Like most of his New Labour spinmeister colleagues, he’s learned nothing from the (unachieved) 50% fiasco which has ensured that for the past decade the UK has had too many justifiably frustrated degree-educated retail workers and office temps.

Two things follow if a government simply floods the labour market with lots more degree-holders. First, as with money so with qualifications, the currency is debased through excessive issuing and the value of a degree ineluctably falls until a new kind of distinguishing mark eventually takes its place (as W.S. Gilbert aptly joked: “When everybody’s somebody, nobody’s anybody”; the emerging distinguishing mark in Blair’s “50%” era appears to be the postgrad. degree). Second, while governments can certainly make sure a lot more degree are awarded, they can do nothing to ensure a commensurate increase in jobs with the sorts of status, prospects and remuneration that degree holders expect. So a qualification-job mismatch becomes commonplace.

As the victims/beneficaries of Blair’s “50%” soundbite have discovered, including too many of my own students, having a 2.1 from a good university is no longer anything like enough to provide an excellent chance of the kinds of employment they thought they were being promised in the “knowledge economy”. Indeed, many employers now seem to suspect that a 2.1 isn’t even evidence of basic skills, reliability and personal industriousness.

Milibana therefore ought to drop the glib sloganising that he favours when talking about higher education and put his thinking cap on again.

Surely by “competitor nations” he can’t mean other European states. You would hope English pupils would be more proficient at learning their mother tongue than, say, Dutch children learning English. Then again…