Labour has increased university tuition fees because Keir Starmer is a liar; he has u-turned on a promise to abolish them altogether.

For the 2025-26 academic year, tuition fees will rise from a maximum of £9,250 – where they have been pegged since 2017 – to £9,535. Maintenance loans will also rise, to help students cope with the increased cost of living.

But this is a poisoned chalice – student loans are ridiculously hard to pay off, with many ex-students finding that after years of paying, they have only fallen further into debt.

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Last year, loan terms were increased from 30 to 40 years and repayment threshold salaries were dropped from £27,295 to £25,000, meaning more graduates would be repaying their loans for longer; instead of paying back the £243 per year that ex-students formerly did or would, they would pay back £450 per year – and the time increase means instead of paying back a minimum of £7,290 they will pay at least £13,500 instead.

Some might think that’s still a good deal on loans of more than £25,000, but of course there is interest to be paid. Some ex-students known to This Writer discovered that, after paying back their student loans for more than 20 years, they owed more than when they started. It seems to This Writer that the situation can only worsen.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said the government will announce “major reform” to its long-term investment in universities in the near future; tuition fees have fallen behind inflation, meaning universities are struggling to meet hard financial challenges.

It is all a far cry from Keir Starmer’s promise in 2020, when he tried to woo young Labour Party members to support his leadership campaign by promising to abolish tuition fees altogether.

He changed his mind in 2023, as we can see from these two clips:

At the time, Labour was taken to task by Susanna Reid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, making the point that “circumstances may change, but principles should not” and adding (alongside co-presenter Martin Lewis) that Starmer has dropped many more of the original 10 pledges he used to get himself elected as Labour leader:

Rachel Reeves’s comments about circumstances deserved a response, which This Writer provided in an article last year. I stated:

Changing circumstances don’t need to affect government policy. The Covid crisis and the war in Ukraine have happened, sure – but they are temporary; short-term. Government policy should be long-term.

Political plans should be made in ways that accommodate unexpected developments; they need to represent a coherent political position for which each party stands.

Changing policy on a whim, as Starmer does, puts the electorate on shifting sands. What does Starmer really want to do? Who does he represent?

Not students – that’s for sure.

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