Last week there was a little stooshie over an interview in which Alex Salmond appeared to defend Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. I’m not interested in discussing the merits or otherwise of Thatcher’s policies just now. What interests me about this story is that it is a perfect example of the danger the SNP is always in, having positioned themselves as primary political spokespeople for the nation of Scotland.

For a number of years in the past the SNP has used the slogan “Scotland’s Party”. You often hear them distinguish themselves from other parties by highlighting the fact that the other parties are “run from London” and so on and so forth. It is inherent in the nationalist ideology that there is a distinctively “Scottish” point of view. As the main nationalist party in Scotland, the SNP has to make sure it always represents this “Scottish” point of view.

Of course, it’s not unusual for a political party to claim to represent an entire group of people. For instance, the Labour Party would claim to represent working class people (or, in today’s language, “Hard Working British Families”). But it’s one thing to try to represent a particular sub-set of the population. It is quite another to try and represent an entire nation.

Of course, there is no “Scottish” point of view. However, the SNP often do a fairly good job of convincing people that there is. They will often tell you they are the only party standing up for Scotland’s interests, and I often think that some people south of the border really do believe that what the SNP says is an accurate reflection of Scottish opinion.

The danger for the SNP, though, is that they always have to make sure that they actually do provide an accurate reflection of Scottish opinion. This will often means that the SNP ends up doing what is popular rather than what is right (this probably explains why many of the SNP’s policies are so populist). A lot of the time, what is popular and what is right will be aligned. But what if they are not?

The thing about Alex Salmond’s interview was not that he said “I didn’t mind Thatcher’s policies so much.” The problem was that he said “Scotland didn’t mind Thatcher’s economic politics so much.”

The interview with Iain Dale in Total Politics sees Mr Salmond being his usual presumptuous self. He sees himself as speaking for Scotland. In fact, he is only qualified to speak for himself or, at the very most, for the SNP.

I suspect that if Alex Salmond simply said, “I didn’t mind Thatcher’s economic policies”, you wouldn’t have seen a fraction of the outrage. There might have been a few “Tartan Tory” jibes, but that would have been about it.

It was the fact that he was attempting to speak for Scotland — and he got it wrong. If you are going to be arrogant enough to speak for the whole country, you need to make sure your finger is right on the pulse. Make one little slip-up and you end up offending most of the country.

In the wake of the reaction to my previous post, I want to re-state and clarify what I wrote. I am well aware that the previous post was way too long and ranty, and when you blog like that it is easy to lose focus. Hopefully this will be short.

Snapesbabe reckons that my post yesterday said that “all people who are complaining about people who voted for Boris are stupid”. I don’t think that’s what I said and it certainly wasn’t my intention.

My point wasn’t to say that people complaining about Boris voters are stupid. My point, as I noted in my comment there, was to say that many of the most prominent people who complained about Boris Johnson’s voters were using arguments that were either irrelevant, invalid or could equally be levelled at Ken Livingstone’s voters.

Snapesbabe presented a post by Mitch Benn as a counterbalance to mine. I think Mitch Benn’s post demonstrates rather well what I was talking about. I know that Mitch Benn is a comedian, so you can’t expect him to play it straight. At the same time, it is very similar to just about everything I have read complaining about Boris Johnson over the past few weeks.

Here is Mitch Benn’s argument, summarised by me:

I don’t understand. How can over a million Londoners be such morons? Do they not see that Boris Johnson cannot be taken seriously? I can only conclude that they voted for him because of his appearances on Have I Got News For You. Otherwise people would see him for the Tory toff he really is.

Is there anything about Boris Johnson’s policies or record? Only this: “[Boris Johnson is] a man who has thus far struggled to demonstrate his ability to find his arse with both hands.”

This is what I’m talking about.

I will now look at the comments to another post, one which was favourable to my post yesterday. I think the comments thread demonstrates rather nicely exactly what I was saying. And these are people who have, I presume (given that they are commenting about it and all), read my post. Many of them have committed the same offences that I spent the best part of 3,000 words arguing against.

