. The NUS’ ill-fated decision to fight to keep the tuition fee cap rather than take a tougher stance and oppose tuition fees outright, gave the government the green light to push on with its plans. An entire rethink of the way higher education is managed and funded is badly overdue and is essential if the railroading through of education reform without student consultation is to be stopped.

Tinkering with the system is not sufficient. The government must realise that its attempts to boost the chances of bright young people have failed miserably. As students flock to university in ever-increasing numbers, the worth of a degree is eroded and downgraded. Gordon Brown’s increasingly dire poll ratings may prompt him to think about the future of Labour’s education policy. An abandonment of fanciful targets might just persuade the average student that Labour is indeed on their side, and not totally driven by targets and profits.

If Labour is to win the student vote at the next election, then change is desperately required. The political establishment must be held to account by students and prevented from exacerbating the financial misery that threatens to engulf higher education. Top of the agenda must be young people from the poorest backgrounds who have been failed by an education system that seeks primarily to maximise profit, seemingly at any cost.

“Education, Education, Education” is dead in the water. Now it’s time for “Reform, Reform, Reform.”

Labour's suicide

While the media and political pundits endlessly debate the spending cuts outlined by Gordon Brown at the TUC yesterday, the real catastrophe - the ongoing suicide of the Labour party - is being given less attention.

To be sure, job losses are bad news - and Brown's inability to satisfactorily articulate his plans for scaling back the nation's debt are giving the Tories and the Lib Dems all the ammunition they need as the next general election looms.

But the real problem with Brown is that he is simply not taken seriously by Labour voters - his own foot soldiers - whose desertion to other parties will hit the party hard at the next general election. These foot soldiers include low-income earners and trade unions associates - once the bedrock of Labour support and still a key financial lifeline to the party. When Labour announced it was scrapping the 10p tax rate last year, the party rightly faced a barrage of criticism for abandoning its core voters and, more importanty, its core values.

At the heart of Labour's decline is this abandonment of key bastions of support. Brown must surely acknowledge his political time is nearly up, with the Conservatives breathing down his neck in all polls and members of his government relentlessly plotting against him. But he displays a staggering inability to acknowledge the resentment felt by a large percentage of Labour voters at many of the policies he champions.

When he promises to "cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets", there is a collective wince among Labour troops, becuause they know, instinctively, that these "cuts" refer to underhand economic tactics which punish those at the bottom of the pile and do little to restrict the obscene salaries raked in by those at the top. When Brown was looking to shore up middle class support last year, it was the 10p tax band that aided lower income people that was first up for the guillotine.

But Labour is apparently unwilling to confront this reality. The uneasy "coalition" of New Labour that was elected in 1997 was skewed decidedly in favour of "Middle England". If yesterday's speech is anything to go by, it is Middle England that still holds Brown enthralled. He is afraid of a backlash - but if he does not pay attention to his rank and file, he may find Labour's meltdown and bitter division at the next election more devastating that any poll can predict.