Peter Ainsworth is Managing Director of CAMROW and the author of Setting Universities Free, How to deliver a sustainable student funding system.

Kemi Badenoch is right that young people are not prospering. Too many struggle to gain a foothold in the labour market, and too many have been encouraged into university courses that do not lead to strong employment outcomes.

But her proposed student-loan reforms have the moral issue the wrong way round.

The central injustice facing this generation is not the interest rate on Plan 2 loans. It is the difficulty of getting that vital first job – with the chance to do real work, develop capability and build confidence.

Employment matters not only economically but psychologically and socially. It teaches reliability, responsibility and judgement in ways classroom learning cannot. When young people cannot get started in work, the damage is not just financial. It is fundamental and life changing.

That is the moral issue Conservatives should focus on.

The misplaced “exploitation” narrative

Badenoch, writing in The Telegraph, describes student loans as a “scam” and says government is “making money off the backs of graduates”. That framing suggests exploitation.

But the reality is more nuanced.

The student-loan system involves substantial taxpayer subsidy through debt forgiveness. Some analysts suggest close to half of lending may ultimately be written off. With around 50 per cent of young people attending university and typical borrowing near £60,000, the arithmetic implies a subsidy cost of roughly £15,000 per young person – i.e. a burden on all, including those who did not go to university.

Before describing graduates as victims, Conservatives should acknowledge that the system already asks those who did not benefit from higher education to help finance those who did. In this context, those who attended university are the relatively privileged group. Expanding the subsidies from which they benefit even further risks exacerbating rather than correcting an injustice.

Badenoch’s proposed interest rate cut would mainly benefit middle earners – those on roughly £50,000 to £70,000. This makes it even harder to justify around £2 billion of additional subsidy to this group when nearly a million young people, including many graduates, are NEET: not in employment, education or training.

Taxes fall most heavily on those priced out of work

There is also a misconception about who bears tax burdens.

Policies that raise the cost of hiring – higher employer National Insurance, elevated minimum wages and regulatory risk – fall most heavily on those priced out of employment altogether. On paper they pay no tax. In reality they bear the heaviest burden of all: exclusion from work itself.

Even “safe” degrees cannot eliminate uncertainty

In both the United States and the United Kingdom, entry-level hiring in technology roles has weakened recently. Computer science graduates in particular have reported unusually high unemployment rates relative to other disciplines. The lesson is not that STEM lacks value. It is that no field of study can guarantee outcomes in a dynamic economy.

This has important implications for policy. Farage’s Reform proposes a greater focus on STEM while Badenoch endorses college-sponsored “apprenticeships”. Both assume politicians can reliably predict which courses will deliver the best outcomes.

Experience shows they cannot.

A Conservative reform: align incentives

If Conservatives want to address low-value courses, the solution is not to change interest rates or for politicians to anticipate the labour market. It is to change who carries the risk associated with career outcomes.

The state should no longer issue student loans. The current system insulates institutions from responsibility for what they deliver. Universities should instead provide the financing, alongside regulated financial partners, so that they have a meaningful financial stake in the employment outcomes of their students.

When incentives align, behaviour changes rapidly. Courses would be designed around employability, work experience and real demand because institutional survival would depend on it.

The real priority: open the labour market

The most urgent reform for young people – graduates and non-graduates alike – is access to the first step on the employment ladder. Without it, later progression becomes far harder.

Ending state student loans would reduce government borrowing by around £10 billion a year. Those resources could be used more effectively to reduce the National Insurance burden on young employees and their employers. Many businesses are willing to take chances on inexperienced workers, to teach and mentor them. But successive increases in employment taxes and regulatory costs have made those opportunities too expensive to provide.

Cutting these employment taxes is the most reliable way to complete the education of young people – through a real job opportunity.

The unfairness facing young people today is not student-loan interest.

It is being locked out of the first rung of the ladder of a fulfilled life.

Fixing that should be the moral priority of Conservative policy.

Sir Keir Starmer’s propensity to blame anyone else but himself shows no sign of diminishing. It does not seem to occur to him that as Prime Minister one of his duties is to take responsibility.

At yesterday’s PMQs, he as usual evaded most of the questions, and instead launched irrelevant counter-attacks on Reform, the Greens and the Conservatives.

The PM remains addicted to the excuse that anything which goes wrong is the fault of the wicked Conservatives.

But various of the appointments which have gone wrong were made by Starmer himself, including those of Sue Gray, Morgan McSweeney, Chris Wormald and Peter Mandelson.

And most of the policy decisions which have later been reversed were likewise made by Starmer and his colleagues.