(NB. I should point out that I don’t know any of these people, so I may be misrepresenting their views. But I am assuming that they are opposed to Boris Johnson’s victory (this part is obvious from their comments) and are left-liberals who are disappointed in the current Labour government (this part I have inferred). Please accept my sincerest apologies if this is inaccurate.)

randwolf said:

This is what they said about the Democrats…and then we “elected” Bush II. …come to think about it, it was also, “…and then we elected Nixon.” The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

“The enemy of my enemy is not my friend” was precisely what I was saying in my post yesterday. It applies equally to Ken Livingstone as it does to Boris Johnson. My point was that the campaign from the left was mainly a negative one against Boris Johnson rather than a positive one in favour of Ken Livingstone. Saying that you should vote against someone just because they are a Tory does not cut it. And if you carry on voting for Labour no matter how bad their policies become, don’t be surprised when they start adopting more terrible policies.

juggzy has the most sensible comment in the thread, although still misses the target in my view. It starts off by pointing out that Ken Livingstone has more experience. That’s a fair point, although once upon a time Ken Livingstone was just as inexperienced as Boris Johnson, so this can’t be the whole story.

Plus, as I noted in my post yesterday, if anyone stays in power too long it’s practically inviting corruption (and there were already signs of this in Ken Livingstone’s second term). So this is a tradeoff rather than a straightforward decision, and it depends on how seriously you view each potential weakness.

ffutures says:

Labour’s record on civil liberties does not excuse Boris Johnson. Two wrongs don’t make a right…

This was pretty much the point I made yesterday in reverse. The Conservatives’ policies from the Thatcher era do not excuse Ken Livingstone or any other current Labour politicians. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

rozk says:

…as with Cameron, he was in the Bullingdon - that speaks volumes.

So we’re back to “booo, he’s a toff!” As purplecthulhu replied,

College clubs? It’s easy to make veiled comments about what someone did in their teens and 20s…

I think most people would be relieved that they are judged on their character and opinions as they stand today rather than whatever they did as a youngster.

There are some people who, when pressed, were and are able to articulate genuine reasons why they genuinely think Boris Johnson should not have been voted London Mayor. This is fine, and I do not have a problem with that.

But these people are outnumbered by a factor of one hundred by arguments that basically amount to, “You shouldn’t vote for Boris Johnson because he is a clown and a Tory toff, and those people who do vote for him are idiots.” I am sorry, but if you write in The Guardian or the New Statesman or your left-wing blog something as lazy as that, you are not engaging in a debate — you are engaging in groupthink.

And if you spend the whole campaign just pointing out irrelevant stuff about Boris Johnson being a Tory toff rather than actually talking about policies, don’t be surprised if he goes on to win the election. Believe it or not, there is more to politics than the colour of the rosette. Evidently enough over a million Londoners simply do not care that Boris Johnson is a Tory toff.

And when, after Boris Johnson has won the election, you raise your arms and say, “the only possible explanation is that those voters are morons,” you are just making the situation worse. Because “those voters” will start to increase in number as they get turned off the left by their childish arguments, and one day the left will wake up to find that they are just talking among themselves. Perhaps that has already happened.

You must understand that I am not making any pro-Conservative, pro-Boris Johnson or anti-Ken Livingstone points. But I beg those good liberals and people of the left — for the sake of their cause — to start debating politicians on the basis of their merits rather than their background. After all, are not left-liberals supposed to be against judging people on the basis of their background?

It is often said that the most despised people in the country are journalists and estate agents. And while these people sometimes are indeed prize toss pots, there are two other professions that I despise above all others. Actors and politicians. Thing is, acting and being a politician is essentially the same job. They’re not wrong when they say politics is showbusiness for ugly people. Both aspire to earn money by spending their life being insincere. You can’t admire that.

But unlike many, I cannot bring myself to hate Boris Johnson in particular. That’s not because LOL I like his funnee hair and he is a legernd. (I do find it amusing, though, that people will — without a trace of irony — cite this article and others by the (admittedly excellent) Charlie Brooker saying “LOL! CHARLIE BROOKER IS A LEGEND!” It’s all a bit Dan Ashcroft if you ask me. But never mind.)

