British students everywhere know the 'right' choice to make: vote
for Labour and "kick the
Tories out".
Well, you could just vote for
the Tories.
*SHOCK* The Tories? That
selfish, NHS-privatising, benefit-cutting Nasty Party??
Yes, I say you should vote for
them.
And this is where I lose the
attention of most people my age. After all, they say if you're young and vote
Tory, you've got no heart.
The problem is, if Labour were
to win, much of what students are hoping for won't actually happen. The Labour
manifesto is like a bag of goodies, offering lots of nice things to capture the
'Young' vote, which often suffers from low turnout. A lot of these policies are
self-defeating in the long term and actually worsen the issues they are meant
to solve.
The words "saddled with debt" are a favourite buzzword Jeremy Corbyn
when debating tuition fees. However, it deliberately makes you feel you are
having something bad done to you by the mean Tories. People choose to go to
university. They know how much money they will have to pay and voluntarily
enter into that commitment. By paying off student loans, we are simply providing
money for a service we asked for.
Many disagree with this status
quo, and would like to see higher education as something free for all. Now,
while that sounds nice, there is a flipside to putting the burden back on the
taxpayer. Tuition fees were introduced in 1998 by Labour Prime Minister, Tony
Blair. His slogan was "Education, Education, Education", taking
active steps to increase facilities in schools. Why on earth would he want
students to pay for their own higher learning?
Letting students pay for their
education was necessary in order to increase the number of students attending
university. Before then, fewer people were able to attend higher education
because places were proportional to the amount of tax that could be raised and
the lack of places disproportionately rejected young people of the working
classes. We can see this in Scotland, where the SNP abolished tuition fees. A
cap was put on places to afford it. Since then, the number of young Scots
attending university has more than halved. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38316717
The idea that abolishing
tuition fees will allow more people to get into university is false. Many won't
have the opportunity to go at all. At least with student loans, you can pay for
your tuition fees when able, and only if you are able.
There are many other reasons
why the Labour manifesto is wonky. They believe it will be possible to fund
more public services by raising corporation tax to 26%. Of course, they
completely ignore the fact that when George Osborne lowered the corporation tax
rate to 20%, the amount of money raised by the tax increased. Raising
corporation tax will actually lose us money, rather than gain it, as
corporations change their behaviour in reaction to taxes. Try "investing in the future" with that. https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-effect-of-labours-corporation-tax
There are reasons to have
misgivings about the leadership of Labour. After all, you would get Jeremy
Corbyn. A very nice guy who has opposed 30 years of anti-terror legislation and
has trouble distinguishing between a soldier fighting to defend their country
and a terrorist trying to instil fear in the public. It's all violence to him,
and he still has not said he'd be willing to authorise a drone strike to defend
his own citizens. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40111329
I rather like Jeremy Corbyn.
He's gentle with good intentions, but no idea how to apply them to reality in a
way that works. He's nothing like John McDonnell who would become the new
Chancellor in a Labour government, known for saying "It was the bombs and bullets
and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the
negotiating table." He's
also rather preferable to Diane Abbott who would become the first Home
Secretary to think that "White
people love playing divide and rule" and
that "on balance, Mao did
more good than harm".
So, why vote Tory? It's not because they're running a good campaign. They're complacent and are all too easy to view in a negative light, when they make brutal, and often unpopular, decisions on the basis they will help this country recover in the long term. However, they know how to navigate the pitfalls of Brexit negotiations and they're the best way of avoiding a Labour government that would fail to achieve its promises and potentially bankrupt the country, assuming it doesn't endanger its citizens first.