It would be wearisome to go through a complete list of the Government’s U-turns, but the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Allowance, followed by its reinstatement, is an egregious example.

There is a case for abolishing this allowance, and a case for keeping it, but no case for what actually occurred.

So too the insistence, at first, that the two-child benefit cap must stay, followed by the decision, under pressure from Labour MPs, to abandon it.

Who now relies on Starmer’s word? Under pressure he crumbles. This appears to be the case with the Chagos deal, though as usual it is difficult to tell what is really going on, and what weight should be attached to the use yesterday by Hamish Falconer, a junior Foreign Office minister, of the word “pausing”.

Who now would wish without ambiguity to defend any controversial Starmer appointment or policy?

In a recent cover piece for The Spectator about where it all went wrong for Starmer, Tim Shipman quotes a Labour insider who has struggled in vain to define Starmerism, and has come to realise,

“Keir has never met a policy that he had a natural view on. That’s why he’s capable of thinking that ID cards are terrible and then ID cards are wonderful and must be compulsory and then that they mustn’t be compulsory.”

Shipman recounts the story of Starmer’s speech in May 2025 warning that mass immigration would lead Britain to become an “island of strangers“.

Starmer and his aides did not realise this would be seen as an echo of Enoch Powell. Without telling his staff what he was about to do, Starmer admitted to Tom Baldwin that he was uncomfortable with “island of strangers”.

Baldwin hastened to publish the interview containing this repudiation in The Observer, cutting across a Sunday Times profile which had been in the works for weeks.

One of Starmer’s staff told Shipman about the effect this episode had on them:

“Keir basically threw everyone under the bus. That really turned things in terms of the internal dynamics. Even people who didn’t like the speech were stunned that he would wash his hands of it and hang people out to dry. It also undermined those people with civil servants, who see that the boss won’t back them up.”

All PMs make mistakes, but few have so frequently put their own staff in such a difficult position. Margaret Thatcher treated some of her Cabinet colleagues, notably towards the end Sir Geoffrey Howe, with appalling rudeness, but was known for her consideration towards her own staff.

Shipman quotes “a senior figure close to No. 10” who says:

“Fundamentally, the Prime Minister cannot make a decision, stick to a decision, implement a decision, defend that decision when it gets tough, or explain that decision, ever.”

In opposition, Starmer had a campaign team, run by McSweeney, but no policy team working out how to turn the promised “change” into a programme for government.

Thatcher, Howe, in the early years a key ally, and others in her team knew where, amid appalling difficulties, they were trying to go, and had mapped at least some of the route to get there.

Starmer has brought back senior Blairites, including Jonathan Powell and Peter Mandelson, presumably in the hope that they would supply the experience of high office he himself lacked.

But Mandelson has not merely resigned, he has been arrested, and we do not yet know what warnings of future trouble the PM received before appointing him.

Powell remains in post as National Security Adviser, but seems to have sought, on the dubious plea of necessity, to apply in the Indian Ocean the concessionary strategy which in Northern Ireland led to the Good Friday Agreement.

At yesterday’s PMQs, Kemi Badenoch asked whether the PM would cut the interest rate paid on student loans. He gave no reply, but claimed instead to be cutting energy prices, and at one point instanced, as he likes to do, the introduction of “free breakfast clubs”.

Badenoch was right to stick yesterday to student loans. By doing so, she demonstrated Starmer’s evasiveness, and the Conservative Party’s new-found determination to think about the needs of younger voters.

But one trusts that one day soon she will point out there is no such thing as a free breakfast club. These clubs have to be paid for by taxpayers.

Starmer evinces week by week his indecisiveness, his inability to think things through, and his inclination to abandon any policy which is unpopular with Labour MPs.

For Badenoch, this opens a wide field of action, as the leader who does the hard thinking, takes the hard decisions and sticks to them.

John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.

Anyone with a sub-optimal approach to home maintenance will know of the WD-40/Gaffa tape heuristic.

If something should move, but won’t, give it the spray. If it shouldn’t move, but is, tape it down. The whole concept is a bodge: it neither fully fixes the problem nor uses these products as intended. But it gets it off your “To do” list for a few months, until it eventually breaks down again.

For the government, it appears a similar approach is emerging, giving problems to the NHS. While you might assume the Health Service is focused on fixing injuries and curing illnesses, that would be naïve. Instead, various governments have expanded their remit to include aspects of ill-health, becoming catch-all social programmes. In some parts of the country, the NHS will, in certain circumstances, deep-clean your house, pay your bus fare to appointments, or even wash your clothes.