No, the real reason I don’t hate Boris Johnson is because I can’t stand politicians full stop. To single out one person the way some single out Boris Johnson seems incredibly unfair to me. And the reaction among some people to his election as London Mayor has left me in despair about the state of political discourse right now.

So I was glad to see the balance redressed somewhat by the excellent Nosemonkey yesterday. I was beginning to think I was the only one who couldn’t understand why so many people were queuing up to pour effluent on the man.

It is slightly dangerous territory for me to be talking about London politics. Everything I wrote here applies. But I have been spurred into blogging about this for two reasons. One is that the position of London Mayor is pretty much the only major directly elected post in the country and its effects inevitably reverberate around the country. The second is that the debate itself merits comment because it reflects the shoddy standard of political discourse in the UK as a whole.

I will refrain from commenting too much on the policies of either candidate. I know too little about the policies and obviously my opinions could well be different were I actually a Londoner. But I would probably have reluctantly voted for Brian Paddick. I would probably not have allocated my second preference. Choosing between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson is a bit like choosing between shit and shite. Forced at gunpoint however, I would plump for Johnson.

I have, after all, voted for him before. A couple of years ago Boris Johnson stood in the election to become Rector of Edinburgh University. He was an early favourite, but then that shady coalition of Labour / Green / People and Planet / whatever in EUSA went on the offensive to produce a highly negative campaign based on Boris Johnson’s support for tuition fees.

The students, being self-interested, rational utility maximisers, decided to vote against the possibility of being seen to favour tuition fees. I voted on principle against this subsidy for the middle class.

Today we have the completely anonymous Mark Ballard as our Rector. Don’t know who Mark Ballard is? Don’t blame you. He used to be a Green MSP but was such a nonentity that he was voted out last year. As such, a genuine nobody is Rector of Edinburgh University. The guy we could have had is now Mayor of London. (Even Magnus Linklater would have been better. I actually met him while he was campaigning and he seemed rather pleasant.)

It is true that Boris Johnson is a bit of a clown. But I don’t see why this is necessarily a barrier to being in public office. People always drone on about how boring politicians are. They complain about bland inoffensive leaders — Blairs, Camerons, Cleggs and the like — who silence independent thinkers or anyone who could be seen as a loose cannon. They despise those Milliblands et al. who climb the greasy pole, toe the party line and so on. And quite rightly.

But then when someone who is charismatic, who is an independent thinker, who will not toe the party line comes along, apparently he is unfit for office. You can’t have it both ways.

Plus, the notion that over a million Londoners voted for Boris Johnson “just for a laugh” is highly patronising. I am pretty misanthropic, but even my hatred for the electorate does not stoop this low. I do not doubt that some people voted for Johnson on this basis, but to put his victory down to this phenomenon alone is surely wide of the mark. It makes you look petulant.

Also, I surely need not say that voting against Boris Johnson because he is a character is every bit as pathetic as voting for him for that reason. Yet, as far as I can tell, it is the number one reason why people have been so averse to a Johnson victory. It is also odd that people should complain about Johnson for being famous for being maverick, only to vote for Ken Livingston who… is famous for being a maverick.

To say that because Boris is a bumbler when he talks means that he will be a bumbler in control of London is pathetic. Political leaders don’t “run” anything — that’s the job of the civil service and what have you. Boris Johnson won’t be sitting in front of a real-life game of Sim City. Political leaders are public figureheads who canvass opinion, bring ideas to the table and direct policy and they are only one (albeit prominent) branch in a large tree. I see nothing in Boris Johnson’s character that will prohibit him from doing this job just fine.

