Politics

Ed Miliband is mooting a tuition fees cut, to a maximum of £6,000 a year according to reports. I graduate in 2016. If Labour wins the next election, I’ll be in one of only 4 cohorts to pay £27,000 for their education. If I’m really unlucky, I might get lumped with a graduate tax too. It’s not my plight, however, that’s got Labour talking about tuition fees again. Instead, it’s the government’s admission that the current policy is likely to be more expensive than planned: official estimates suggest that 45 per cent of students will never pay back their loans. Just 3.6 per cent more and the new system would

It’s not just Vince Cable who is getting it in the neck today for the scathing report into the sell-off of the Royal Mail. Michael Fallon is copping his share of the blame too. Fallon has friends in high places; but he’s wound up one of his Tory colleagues: ‘Fallon is 62 years old this year, and is one of those safe-seat types. You know, the sort of guy who thinks ‘campaign’ is a fizzy white wine from France. His whole job was to sit on Vince Cable. But he’s been AWOL in recent months, and today the National Audit Office has holed Fallon below the waterline. This Royal Mail

Remember Labour’s defining mission: ‘education, education, education’? Yesterday we had the Conservative equivalent ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’. In what some might see as an important day in the development of the mission of the Conservative Party, the Chancellor pledged the goal of Full Employment: ‘Today I’m making a new commitment. A commitment to fight for Full Employment in Britain, making jobs a central goal of our economic plan.’ What does this mean in practice? It suggests that cutting taxation and cutting the deficit is all about creating the conditions for work, not that tax cuts, and balancing the books are ends in themselves. It creates a moral imperative for economic reform

George Osborne’s commitment today that the Conservatives will fight for full employment in Britain is another way for the Chancellor to make an iconic gesture towards ‘blue collar’ voters who might still feel left behind by Britain’s recovery (he can find a useful guide on other things to do in the pages of today’s Sun). The first was a rise in the minimum wage, long fought over by Conservatives as a measure which could damage employment, but embraced by the Chancellor as a way of showing that the recovery is for the many, not just the few. Today’s commitment in the Chancellor’s speech – which was initially billed as Osborne

If Alex Salmond gets his way, this country will be rendered asunder. Once you cross the Tweed, you’ll be in a foreign land. The fact that Salmond is so keen to suggest that even after independence there’ll still be a ‘social union’ between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom suggests that he knows that people are disturbed by this idea. But one of the puzzles of the Scottish referendum campaign is how reluctant politicians have been to make the emotional case for the Union. Instead, Better Together and the government have chosen to concentrate on a series of technocratic argument. This is why Nick Watt’s story about a senior

In a speech given at Tilbury Port in Essex, Chancellor George Osborne hailed cuts to business and personal taxes this week as the ‘biggest in two decades’ – and committed to ‘fight for full employment in Britain’. Here’s what he said:- Thank you for coming here to Tilbury Port, this morning. We’re all here at the start of the most important week of changes to our tax system for a generation. These are the biggest cuts to personal and business taxes for two decades, and we’re making our benefit system more affordable and fairer too. Changes which will affect the lives of millions of people. Whether you are working or