Now, ministers are looking to add to this burden by setting NHS Trusts targets around getting people back to work. Under plans announced this week, Trusts will take some of the responsibility for reducing out-of-work benefit claims. Measures will include not just treating conditions that keep people out of work but also providing external support and job coaching. As an initiative, it will place additional responsibilities on the Health Service that should really be picked up elsewhere.

Now, there is some logic here. The NHS should know who is unwell and should be able to have a proper understanding of how their disabilities impact their ability to work. It is sensible to join up elements of government that interact, rather than them becoming siloed and contradictory. Yet the scheme risks further diluting the NHS’s performance, introducing a new layer of bureaucracy, and undermining our democratic choices about how money is spent.

After all, it is hard to ignore the role that funding plays in all of this. NHS funding occupies a special place in our political consciousness. It is almost sacrosanct. Few governments would dare to impose real-term cuts in it. Even during austerity, spending on health was ringfenced, though it increased less than during previous governments. It makes it tempting to stretch the definitions of where that money can be used.

We all know that governments are fiscally constrained. Raising new money through taxation, or reallocating it to different departments, is fraught. Stretching the edges of the NHS budget is politically easier. As a result, more responsibilities that would have fallen to other departments are lumped into the NHS. As local authorities have seen their budgets consumed by social care, other service gaps have been taken on by health.

This starts to feel like a bait-and-switch for voters. People voting for greater health spending envisage it going on, well, health, not a broadening backstop for the rest of the state. It seems especially galling when frontline services are still stretched, with long waiting times and struggling A&E departments. When people say the NHS is important to them, they are thinking about addressing these issues, not using its expanding budget as a catch-all. Voters waiting for a GP appointment or operations might reasonably wonder why the service is being asked to become an employment agency.

There are also questions of accountability. These sums are relatively small in NHS terms and can easily get lost in the overall budget picture. They may not receive the same scrutiny if they were being spent by other arms of the state, with a clearer focus on the objective at hand. Should the NHS fall short in getting people back into work, it is unclear who will bear the blame. It becomes easier to shift it between the DWP, the Treasury, and now health bodies, which have expanded their remit.

This mission creep also risks undermining the competence of public services. Organisations tend to work best when their objectives are clear and stable. The health service already juggles prevention, acute care, chronic disease management and mental health support. Each of these domains is complex and resource-intensive. Loading on extra pastoral responsibilities will draw away both resources and attention. Rather than doing a few things well, the expanding health state is likely to do many things badly.

Every extra thing we ask the health service to do detracts from its core mission. It adds in extra functions, extra people, and new levels of bureaucracy. Often, this ends up duplicating what happens elsewhere in public services, or something that was cut as part of a broader strategic review. Instead of reducing silos, it just increases the number of state functions trying haphazard solutions to a problem, rather than an integrated approach.

It is the sort of thing the Conservatives should be resisting if we are serious about delivering a smaller state. Often, our attempts to reduce government spending have been hampered by a lack of honesty about what “doing less” entails. The result is a state that tries to carry out ever-growing functions, but with less funding and less effectively. Indeed, many of these additional duties for the health service were introduced during our time in government. If we genuinely want the state to be leaner, we should have better ideas about providing limited but more effective interventions.

Like with WD-40 and tape, it is easy to reach for the convenient solution. For politicians, lumping more things into the NHS is a bodge. It allows them to skirt some of the tightness in public spending and shift more things onto the part of the state allowed to expand. If continued, the NHS becomes a catch-all solution for every problem. Rather than properly deploying other bits of the public sector and working out how to have them operate effectively, we shoehorn extra things into health. To butcher a famous phrase, we cannot successfully roll back the frontiers of the state to see them reimposed through the health service.

A system that routes every difficult question through the NHS is not integrating government; it is shirking harder decisions about how the rest of it should function. If employment support is underpowered, it should be strengthened. If local authorities are overwhelmed, that should be confronted openly. Continually expanding the health service’s remit may be politically convenient, but convenience is not reform. WD-40 quietens the hinge for a while. It does not fix the door. And sooner or later, the door still needs to be repaired.

The government is right to be concerned about worklessness.

Equally, there is nothing wrong with thinking about how health impacts the economy. Making the health service the actor of last resort for every social problem, however, is a misuse of its political capital.

Services are best when they are focused – not when they are trying to do everything.

1. A fed child is a fed child

2. Remove pressure

3. Predictable portions of joy

4. Family-style meals

5. Reduce cognitive load

6. Low-key praise

Help and support:

Terri Bloore is the Conservative candidate for Mayor of Newham.

