Nigel Hastilow: Has student debt put Corbyn overdrawn?
It’s not surprising young people voted in droves for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. They had a £100 billion incentive to do so because they hoped he would wipe out their university fee debts.
He let hundreds of thousands of graduates who rallied to his flag believe their debts would be forgiven.
Sharon Hodgson, an MP for somewhere grim up north, Tweeted during the election campaign: ‘Jeremy Corbyn: Labour could write off historic student debts. All those in early 20s with student debt #VoteLabour.’
And Shadow Justice Minister Imran Hussain said: ‘Every existing student will have all their debt wiped off. That’s fantastic news, isn’t it guys?’
Jezza was not quite so definite about what he was promising but he gave the impression he would write off existing debts.
Under a headline which read: ‘Jeremy Corbyn: I will deal with those already burdened with student debt’ he told NME magazine in June:
‘Yes, there is a block of those that currently have a massive debt, and I’m looking at ways that we could reduce that, ameliorate that, lengthen the period of paying it off, or some other means of reducing that debt burden.
‘I don’t see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the £9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after. I will deal with it.’
A few weeks later, the party is backtracking fast. Jezza insists: ‘We never said we would completely abolish it because we were unaware of the size of it at the time.’
It’s true he never said he would ‘completely abolish’ the debts but it nonsense to say he didn’t know the extent of the problem. The figures are publicly available. They add up to a cool £100 billion.
Even Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, not known for his financial prudence, admits wiping off student debt is ‘an ambition’ not a promise.
It is not quite true to say Labour lied but it certainly did its best to mislead young voters saddled with university debts into believing a Corbyn Government would lift the burden off their shoulders.
Coupled with the more viable, but still horribly expensive, promise to abolish loans for future students, it was one of the main reasons Labour won a landslide victory among young people.
Jezza persuaded 66 per cent of 18-19-year-olds to vote Labour, 62 per cent of 20-24-year-olds and 63 per cent of those aged 25-29. Many of their parents would have been persuaded by his dubious promises as well.
Proof of the party’s appeal to students – as well as their self-interested tutors – can be seen in Labour’s victory in the safe Tory seat of Canterbury. Its vote rose over 20 per cent to win with a majority of 187. No fewer than 44,000 of the city’s voters are in full-time education.
The strength of the student vote has led to accusations – which nobody is investigating – that many young people voted twice: once at their parents’ address and once in their university town.
It has also prompted accusations Mrs May timed the poll badly because students were still at university on June 8. If she’d left it another couple of weeks most of them would have gone on holiday.
The point is, though, that the votes of young people allowed Jeremy Corbyn to defy expectations and pull off a credible election defeat rather than endure the rout most people expected.
It’s why he received a hero’s welcome at the Glastonbury festival where he was hailed like some ageing rock star by thousands of fans.
Labour is working on the basis that there may be another election before the year is out and Jezza could be Prime Minister by Christmas.
But because of his relative success at the election, Mr Corbyn’s promises are at last coming in for some proper scrutiny. They don’t stand up to close examination.
Scrapping student loans could only succeed if there were a massive reduction in university places. That’s not a bad option when so many courses which lumber young people with debts of £50,000 are not worth the paper their degree certificates are written on.
Even more unrealistic, though, is the idea that Labour could do anything significant about the £100 billion of outstanding debt.
Mr McDonnell is right when he says the whole issue needs to be sorted out.
But starry-eyed students and young graduates who put their faith in Jeremy Corbyn’s ability to come up with an affordable solution really should be wondering how they let themselves to be so seriously conned.
It’s not as if this was the first time students have been conned. Remember Nick Clegg? His Liberal Democrats promised no fee increases then reneged on the pledge once they were in power – a betrayal the party has still not recovered from.
We all know a politician’s promises can’t be trusted. Idealistic young voters thought Jezza was different. Welcome to political reality, kids.
