Good morning. Keir Starmer has been giving interviews this morning, including on the Today programme. Labour is promising “change” but today Starmer seemed determined to temper expectations, repeatedly stressing that that there were things he would like to do in “an ideal world” which voters should not be expecting after 4 July. When Starmer was running for the Labour leadership in 2020, he said he supported abolishing university tuition fees.
On the Today programme, asked by Mishal Husain if he still believed in that, Starmer said he certainly wanted to change the current arrangements. He said since 2020 there had been “huge damage” to the economy. He said he thought the government could not afford to put more money into the NHS and to abolish tuition fees, and he had decided to not abolish tuition fees. People would understand this, he argued. I came into politics, as you know, late.