I like a challenge, I always have. I work hard and am ambitious in my plans – my career to date proves that. So, I have thrown my hat in the ring for Mayor of Newham, despite the odds. Yes, the odds are really stacked against me, but I, like most of the British, like the underdog. I also truly believe the time is right in Newham for change.

Newham is one of the capital’s most culturally diverse and rapidly growing communities and grappling with its fair share of social, economic, and administrative challenges. These issues range from deep-rooted housing crises and ballooning public expenditure to strains on public services and living standards. For many residents, these challenges are not abstract statistics but lived realities that shape everyday life.

Just as a reminder for those of you who are less au fait with the East London borough stats, Labour has controlled Newham Council and all its predecessors since at least 1930, with the party has won 90 per cent of seats or more in every local
election since 1978. Yet recently Labour has faced significant by-election losses, leading to discussions about potential vulnerability ahead of the May 2026 election.

Indeed, Newham narrowly escaped bankruptcy, having to resort to drawing up a crisis strategy that includes asking the government for extra help and permission to increase Council Tax by nine per cent – one of the highest in the country. This has hugely affected the services and necessary support that the Borough can offer residents. Under Labour’s watch, Newham now holds the dubious title of Littering Capital of the UK, one of the highest rates of knife crime in London and is one of the most deprived boroughs.

The current Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, has rightly announced she is stepping down, yet it has not stopped Labour flouting “Leadership you can rely on” in a pamphlet I had through the door of my Newham flat. You couldn’t make it up!

Labour, as we know, has never been strong on the economy, but this financial mismanagement takes the biscuit. So, what do I plan to do about it, you may ask?

My campaign will be driven to bring back financial trust in Newham Council. I believe a thriving local economy and resilient neighbourhoods go hand in hand — with successful businesses creating jobs, investment and opportunity, while strong communities. I believe we need to bring investment into Newham, which will bring back pride and as a result cleaner, safer streets.

I want to rebuild financial trust and transparency through efficient management and reducing wasteful spending. Just one example of how I would do this is by selling of Newham Dockside, the Council Building that Labour spent £111 million on, yet stands practically empty. A business that doesn’t take regular inventory, of course, will go bust and we need to look at all efficiencies large and small to make these savings. Services will need to be evaluated and front-line services will be prioritised to reducing the financial burden on residents.

Once such vital service that has been woefully under supported is our police. We need more police on our streets to deal with anti-social behaviour and crime. More police presence, will ensure criminals are prosecuted and fined and residents feel safe. We can also deal with fare dodgers too who seemingly go scott-free when our stations are left unmanned.

I truly believe that by improving street cleanliness through quicker response times and tougher penalties for repeat offenders of fly tipping, we can quickly bring back pride onto our streets, and again bring money back into the borough.

We need to be prioritising the development of housing for residents, addressing the high number of households in temporary accommodation, and support for leaseholders who are held over a barrel by management fees.

Finally, I believe in my heart that we must support local businesses in Newham and boost the economy. We can only do this by abolishing business rates.

The challenges are not easy overcome, it will require some uncomfortable moments assessing what we really need and what is nice to have. Newham has extraordinary potential but has never witnessed the opportunities that a Conservative led council could bring. It is a shame and we have seen this in the mishandling of the Borough in the past decades. With the right leadership, we can support local businesses, restore trust in local government, and build communities where people feel safe, listened to and proud to live.

I know we can do this, I know the Conservative values of fairness, equality and good work ethic will make Newham a place businesses and residents are proud of again.

US Congressman Al Green was kicked out of Trump’s ‘State of the Union’ last night for holding up a banner that read “Black people aren’t apes”. It was a protest against Trump’s recent video depicting the Obamas as apes, for which he has never apologised. Other Democrats refused to stand for the man unfit to be a janitor, let alone president.

Green’s stand triggered admiration for him, disgust at Trump — and a flood of racist support from what remains of Trump’s ‘MAGA’ base.

BREAKING: Al Green was just kicked out of the SOTU for the second year in a row to chants of USA.

He carried a sign that read “black people aren’t apes”.

Man I love this guy. pic.twitter.com/KBTT4HmzE8

Advertisement

— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) February 25, 2026

The admiration was mixed with horror that in 2026 anyone needs to point this out to a US ‘president’:

BREAKING at the State of the Union:

Al Green stood in the crowd holding a sign that read “Black people are not apes” as Donald Trump entered and was removed from the chamber.

Let that sink in.

