We reported last week that Labour were proving popular amongst students with more than half of the graduate population admitting that they were going to be voting Labour in the upcoming election.
This popularity will be growing even greater this week, however, as news emerges of the party’s plans to completely scrap tuition fees.
The shadow chancellor John McDonnell made the announcement this week in a speech in the midlands and reiterated Labour’s stance that education should be for everyone and that everyone should have the opportunity to better themselves.
He refused to be drawn on whether his pledge would be featured in the party’s manifesto however.
Of course, many other people, excluding students, are wondering just how this pledge, alongside all the other pledges that have been made by Labour which includes billions more for the NHS, billions more for education, thousands more police officers, smaller class sizes and no more cuts to disability and welfare benefits, is going to work and be financed. According to many experts the cash that Labour would look to retrieve from capital gains tax will have been spent on just one of their manifesto pledges which leads to the conclusion that they may have to borrow massively to meet other promises. This is a scary prospect that makes everyone think back to the financial crash and the mess we got ourselves in – and importantly, which we are still paying for now.
Let’s be fair, the ideas are great in theory. Free education for all, more police officers, and an NHS that is staffed well with no financial strains, but in realistic terms this isn’t as easy as the Labour party are making out and the money needed for it just isn’t available. Fact. We’d all love a nuclear free world where people could live without financial restriction and hardship but what the red party are putting forward is nothing short of barmy.
In a leaked manifesto that emerged today it shows that as well as the aforementioned pledges, Labour also plan to renationalise energy companies, railways and the Royal Mail and have refused to set a target for migration. They have also said that they wish to protect the nomadic way of life and help travellers, gypsies and Roma. They have also suggested that they would commit to a nuclear free world and would only use a nuclear deterrent if absolutely necessary. We believe these policies are going to put a lot of people off voting for them. Not because a nuclear free world is wrong (we’d love to have a world where there was no imminence of war) but realistically how can we do this when other countries in the world have nuclear weapons? Even if there is just one rogue country with these such weapons, surely we need to protect ourselves from this threat?
This is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to some of the left-wing ideas that have come to fruition over the last couple of days. One of the biggest vote swingers that will turn people away from the party is the refusal to set migration targets. Labour have basically come out and said there will be no restriction on numbers coming to the country. Immigration has long been a big sticking point for voters in this country as many of the public services that we have got are put under pressure by the sheer numbers of people using them.
To actually come out and say that there will be no restriction on numbers coming to the country could be a really damaging decision. People are well aware of the pressure on transport, housing and the health service but Labour’s plan is to just throw cash at all these problems without trying to reduce the numbers putting the strain on in the first place. It doesn’t add up.
Only time will tell just how well the hard-left stance is at winning votes amongst the British people, but if you took students out of the vote altogether, we’re predicting it would be a complete whitewash. Even a large student following won’t be enough to save him and the party this time looking at the polls and it isn’t hard to see why. Whilst some of the policies look plausible and will have a lot of support, most of the other plans look unreachable and look like they will put a lot of people off the hard-socialist path that they are going down.