UKIP's Gawain Towler talks exclusively to Left Foot Forward about his party's position on tuition fees.
On the day of the government’s controversial tuition fees vote there are huge protests uniting people of all political persuasions in Westminster and throughout the country. Whilst the parliamentary opposition is coming from the Labour benches, Nationalists and a handful of coalition rebels, they may have some unexpected political bedfellows in the shape of UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party.
Whilst UKIP have had no sitting MPs in Parliament since 2008 and therefore no way to influence the vote directly today, they have a number of elected MEPs.
Talking exclusively to Left Foot Forward, Gawain Towler, a spokesman for UKIP in the European Parliament, outlined the party’s unequivocal opposition to the coalition’s reforms.
Despite having criticised past policies of both Conservative efforts in “screwing over polytechnics” and Labour policies “designed to hide unemployment”, Towler announced that if UKIP were to have representatives in the House of Commons they would definitely oppose the legislation:
“We would be against rises, without a doubt, wholeheartedly….. whacking great fees on them (students) doesn’t get you very far…. we don’t think education is just there to tick an economic box”
While UKIP’s official position is that too many people currently attend university, the widely criticised Government legislation has managed to unite everyone from the left-wing of Labour to the Eurosceptic, right-wing party. Perhaps some issues transcend the ideological divide?
24 Responses to “Tuition fees backlash gains momentum on the right”
Anon E Mouse
Chris – hahahahaha, you’re losing it little fella – How many people read Labour dot org?
That site is as irrelevant as the party under Ed Miliband, the tax avoiding property millionaire (never done a real job and cheated with the union dinosaurs to get the Leadership of Labour)and worse ditherer than Gordon Brown.
He was on the BBC and didn’t say that last night and since NO ONE reads the Labour site he hopes his opportunistic appeal to the students, who are predominantly left wing, will mean they don’t realise that.
The protesters are out or order and their cause has been lost by the actions yesterday and Miliband not condemning it on the national news is typical of the weak hopeless buffoon he is.
Come back Gordon Brown all is forgiven…
Chris
@mouse
That is the press statement, moron, sent out to the news media. They then report the statement – don’t you know anything?
And why to you continue to post on company time, get back to work you lazy slacker!
Liz McShane
Anon – Ed has condemned the violence comprehensively. I am sad that you take the view on Higher Education as you do. It has been the avenue out of poverty & limited hope for a lot of working class people over the years.
If these hikes in fees put off people from studying medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, teaching, architecture, civil engineering as well as Arts, Science & Humanities degrees then I really fear the type of society we might come to live in.
Further education benefits us all – that’s if you believe that such a thing as Society exists.
Anon E Mouse
Liz – Long time no hear.
You don’t know what view I take on higher education or my opinion on tuition fees – introduced after Labour promised it wouldn’t along with the Top Up’s they also promised they wouldn’t and did.
Grammar schools were also a way out of poverty although to be fair to Labour more were built under their governments than Tory ones but that’s not the point. (Oh and your argument for the state providing “free” education is that more highly skilled workers pay more overall in tax than the cost of the education – what worries me is that these students are so stupid they can’t articulate that)…
The point is that Ed Miliband is HOPELESS. He gets it for sure. But he will go down as an even worse leader than Gordon Brown – he is truly DIRE. He should be banging on the BBC door to condemn this wanton violence (and you should really know better Liz in view of the way these things were resolved when you were a child with armoured vehicles etc) but he’s not because somehow in his limited brain he hopes to pick up student votes as they desert the Lib Dem’s.
Ed Miliband is Labour’s biggest liability than their last biggest liability. Sack him or you’ll be sorry. I was right last time and I’m right now.
Get Alan Johnson or his brother I say because with him Labour (again) is doomed – the polls show it…
(Have a good weekend woman…)
It’s the Vote that Counts, Not the Rolls Royce « March The Fury
[…] abstained). Outside of Parliament there have been other surprises – UKIP’s EU division declared this week they are ‘wholeheartedly’ ‘against fees’, a fantastic development that has added to the broad coalition of opposition to the […]