Tuition fee ‘decapitation’ plan against Lib Dems
By politics.co.uk staff
The National Union of Students (NUS) is drawing up plans to persuade students away from supporting the Liberal Democrats at the next general election.
President Aaron Porter told the Observer newspaper his team would bid to highlight the Lib Dems’ U-turn on tuition fees by focusing their efforts on Lib Dems in vulnerable university seats like Cambridge, Bristol, Bath and even Nick Clegg’s own Sheffield.
“It will serve to undermine the wafer-thin mandate this government has on university cuts and debt,” he said.
There is still four-and-a-half years until the planned date of the next general election, but student anger against the tuition fees hike backed by the Lib Dems – who signed a pledge promising to oppose any increase before the general election – is unlikely to fade away.
Sheffield Hallam University’s student union president Caroline Howd is among those who have admitted their frustration with the Lib Dems.
“We could not get [Clegg] out of our union before the general election,” she told the Observer.
“He came and spoke about how MPs should not make promises and then break them, about how fees were wrong.”
Britain’s third party has performed especially well in seats with large student populations in recent elections.
It now faces its 2005 ‘decapitation’ strategy being used against itself, with Mr Clegg’s own seat among those likely to be targeted.
