First priority? Wiping out the Lib Dems in local government

By Ben Fox

Back in the run up to the 2005 election, Leeds University Radio held a series of four or five programmes on the big issues in the election. I was the Labour-supporting ‘pundit’ facing off against a Tory and a Lib Dem. Even though the audience for the programmes was less than ten (including those involved) it was great fun nonetheless.

Two years after the start of the Iraq war and a year after the Labour government proposed to introduce what it had clumsily described as ‘top-up’ fees of up to £3290 per year, this was the golden moment for the Lib Dems. Unlike the other two parties they could claim the moral high ground in having opposed both policies. And didn’t they let us know it.

The big prize up for grabs was the Leeds North-West seat, won by Labour in 1997 and 2001, but with a large student population alongside relatively affluent areas of the city and rural areas just outside, it was effectively a three-way marginal.

I was one of the few young Labour activists who supported ‘top up’ fees. To me, it was a decent policy that, while in practice amounted to a graduate tax, was presented appallingly by the government. It meant that students paid a fairer contribution towards their education but that the state, rightly, paid for the majority. Predictably, in the radio debate on tuition fees, Labour’s policy, and my support for it was described as ‘regressive’, something that would prevent the poor from going to university. The neutral ‘pundit’ (this was student politics where everyone takes themselves extremely seriously) said he would vote Lib Dem and that it was ‘disgraceful that a Labour government should be imposing such a policy’.

Our Labour candidate Judith Blake, hundreds of volunteers and the university Labour club fought hard but the Lib Dem candidate Greg Mulholland, the classic Lib Dem opportunist, won on the back of student votes by just over 1000 with the Tories a distant third. Mr Mulholland had enough common sense to vote against his government on Thursday, but his party has betrayed his constituents and future constituents who will have to pay the fees.

The Tory/Lib Dem rhetoric about this being a tough but necessary choice in such tough economic times makes little economic sense in the medium-term. Of course it is true that a graduate will, on average, earn around £400,000 more than a non-graduate over their working life, but the combination of potentially £9000 fees plus high interest rates on loans will mean that the average student will end up paying back about six times more than I paid for my university debts. Even the aspiring middle-classes will be put off, let alone those from the poorest backgrounds. For Cameron to pretend that this is ‘progressive’ is unsurprising. This is a man who could probably sell oil to Saudi Arabia if he put his mind to it. But from the Lib Dems it is the most shameless hypocrisy. It almost makes you yearn for straight-forward and honest politicians like Richard Nixon.

The truth is that it is a ruse to slash public spending on our universities, which is already at one of the lowest levels in Europe. Universities will have their research budgets slashed, meaning that many of the seeds that sow innovation and often end up producing patents and technologies worth multi-millions for Britain will no longer be sown. This draconian policy is socially regressive and economically illiterate. Moreover, the extra lending by the government to cover student fees over the next four years will actually increase the deficit by £10bn.

I was talking to a German colleague yesterday about the political situation in his own country, where the SPD has lost successive elections and is currently in opposition to a Conservative/Liberal coalition. The German FPD, which is effectively a party of ‘Orange book’ liberals, was hugely successful in last year’s federal elections, winning 15%, their highest share of the vote in a generation. Less than a year on, they are polling 5%.

The Lib Dems should expect the same to happen to them. Having averaged between 10-15% since the May election, their betrayal on tuition fees will almost certainly see their haemorrhage. Maybe this will destroy them, equally likely is that it could drive them closer to their Tory allies and make a formal Tory/Lib Dem pact more likely. Either way, with local elections taking place in six months, our first electoral priority must be to wipe them out in local government, particularly in the university towns where their fees promise won them so many ill-deserved seats.