Politicians are known for what’s colloquially termed ‘chatting breeze’. The gap between what they say, mean and know to be true is always particularly pronounced during election time. Prospective Prime Ministers and MPs will promise voters the earth in order to win votes, but when it comes to making the possible practical they often fall short. It’s for this reason that the ‘broken promises’ epithet is directly associated with politicians and politics.
In fairness to people in politics, it’s not always as easy as making a promise and then action it once you’re in office. There is red tape, process, the need to get things voted in and, let’s not forget, the need to balance the books once the buck stops with you.
The gap between words and deeds was the undoing of Nick Clegg, the former Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats. His reputation and credibility never recovered after he was involved in raising tuition fees to £9,000 a year as part of the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition of 2010.
It’s interesting, then, that Jeremy Corbyn has so far remained unscathed when there’s a mismatch between people’s perceptions and the reality of his views, or when he says something that it subsequently turns out won’t quite be possible. Indeed, he is currently riding high above thebeleaguered Prime Minister in the polls.
One of the main attack lines against Corbyn during the election campaign was that his promises were not costed. So, it’s unsurprising that the right-wing press (by which I mostly mean the Daily Mail) in particular have leapt on the interview he gave to the BBC’s Andrew Marr show yesterday.
One of the cornerstone policies of Labour’s campaign was to abolish tuition fees. More than this, back in June Corbyn told NME magazinethat he would ‘deal with’ the debts of students who had already graduated as well as doing away with fees for prospective students.
The Leader of the Opposition’s exact words at the time were: ‘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.’
However, speaking to Marr yesterday he said ‘I did not make a commitment we would write it off because I couldn’t at that stage.’ The semantics are, arguably, semantics but there’s no doubt that many of Corbyn’s supporters did interpret what he said to NME as a commitment to do something about student debt as well as tuition fees.
The Labour manifesto included the pledge to do away with tuition fees but it mentioned nothing about existing student debt, which currently stands at around £76bn, to the Student Loans Company. So, technically, no manifesto promise has been broken. But, whether or not Corbyn’s words pre-election were merely a cynical play for power or a genuine promise to ‘look at doing something’ is for voters to decide when the next opportunity comes.
For Corbyn’s political opponents and critics, however, any opportunity to discredit the Labour Leader on the basis that he doesn’t have a grip on the numbers is just too good to be missed. Jo Johnson, the current Minister for Universities told the BBC that Corbyn made ‘a welter of outlandish promised’ to young people during the election. ‘It is becoming ever clearer that Jeremy Corbyn is looking to walk away from a host of undeliverable pre-election promises to students, making this the most blatant example of switch and bait in recent political history.’
It’s expected that Labour will release a statement on the issue of student fees at some point soon. All of this comes after Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, Angela Rayner, also told Andrew Marr that wiping off all student debt would cost somewhere in the region of £100bn just over a week ago.
The interesting thing about Corbynmania so far is that it doesn’t seem to be affected by revelations about the devil lurking in policy detail. Jeremy Corbyn has consistently gained ground amongst younger generations, who are overwhelmingly pro-European, despite being an avowed Eurosceptic. Indeed, the assumption that the young people who did vote for Corbyn only did so because of his stance on tuition fees is patronising and reductive, there was more to Labour’s offering than that. However, whether this particular perceived promise sticks to Corbyn will be an interesting test of his brand.
Meanwhile, as politicians continue to argue about what the right approach to university funding and student debt is, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that students are graduating with average debts of more than £50,000, with those from poorer backgrounds carrying the most debts into their working lives.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.