𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Rachel Reeves’ jaw-dropping inability to read a room may just have opened the door for a huge Conservative comeback at the ballot box. 

The Chancellor of the Exchequer essentially declared financial war on the 3.6million younger Brits saddled with Plan 2 student loans when she insisted that her move to unilaterally freeze the repayment threshold – the amount of money a graduate can earn before they start paying back their loan – from April next year was “fair and reasonable”.

Do not adjust your television sets, refresh this page or turn your screen on and off… the Chancellor of the United Kingdom, the person in charge of our entire economic policy, has decided it is “fair and reasonable” for the state to unilaterally change the terms of a LOAN. With no input or consultation with the people who took out that loan in the first place.

That’s the sort of economic precedent every single right-thinking person in the country should be sweating over. It’s also the sort of move that you could reasonably call “loan sharking”.

And it’s the British Government doing it.

Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis has already described the decision, announced in Labour’s November Budget, to freeze the freshold at £29,385 for three years from April 2027 as “not a moral thing to do”.

The good folks at Rethink Repayment are doing some excellent work on social media to highlight the injustice of it. Oli Dugmore, executive editor at the New Statesman, did a brilliant job of summing up the farcical situation in an appearance on Question Time earlier this month too – pointing out that the combined tuition fees of every other member of the panel would not cover the cost of one year of his own university tuition.

It does not take a great deal of critical thinking to understand the ticking timebomb that is the scandal of Plan 2. Consecutive governments’ inability to handle the economy and get interest rates in check have left younger Brits who started university from 2012 saddled with debt they don’t have a hope in hell of paying off.

In fact the government is clearly so reliant on the exorbitant interest it is charging them that it will do everything it can to make sure they CAN’T pay it off.

The Chancellor knows this, at least you would hope. So when she stands in front of the cameras and tells us all this is a fair state of affairs, it’s probably best to apply a bit of common sense.

Even Labour MPs are calling her out on the mad position she’s found herself in. To his credit, backbench MP Chris Curtis described the entire student loan system as a “a proper dog’s dinner”. The honourable member for Milton Keynes North added: “It has become a symbol of how the deck keeps getting stacked against my generation.”

I could not agree more.

I was part of the first cohort exposed to the long con of Plan 2 student loans. I have been lucky enough to work in full-time employment non-stop since the summer after I left university in 2015. Barring an insane career change or stroke of luck I have no hope of paying off my student loan.

Now, finally, the Conservative Party is grasping the nettle. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has confirmed for the first time that her party will make looking at the terms of Plan 2 student loans a priority. The opposition are reportedly looking at massively cutting interest rates on graduate debt, with sources describing it as “a vote winner”.

And on this, she’s bang on the money.

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The first political party to come out and declare themselves the champions of Plan 2’s victims is surely going to be earning the gratitiude of a huge swathe of the electorate for life. For the Conservatives, fighting off a rising tide of Reform to the right, it makes perfect sense to set yourselves up as the party who will look after those who were missold a university degree.

It’s the sort of thing that might just tempt people who have never even considered voting Blue before putting a tick next to their name in the polling booth.

Indeed, the latest Rethink Repayment polling found that 84% of Plan 2 graduates will be influenced at the next election by who is promising the most on reforming Plan 2 student loans.

It’s akin to the brutal mauling the Lib Dems took in coalition – when Nick Clegg sold a generation of young voters on the promise of categorically NOT raising university fees, and then did it anyway. That betrayal of this same group has cost the Lib Dems for years since, in fact it will have lost them voters for life.

I don’t think that the shameful way that Rachel Reeves has treated Plan 2 graduates will lose Labour the next election… I think that ship is probably sailing through several different harbours as Keir Starmer’s Downing Street pivots from crisis to crisis.

But I do think it could help win someone the big job come 2029. And Kemi’s the first political operator who’s spotted that very same opportunity.