Universities

Brace yourselves, CoffeeHousers. Today is the day of the tuition fee vote, along with all the froth and fury that will attend it. The government's motion will most likely pass through the Commons – yes, even without the support of Simon Hughes – but the wider repercussions are, as yet, uncertain. The main question is what the Lib Dems will achieve by walking through the fire, as Nick Clegg puts it. Will they emerge from the other side, a more credible party of government in the public's eyes? Or will they just get burnt to ashes? At the very least, the yellow bird of liberty is stuttering this morning. As Anthony Wells reports, the latest YouGov poll has them at 8 percent – what appears to be their lowest level of support for 20 years.

Oh look, Alan Johnson has performed a hasty Reverse Cable. Only a few days ago, the Shadow Chancellor suggested that he didn't believe a graduate tax – Ed Miliband's chosen policy – could work. Yet, in a wilting Thunderer column (£) for the Times today, he now claims that "there is a very strong case for a graduate tax." From unworkable to strong, in only four days. Sounds like a disclaimer for Ikea flatpack furniture, not a policy position. In a separate article, the Times characterises this as a minor victory for Ed Miliband – and so, in some respects, it is. He has managed to rein his Chancellor on this issue, if not on 50p tax, and the Labour leadership are now backing the same policy, albeit a misguided one.

Here in Westminster we are all brushing up on the names of Lib Dem PPSs, as we try and work out who might quit the payroll vote over fees. The latest is that Michael Crockart, PPS to Michael Moore – who is himself the most anonymous Lib Dem Cabinet minister – looks set to walk. But one of the better known Lib Dem ministers has now put his head above the parapet. Norman Baker has told the BBC that quitting over fees is one ‘option’ but he hasn’t yet made up his mind. (Oddly enough, these comments seem to have been made on the South East edition of the Politics Show on Sunday, but only just reported).   Baker has always been a maverick.

You almost feel sorry for Nick Clegg this week, with the tuition fees vote in prospect. Being hated is difficult for LibDems because they didn’t expect it. Not so with the Tories. As a conservative, you usually realise early on that you're going to be a small fish swimming against the current of fashionable received wisdom – and that will involve various tribulations. Like having to persuade your non-political friends that you do not advocate slaughter of the firstborn, and that there is a difference between believing in empowering people, and wanting to let the devil take the hindmost. If you turn up to the Islington Conservative Carol Concert (as Eric Pickles is doing), then you brace yourself for protesters outside it (as there will be).

There he goes again. Another Alan Johnson interview, another reiteration of his differences of opinion with his leader and another Tory press release claiming Ed Miliband’s writ doesn’t even run in his own shadow Cabinet. This time, Johnson has told Mary Riddell, “Well, I don’t think [a graduate tax] could [work]. Frankly, there’s a difference of view.” If this was not enough he continued to say, “I feel it’s going to be very difficult to make a graduate tax a workable proposition.” This must be so frustrating for Ed Miliband. First, it takes some of the heat off the Lib Dems who are all over the place this weekend on the whole university funding question.

There have been a huge amount of police out in Westminster today. After being caught off-guard by the student demo a few weeks back, the cops are now leaving nothing to chance.   But if the police have now got their act together, the same cannot be said of the Liberal Democrats. They are currently considering whipping their MPs to abstain on tuition fees despite the fact that the government’s policy is one that has been crafted by a Lib Dem Secretary of State, Vince Cable, and a Tory Minister of State, David Willetts.   If the Lib Dems were to abstain, it would play to the worst stereotypes of the party. They would be derided as ditherers of the first degree, incapable of taking a tough decision.

David Willetts and Vince Cable deserve huge credit for coming up with an impressive agreement on higher education funding that both the Tory and Liberal Democrat leaderships can live with. They have taken the coalition beyond the coalition agreement and shown that it can make sound policy on even the thorniest of political issues. But as important as the agreement is the way that it was hammered out. The discussions were civilised and empirical. There was—in stark contrast to the ‘blue on blue’ debates over defence and welfare—no negative briefings or anything like that. My main quibble with it is whether the £9,000 cap on fees is set too low to allow our universities to both maintain the excellence of their teaching and their global standing.

Politically, one of the key questions about Lord Browne’s suggestion that tuition fees should be raised is how the tribunes of the middle classes react. Will a rise in fees be seen as another burden on those who work hard, play by the rules and are already bearing more than their fair share of the costs of the state? If the argument is to be won, the coalition will have to show that students will now get more out of their university experience. There’ll have to be an emphasis on how these changes will make universities improve the quality of the teaching that they offer. It’ll be worth watching to see if the question of who can increase the interest rate flares up over the next few weeks.

Ever the opportunist, Ed Miliband recognised that university funding could be the coalition’s first test of resolve. Opposing a tuition fee hike has given him the chance to serenade disgruntled Liberal Democrats and to discard New Labour’s sheen (which so incensed Alan Johnson, the minister who introduced the fee in such difficult circumstances). Miliband is determined to mould the Labour party in his image. Speaking on the Politics Show yesterday (16:20 in), he said that the party, Johnson included, will strive to deliver a graduate tax. After a summer’s procrastination, the government has run out of time. The substance of Lord Browne’s recommendations is in the public domain and it has caused disquiet on government benches.