And being a clown is, at least, a whole lot better than being malicious. Because that is what Livingstone is. While the character assassinations of Boris Johnson are ten a penny, people on the left tend to be an awful lot more quiet about Livingstone’s many failings. His inexplicable inability to simply apologise to Oliver Finegold for his drunken remarks; his failure to distance himself from homophobic Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi; his hokey-cokey in-out-in-out, I’m not running, yes I am but as an independent, then I’ll rejoin the Labour party, shake it all about. Don’t forget also that he rushed to the door like a yapping dog with its tail wagging to make excuses for the brutal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Of course, Boris Johnson is not just a clown. He is a toff. And he is a Tory. Booooo!

Well, all I can say to that is, grow up. This is just the most pathetic way to discuss politics. If you have to resort to invoking the days of Thatcher to persuade people not to vote Conservative, you must be scraping the barrel. Yet it is a staple of British political discourse.

The Labour Government could go round the country literally raping everyone. When someone calls them up on it, you can be sure the Government will turn round and splutter, “Ah yes — but the Tories brought you the POLL TAX. Booooo!” And the sheep on the left will be won over. They will hi-5 each other for what they see as an excellent sucker-punch (which is in fact a tired, over-used, irrelevant line), hiss at the Tories and let the Labour Government get back to raping everyone again.

I am in little position to comment on how bad Margaret Thatcher’s government was because I am too young to remember anything substantial of it. But it seems to me as though Thatcher is vilified mostly for ushering in some changes that were no doubt difficult to take at the time but which were necessary in the long run. Socialism is a discredited ideology — almost the entire history of the twentieth century should tell you this. Almost every other comparable country has gone through a similar process. Besides, Labour has done little to reverse this, so to turn to them while blaming Thatcher is hollow.

Even if I am wrong on this, you must realise that invoking Thatcher will not cut it much longer. For one thing, this stuff happened twenty or thirty years ago. Many voters (like myself) now do not even remember that far back, and politics and the Conservative Party are operating in very different environments now. It’s not fair on today’s Conservatives to punish them for the actions of the previous generation, and it takes the people with whom you are debating for mugs to crudely reduce everything to this. And it makes you look like a tosser as well.

The thing is, the Conservatives may have the Poll Tax (from twenty years ago). But Labour have the Iraq War (with goodness knows how many people killed) from this decade. There was their bullying approach to the media that went along with the Iraq War in this decade. They have created a climate of fear and general suspicion of anyone with “Mongolian eyes”, leading to at least one unnecessary death in this decade. They have turned this country into the most spied-upon in the world in this decade. They have begun to construct the database state, with all the security risks that entails, along with the hopelessly expensive ID cards in this decade.

They have abolished the 10p income tax rate. That would be bad enough from the Conservatives, but for a “Labour” government it shows a scandalous disregard for the concept of the progressive tax system. Labour have treated the voters with utter contempt, taking their position in power for granted.

Although I have moved on to the more general point about the standard of political discourse, this is related to the recent Mayoral contest. You could argue that all that has nothing to do with Ken Livingstone. But he helped legitimise all this by re-joining the Labour Party at the height of Tony Blair’s courtship with George Bush.

With all of this blood on their hands, with their power-grabbing, and their utter contempt for civil liberties, what is it that keeps them in power? The best response is “Maggie stole my milk… in 1970″? Get real. This approach has literally allowed the Labour Government to get away with murder. Why should I be prepared to give this Labour mob another chance?

You could argue that whatever Labour do, the Conservatives must always be worse because they are more “right wing”. But this argument does not cut it either. For one thing, it is precisely this approach that allows Labour to get away with all of this. The left just shrug their shoulders and mumble, “could be worse”. The Conservatives, on the other hand, are scrutinised for slightest bawhair of a possibility that they might infringe on people’s liberties. I am certain that the Conservatives would never have been allowed to get away with the Iraq War, the creeping privatisation of the NHS, ID cards and you name it in the way that Labour have been. This alone is reason enough to vote Labour out.

Furthermore, to expect the Labour Party to take a liberal approach is asking too much of them. Their traditional ideology is not liberalism, contrary to what some might tell you. It is socialism. Say what you like about the Conservatives, but at least they have a liberal wing in their party. With Labour you just get one kind of authoritarianism or another.

