When a person does not start a life, they were expecting, there is dissent. Labour must go to the grassroots to encounter this dissent. When we talk about grass roots, the leader of the Labour party must be from the grassroots than from a privileged background … writes Taha Coburn-Kutay
Labour lost one of its safe seat Hartlepool under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer. He failed to keep the Labour voters in the fold. Where did the disconnect happen? The Labour party should be asking itself this question and in retrospect should go back not too much into the distant past but about couple of decades. It is my belief that every nation’s make, or break is in the hands of the students and youngsters of a country. After Tony Blair took power in 1997, his government levied a fee of £1000 as higher education fees and subsequently increased it to £3000 in 2006 during his second term.
The Conservative and Liberal Democrats increased the fee to £9000 in 2010. When you ask the students about the fee issue, they blame the Labour government more than the Conservative Liberal Democrats because the fee increase was initiated by Labour.
What is seen in the media is for optics but not the ground reality. Majority of students cannot afford the £9000 fee and turn to student loans which is turn eventually become bad debt for the exchequer because most of these students are not able to get a job straight out of university. This is because when the student took a course to study, they were not sure of the course and halfway through the course realise they do not want to carry on and drop out. Eventually they do not have the skills to get a job of their choice and cannot pay their loans back which then has a negative effect on their credit history. I have explained this because this is where the problem lies and starts from to begin.
When a person does not start a life, they were expecting, there is dissent. Labour must go to the grass roots to encounter this dissent. When we talk about grass roots, the leader of the Labour party must be from the grass roots than from a privileged background. The world is experiencing a right wing thought process and this needs to change.
The Fabian society started in 1884 and gave the United Kingdom a thought process which changed the country after the second world war when Prime Atlee’s government came to power in 1945. Maybe we need the Fabian society to come with a fresh though process for the present time and bring youngster to the forefront. The dissent must be heard at the grassroots whether it is the students or workers across the UK. There must be a strategy to work on the dissent which is found through the research work. By passing mere statements in the media and changing a few officials will not get the party back together.
The unity of the union is at risk where Scotland is demanding a vote for independence and Welsh youngsters have started voicing for an independence vote too. We have seen rioting in the recent past in Northern Ireland. These issues must be addressed head-on by the Labour party or face another humiliating defeat in the next general elections.
