Quote of the day 21st June 2023 - Schrödinger’s tuition fees

"In the absence of any clear direction from Starmer, the BBC’s Justin Webb chose to bend the interview to his own will by focusing on stories in the morning papers. It had been reported that Labour was now planning to go back on its promise to abolish university tuition fees. Was this yet another promise that had bitten the dust?

Starmer sounded startled. As if he hadn’t expected to be asked about a news story in which he featured. It was like this: tuition fees were obviously unfair, but he would now be looking for a way of funding students that was more fair but which didn’t involve abolishing tuition fees.

Was that clear? Er, yeah but no but yeah but no. The economy had moved on, so he would be moving on to something that he couldn’t yet talk about as it was all top secret and he basically hadn’t had time to give it a moment’s thought. He couldn’t say fairer or unfairer than that. Tuition fees would be both going and staying. Politics in a quantum universe. Schrödinger’s students. Maybe they too would be both here and not here.

Webb was understandably confused. So he pressed on. How about the promise to still tax the top 5% of earners more? And to increase the rate of capital gains? Did they still stand? Yes and no. Or rather they had both fallen into a black hole in deep space."

(Extract from a Guardian sketch - yes, I do read the Guardian occasionally for another view on the world - by John Crace about a Keir Starmer BBC interview, which you can read in full by clicking on the link below.

Starmer goes quantum with Schrödinger’s tuition fees | John Crace | The Guardian)