As for the argument that Boris Johnson will not be a good leader because he is a toff, that is just nonsensical bigotry of the highest order. Being of a certain social class should be not a barrier to holding office. After all, Boris Johnson did not choose his father.

Anyone who knows me will know that I am not rich in the slightest. But if I happened to have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I would like to think that I would not be subjected to this kind of bigotry. Justin in the comments at Nosemonkey’s says,

I tell you what, I will [get over the class prejudice] if they will. You obviously haven’t been swimming in some of the Tory cesspits I have in the last few months.

I am not a “party identifier” — at least not between Labour and the Conservatives. I was brought up by SNP-supporting parents. As I grew up I drifted towards the Liberal Democrats. From this position, I see a great deal more “snide remarks, personal attacks and class prejudice” from Labour supporters than I do from Conservative supporters. In fact, it is one of the things that has ultimately turned me completely off the Labour Party over the past few years.

I obviously haven’t been swimming in Justin’s Tory cesspits either. But if anyone can find me an example of someone saying that you should not vote for someone because they are too working class to do their job properly, I would happily accept defeat on this point. But I have never heard it said. But to complain that someone is too posh is par for the course.

Besides, to attack the Conservatives for being full of toffs misses the fact that plenty of Labour members are also toffs. Tony Blair isn’t exactly a miner. And the stuff about Gordon Brown being from a working class area only tells half the story. I have lived almost all my life in that same working class area, and people round here know that he was a privileged son of the manse who got special treatment during his education. So it’s vote Tory, get a toff; vote Labour, get a toff. Not that this should matter in the slightest of course.

To bring all of this back to where I started, remember that I am not a supporter of Boris Johnson. My point is that Boris Johnson as Mayor of London is not remotely as offensive as some people are making out.

This is a personal view, but I would never vote for someone seeking a third term unless they were exceptionally appealing. But the third term is when the rot sets in, if it didn’t during the second term. That’s when power gets to their heads. That’s when they lose touch of reality. In this light, a change is not all that bad.

Believe it or not, Labour do not have a divine right to power. Even Scotland, with all of its Labour rotten boroughs in the west, realised this last year. Just like in London, “the enemy” got in instead. While you may argue that the SNP are not Tories, they are nonetheless loathsome. But guess what. Scotland didn’t implode one year ago when they were elected. In fact, the SNP administration is a breath of fresh air, and it’s certainly a lot better than the prospect of a third Labour-dominated Executive. I don’t see why Boris Johnson should be different.

Of course, he could very well be a disaster. But the point is that candidates shouldn’t be judged on their background, their hairstyle or the colour of their rosette. They should be judged on their policies and their record. I’ve skim-read Boris Johnson’s manifesto and I have not seen anything particularly offensive and I see nothing that disqualifies him in my mind. Even if people do disagree with Johnson’s policies, this is fair enough — but I didn’t hear any of it. I just heard about his posh accent.

I am greatly saddened by the nature of the debate and the sheer hypocrisy that so many people are showing. Too many people are making terrible excuses for a disastrous Labour government. I blame these people for the road this country is headed down.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Maybe I am asking too much. But any notion I had before that political ideologies are formed, debated and voted for on the basis of rational, intelligent thought have been shattered this week. What Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky said was true after all. Voting for a political party is just like supporting a football team for some people, with accident of birth and plain old prejudice at the basis of their support. I’d prefer it if these people could leave their childish desire to be part of a tribe in the football ground rather than in the ballot box where they are controlling my life.

The cheesy line goes, “if you don’t vote, you get the politicians you deserve.” Well, it’s not true. Politicians can’t do anything without votes. But if you vote for someone because they are the “least worst” or because “at least they’re not the Tories”, then you do get the politicians you deserve. My anger stems from the fact that I do not deserve these politicians.

Update: I’ve written a second post on this topic. I hope this concisely clarifies my intentions with this post. I also respond to the feedback.

I saw this story about a man who has come to believe that he must be the ugliest man in the world — because he has had 5,000 marriage proposals rejected (via Digg).

