My friendly advice to students

Returning to my blog this weekend was something of a shock. I knew that I'd not make any contribution, for a while, but was I really that interested in the fate of John Terry in the England captaincy?

The gap in time, about which I have not written, covers the general election and the World Cup, two events I would normally comment freely on. Given that a blog is intended to have some immediacy. There is no question of backtracking, but the outcome of the first of those events doesn't directly read into my subject of the day.

The party that the political party of which I am a member and semi-detached activist now forms part of the government. This has led them, quite naturally, into the direct firing line of the media and anybody else who chooses to comment on politics. This is a brave but not safe position to be in without natural supporters in the media, which the Lib Dems do not have.

There is much that I could say about that predicament. But the real purpose of my posting today regards the matter in which they are in the greatest difficulty – student university fees.

Briefly, my position is this. In the 1980s. I received 4 years of university education. Not only did I not have to pay a penny towards the fees, but I received a maintenance grant. More pertinently, all the politicians in Parliament who have a university education were recipients of the same state paid benefit. I have concluded for some time that I am a member of the most selfish generation this country has seen.

Both the Conservative party and the Labour Party politicians believe that students should pay for their education (even though they didn't). The Liberal Democrats do not. That was the position of the party at the election, and that is still the position now.

But here's the thing.

The Liberal Democrats did not win the general election.

The Liberal Democrat politicians have been restating this rather obvious fact throughout the current debate, but without natural friends in the media to help foghorn this point, it is not one that is being heard.

The party found themselves in a position where they had some influence, but that is not the same as being in a position to put into practice everything in a party's manifesto.

The leaders of my party had a choice between two alternatives; enact some of their manifesto where agreement could be found with the largest party, or back off and put into practice none of their policies. As a Liberal Democrat member I would have regarded the latter is a far greater betrayal of the effort I put in general election, and of my vote.

In the case of university fees, the party's policy was the outlier - the party’s coalition negotiators they were not going to get agreement from either of the two possible coalition partners whose policies were similarly different to their own.

I imagine that was the calculation that was included in the pre-election documentation of which student leaders have made an issue. This does not mean Nick Clegg and his colleagues were looking for the first opportunity to dump the policy on student fees; it just means that they could see the reality of the situation. I accept that the pledge that Liberal Democrat candidates signed now looks like a poor piece of public relations, but I'm certain that when the signatures were made, they were done so with sincerity.

The fact is the argument against university fees was lost at the general election. Parties who supported fees gained more votes and more seats than parties who did not.

The Liberal Democrat leadership were faced with an argument that they could not win in Parliament, even as members of the coalition. I confess that I have not studied the proposal in detail, but from what I have read it seems that the Lib Dem influence has led to a deal that is better for students than would have been achieved without that influence.

Use of partial influence may be a new idea in the UK, but it is part and parcel of coalition government. The electorate did not give the Liberal Democrats the power to enact their policies so it makes no sense to target that Party for their failure to do so.

For those who share my support of the policy that student fees should be phased out, I have this advice :-

Win the argument; don't berate those who would support you. The only way that we are going to reach a fair deal for university students in England and Wales is to increase the number of MPs who hold that position. An attack on the Liberal Democrat party is counter-productive to that aim.