Advertisement

In 2026, a member of Congress is escorted out for defending Black people’s humanity.… pic.twitter.com/Jd7iDDYjwE

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) February 25, 2026

I want to live in the timeline where the president of the United States doesn’t need to be told this.

Thank you, Rep. Al Green. pic.twitter.com/SUg0XeBUrV

— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) February 25, 2026

Advertisement

HERO 🔥

And I don’t want to hear shit about a censure vote against this man.

Rep. Al Greene was ejected from the State of the Union for the sign — “Black People Aren’t Apes.” pic.twitter.com/ZlJv9P1Vmb

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) February 25, 2026

Al Green racially targeted

Tragically, Trump is far from alone. Thousands of MAGA racists — and no doubt many bots — popped up to defend Trump and use horrific racial slurs against Al Green and other Black people. Thankfully, they were usually taken down emphatically by right-minded respondents, who capitalise on the opportunity to point out what the racists/bots were defending:

Lose it?
Ya mean like Trump in his dementia?
Like Republicans being #PedophileProtectors?
Like Trump posting his racist ape tweet?

Keep trying. You’ll get there someday.

— Jeff Voting w Fear For Democracy (@Jeff67318761) February 25, 2026

The pedo president affects us hard here too traitor.

And I love how you have “America first” on your bio while you cuck for Israel LMAO. You know Trump thinks you’re an ape right?

— Sydney Centrist (@SydneyCentrist) February 25, 2026

Advertisement

Only a shit bag like you would laugh at that. Trump posted a picture of a president as an ape.

— PLGC (@PL67712441) February 25, 2026

Rep. Al Green holding A sign staying Black People aren’t Ape . But he forgot to write Trump is a POS on the other side .

— Ivan3k0 💙🇺🇲💙 Proud American 💙🇺🇲💙 (@KingIvan) February 25, 2026

Many of those defending Trump were Israel mouthpieces taking a short break from genocide denial and anti-Muslim hate. Or in some cases, combining defending Trump with anti-Muslim hate. While they got plenty of racist/bot support, they also didn’t — and those responses ranged from the politically eloquent to the pithy:

pic.twitter.com/NfHwETPoFL

— Eddie A (@EddieAnastasia) February 25, 2026

Advertisement

The amount of insults from this administration and trump himself who divides everybody and post ape Obama videos ? But yeah let me cry, bill you have been sucking trumps cock for way too long, wake tf up, but guess that dick must be tasty

— abrakadabra0x.eth (@abrakadabra0x) February 25, 2026

pic.twitter.com/nzN9eGB1A9

— Prison Mike (@PrisonM56457462) February 25, 2026

pic.twitter.com/aIG9H5nhga

— Carmine Fields (@CarmineWilding) February 25, 2026

Shamefully, even a handful of Black politicians and influencers were prepared to simp for Trump. It didn’t go well:

And less than a month ago you were rightly saying Trump is a racist over the Obamas’ Ape saga. Changed your tune quick.

— FREEDOM FIGHTER (@Co26S79222) February 25, 2026

Hockey???
How easily yall get blinded..
I guess you’re ok with someone who is racist against your own race.
But sure we can go with hochey. pic.twitter.com/4oJUTgaLGx

— Chosen1pr (@chosen1pr70637) February 25, 2026

Tim, you are a disgrace. They hate you and you continue to toe the line for pedos and pedo protectors. It’s gross. What does it feel like to sell your soul? Hope you got a good deal.

— Naptowncrabby (@feelingcrabby1) February 25, 2026

And many pointed out that the ‘ape’ in the room last night was Trump himself — though comparing Trump to an orangutan is deeply unfair – to orangutans, who are a lot more human:

Trumpanzees and Trump the piggy ape love orange bananas and go around in Washington Zoo! https://t.co/ywMBPaXd3c

— Johnny Bray (@MexCaliFLResist) February 25, 2026

I agree with Rep. Al Green; however, I do believe we have one ape in that room. Orangutan Trump with his VP Vance. pic.twitter.com/2uVLICAF4k

— 🌈Marty Weiss TFTI📕🏳️‍🌈🧟✨🧢💪🏻🔱 (@TFTInfamy) February 25, 2026

Trump, is an ape. pic.twitter.com/XP9Nlu2Lps

— 46theud (@46theud38257) February 25, 2026

Overall, though, analysing the feedback to Trump’s speech and Green’s stand was a depressing reminder of the fact that, despite the stubbornly human response of many, the US is a dangerous, racist-riddled basket case run by a dangerous, racist basket-case.

Featured image via the Canary