Party Lines: November 3rd

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Today’s news was dominated by the vast increase of tuition fees to £9,000 per year, a policy that the Lib Dems pledged to oppose, but now look set to support. Perhaps it is fitting then that the Lib Dems tonight plunged to just 9% with YouGov as Labour tied with the Tories at 40%. Government approval meanwhile is down to -10%.

Speaking to BBC News this morning, John Denham said that the reforms to tuition fees represented the worst of all worlds:

“Some universities won’t be able to charge these fees because they wont be able to get the students, so they’ll have to cut their costs and dumb down. At the same time our world class institutions, which are doing world class research, probably won’t get the sort of incomes they need to really stay where they are in the world league rankings.”

In an interview with the World at One, Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy described the decision to adopt higher fees as a “tipping point”:

“My worry now is that having moved so far so quickly in just hiking these fees to £9,000 we will reach a tipping point in people’s minds and a whole group of people will simply look at this and say university isn’t for me.”

“The Labour Party is attracted to the idea of a graduate tax. That’s our approach. The test really today is whether this statement is sustainable and is it fair? I don’t think it is sustainable What’s happening here is students are being asked to pay the cost of the government’s determination to cut the deficit this deeply, this quickly.”

And in a a guest column for the latest edition of the New Statesman, out tomorrow, Alan Johnson condemned the coalition’s “Orwellian level of misinformation” about Labour’s record on the economy.

“I find the coalition’s approach objectionable on a personal as well as political level. The government spouts the importance of aspiration and the need for social mobility, but has no real-life experience of the factors involved. The lack of social diversity among the Lib Dems is even more pronounced than among the Tories.”