I don’t think Emil Kacic is ugliest man in the world. He is certainly not as ugly as some of the people of Newcastle. But is Emil Kacic the least self-aware man in the world? The most socially inept man in the world? Possibly.

I found another story with a bit more information (warning: contains some NSFW images). My Romanian is not too hot, but I reckon it says he has been looking for 30 years. This means that the average length of time he has known each woman before proposing is 2.19 days. No wonder he is getting rejected!

I’ve got to the point where I have even been asking women I am meeting in the streets to marry me, but they always say no.

What a shock! You know, I think if a stranger came up to me and asked me to marry them, I might do a bit more than just say no.

The thing is that when somebody proposes in this manner they are sending a whole variety of signals. He is desperate and rude. The fact that he is 49 years old and has still never married, despite clearly wishing he had, itself provides enough information to anyone who has the question popped in their face. Emil Kacic is a lemon.

It reminded me of another example of somebody approaching relationships in a controversial way. This also hit the internet big time a couple of months back. The “spectacularly beautiful” woman who placed an ad on Craigslist outlining her exasperation that she was failing to date anyone who earned more than $250,000. (Yeah, my heart bleeds.)

The most incredible bit of her ad is the paragraph where she points out that some rich people marry — gasp — plain-looking women!

Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the Upper East Side so plain? I’ve seen really “plain Jane” boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the East Village. What’s the story there?

Both the gold-digging Craigslist advertiser and Emil Kacic are making the same mistake. Both assume that looks alone are good enough. Mr Kacic reckoned that, as long as he was not abnormally ugly, all he would need to do was ask enough people and he would eventually marry. The Craigslist gold-digger (not a nice name, I know, but I don’t have her real name so it will have to do) also implies that the only possible justifiable reason why a man would want to marry someone would be if they were good looking.

For sure, looks must count to a degree. You would be lying if you said otherwise. But it could never be the sole factor, or even the main factor, when making the decision to marry. The reason comes from one of the respondents on Craigslist:

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party, and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub — your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity … in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms, you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset…

In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following: if my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

What I find interesting is something that is kind of skirted around by most people. What the Craigslist gold-digger is doing is little more than a subtle form of prostitution. Yet while the Craigslist gold-digger might attract a few eye-rolls and tsk-tsks, you won’t find her being fined or thrown in the slammer.

In this sense, masses of people sell sex. Countless relationships along the lines of what the Craigslist gold-digger was seeking must be forged. How about also actors who film sex scenes, models, those people on Babestation-style programmes, Page 3 girls, strippers, porn stars, brothel workers, street prostitutes?

My guess would be that many people find some of the activities at the end of that list more unacceptable, but some at the beginning of the list relatively innocuous. But they are all essentially activities that involve people selling their bodies for money.

Perhaps the biggest difference with the later items in the list (besides the case of street prostitution, which happens in a public place and with women in a particularly vulnerable situation) is the socio-economic status of the people involved. Is there a bit of snobbery that comes into play?

It strikes me that selling sex, in its various forms, is a reality of life. And since prostitutes are in an especially dangerous position I would have thought it would be wiser to be trying to help them more rather than increasingly criminalising (and thereby making even more dangerous) their particular brand of this common activity. In a sense, they are being penalised for calling a spade a spade.

I reckon this could be the issue that brings down the curtain on the SNP’s honeymoon period. They seem to have messed up a bit when it comes to universities, on two different issues.

Firstly, the universities say they are disappointed in the amount of funding they will get. The universities asked for £168 million extra and said that a minimum of £40 million extra was required for levels of funding to remain the same in real terms. What they actually got was £30 million — a real terms cut.

I have never been to any universities except for Edinburgh, so I couldn’t say how it compares to other institutions around the world. But I can’t help but wonder if the continued public funding of universities in this manner is unsustainable.

There is already a perception that Edinburgh University is increasing the number of international students it enrols. International students are the only students they can make money out of, so Scottish students will begin to be squeezed out.

