Simon Walters is a political journalist and Consultant Editor (Politics) of the Independent.
The way he is going it is soon going to require a Maths degree to keep up with the tally of Keir Starmer’s U turns.
According to reports the Prime Minister is preparing to perform another somersault – his fifteenth – over the soaring cost of student loans.
If so, it will be good news for millions of students – including Maths graduates – saddled
with debts of up to £60,000 and rising.
Incredibly, recent changes by Rachel Reeves to the student loans repayment system, originally supposed to protect low earners, mean that before long ex-students on the minimum wage face having cash deducted from their meagre pay packet.
With professional job prospects for graduates at an all-time low it adds insult to injury.
Politically speaking, a Starmer climbdown will also be good news for Kemi Badenoch who can chalk it up as another personal victory over him.
The Conservative leader has led calls for student loan interest rates – in some cases as high as six per cent (twice the cost of the home loan they can’t afford either!) to be reduced.
Some of her own aides advised her against it, arguing it was a ‘niche interest’ and that it was futile for the Tories to attempt to woo the ‘campus vote’ – long seen as a minority and overwhelmingly Left leaning.
On top of that some of the loan repayment rates at the centre of the controversy, the ‘Plan 2’ scheme, were set by David Cameron’s Conservative Lib Dem Coalition administration.
But Badenoch, who entered Parliament a year after Cameron left Downing Street, wasn’t put off by that small inconvenient detail.
She persisted, arguing the vast increase in student numbers in the last 25 years, allied to rising loan costs, presents the Tories with a captive new audience, an army of aspirational but frustrated thirty somethings, some of whom are still forced to live with mum and dad, in no small part because of their crippling student debt.
She could see that potentially they are a Millennial and Gen Z version of ‘Essex Man,’ ‘Mondeo Man,’ ‘Worcester Woman’ or the more generic ‘Red Wall’ – key groups of voters whose concerns were seen to have been ignored, and shrewdly targeted by leaders from Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair to Nigel Farage who spotted a gap in the market.
Badenoch also had the would-be successful leader’s necessary slice of luck when she was handed a publicity coup on a prime time plate after financial guru Martin Lewis attempted a bungled ambush of her on Monday.
Bursting into the ‘Good Morning Britain’ TV studio unannounced he squeezed next to presenter Ed Balls on the sofa where the two proceeded to give one of the most egregious combined displays of mansplaining ever seen.
Kemi could not have been less flummoxed.
She swotted the two Alpha Males away with the same sang froid she demonstrates in dispatching Starmer at the Commons Despatch Box every Wednesday. (Not that anyone has ever accused him of being an Alpha Male.)
Which is precisely what she did to the Prime Minister this week on the issue of student loans.
If Starmer does act to curb student loans no one seriously expects Kemi to be crowned campus queen. But it will further emphasise the growing divide in their perceived authority over their parties. It makes it all the more certain that Badenoch will lead hers into the next election, and all the more likely that Starmer will not.
Badenoch is not so naive as to believe she is anywhere close to building a platform to win that election.
But in an age when Conservative speakers are more likely to have been deplatformed on university forums it is a beginning.
Simon Walters is a political journalist and Consultant Editor (Politics) of the Independent.
The way he is going it is soon going to require a Maths degree to keep up with the tally of Keir Starmer’s U turns.
According to reports the Prime Minister is preparing to perform another somersault – his fifteenth – over the soaring cost of student loans.
If so, it will be good news for millions of students – including Maths graduates – saddled
with debts of up to £60,000 and rising.
Incredibly, recent changes by Rachel Reeves to the student loans repayment system, originally supposed to protect low earners, mean that before long ex-students on the minimum wage face having cash deducted from their meagre pay packet.
With professional job prospects for graduates at an all-time low it adds insult to injury.
Politically speaking, a Starmer climbdown will also be good news for Kemi Badenoch who can chalk it up as another personal victory over him.
The Conservative leader has led calls for student loan interest rates – in some cases as high as six per cent (twice the cost of the home loan they can’t afford either!) to be reduced.
Some of her own aides advised her against it, arguing it was a ‘niche interest’ and that it was futile for the Tories to attempt to woo the ‘campus vote’ – long seen as a minority and overwhelmingly Left leaning.
On top of that some of the loan repayment rates at the centre of the controversy, the ‘Plan 2’ scheme, were set by David Cameron’s Conservative Lib Dem Coalition administration.
But Badenoch, who entered Parliament a year after Cameron left Downing Street, wasn’t put off by that small inconvenient detail.
She persisted, arguing the vast increase in student numbers in the last 25 years, allied to rising loan costs, presents the Tories with a captive new audience, an army of aspirational but frustrated thirty somethings, some of whom are still forced to live with mum and dad, in no small part because of their crippling student debt.
She could see that potentially they are a Millennial and Gen Z version of ‘Essex Man,’ ‘Mondeo Man,’ ‘Worcester Woman’ or the more generic ‘Red Wall’ – key groups of voters whose concerns were seen to have been ignored, and shrewdly targeted by leaders from Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair to Nigel Farage who spotted a gap in the market.
Badenoch also had the would-be successful leader’s necessary slice of luck when she was handed a publicity coup on a prime time plate after financial guru Martin Lewis attempted a bungled ambush of her on Monday.
Bursting into the ‘Good Morning Britain’ TV studio unannounced he squeezed next to presenter Ed Balls on the sofa where the two proceeded to give one of the most egregious combined displays of mansplaining ever seen.
Kemi could not have been less flummoxed.
She swotted the two Alpha Males away with the same sang froid she demonstrates in dispatching Starmer at the Commons Despatch Box every Wednesday. (Not that anyone has ever accused him of being an Alpha Male.)
Which is precisely what she did to the Prime Minister this week on the issue of student loans.
If Starmer does act to curb student loans no one seriously expects Kemi to be crowned campus queen. But it will further emphasise the growing divide in their perceived authority over their parties. It makes it all the more certain that Badenoch will lead hers into the next election, and all the more likely that Starmer will not.
Badenoch is not so naive as to believe she is anywhere close to building a platform to win that election.
But in an age when Conservative speakers are more likely to have been deplatformed on university forums it is a beginning.