It already disadvantages us in at least one high-profile way. The move to semesterisation has been seen as an attempt to attract international students who want to be back home for Christmas — but had a range of negative consequences for other students (additionally, that document doesn’t mention the fact that sometimes there can be just a few days between your last lecture and your first exam in December).

If it is true that Scottish universities are facing a real terms cut in funding, then this trend will continue. Then Scottish students will be worse off.

The other place where the SNP is feeling the heat is over their ditched plans to “dump student debt”. If you were a student, it was difficult to avoid the SNP’s ‘debt monster’ character. A number of blogs were even decorated with graphics of the creature. It was clearly a key policy in attracting student votes. So it’s hardly a surprise that a lot of students feel a bit miffed now.

I can hardly blame the SNP for not implementing this policy, which in my view (speaking as someone with £7,000 and counting to pay back to the Student Loans Company) was stark raving bonkers. They shouldn’t have promised it in the first place.

Both of these areas link into the fact that students have it far too easy. Proponents of free higher education miss the point of higher education. A degree is supposed to be a signal to employers that you are talented. For this signal to work, a degree has to be costly to attain.

After all, if it was easy to get a degree, any old fool could get one. This would lead to the ‘devaluation’ of degrees that people so often talk about. The point of making a degree costly is to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. If getting a degree pays off for someone who is not so smart, then degrees are no longer a useful indicator to employers and everyone is worse off as a result.

Of course, degrees are costly anyway. Not in a monetary sense, but in a time sense. Theoretically, examinations are (hopefully) hard enough to deter the not-so-smart from spending four years of their life studying, and the opportunity costs that entails (i.e. four years spent unable to work full time).

However, it doesn’t quite work like that. When people are growing up, nobody is told the truth about university. Parents always push you into going into university due to pride. They don’t want their several years and piles of money invested in a life to come to nothing. Schools are the same — if a lot of a school’s pupils go to university, it reflects well on a school’s reputation. Meanwhile, governments like to encourage people to go to university because it reflects well on their reputation and it helps keep a lid on unemployment figures.

For this reason, there are many students who are walking around like headless chickens, not knowing what to do next (I would include myself in this group). So many people are forced by societal pressure into going into university. A lot of people grow up knowing having been told by parents, schools and governments that they will go into university. These people simply don’t consider any other alternative. Then when they are about to graduate they are stumped.

The obsession with persuading young people to go to university has also led to the fetishisation of “student culture”. Thanks to this, those four years are not seen as a cost at all. They are seen as the best four years of your life. Four years spent getting drunk. The degree is seen as a nice bonus. Fair enough if people want to enjoy themselves — but this is at the expense of taxpayers’ money.

How do we know that degrees are not costly enough? Because some graduates — mostly male arts students (who? me?!) — end up earning less than people who do not go to university. (This is part of the reason why this issue angers me a bit. If I knew I had to pay, I would have been forced to think through my choices a bit more, and would probably have made a better decision.)

Before statists and socialists start moaning, let me point this out. If degrees are costly, this need not preclude poor people from getting one. For one thing, poor people are the very people who benefit the most from university education, so they have the biggest incentive to invest in it.

Also, I still think it would be unfair to make poor people pay upfront. I would not be averse to the introduction of university tuition fees as long as they did not involve up-front monetary costs. Instead, the money ought to be paid after graduation (or drop-out) in line with your ability to pay. This is how student loans work, so I don’t see how it couldn’t work with tuition fees.

Besides, any pretence that free higher education helps poor people would soon be shattered if you spent five minutes on a university campus. Students are overwhelmingly middle class anyway. Instead of helping the poor, public funding of university education hinders the poor. It takes working people’s tax money and ploughs it into the pockets of middle class Tarquin and his Classics degree.

This is not necessarily to say that I am completely opposed to any state involvement in higher education. I would understand if there were a clear need to provide an incentive for people to attend university (although surely the prospect of a highly-paid job ought to be enough incentive). But today, 52% of 18–30 year olds either have a higher education qualification or are currently studying for one. There is hardly a shortage of graduates, or people wanting to graduate.