You’d think a backer of apprenticeships such as me would be buoyed by the PM’s pledge to get rid of ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees and chuck the £100 million saving into apprenticeships.
But like so many things with this government, they have had 14 years to do this stuff and only now, as they face political oblivion, are they taking notice of what people like me have been saying for decades.
Personally I think it’s a bit misguided for the UK Prime Minister to be criticising his own education system by comparing it to a multi-billion dollar media icon, who has been at the top of his game for almost a century. Forbes reckons Mickey Mouse’s contribution to the Disney balance sheet in recent years is around $5.8 billion pa… a number I’m pretty sure Rishi Mouse can’t come close to matching.
The PM has called an election for July 4, the date of Independence Day in the United States. I’m not sure about the significance of the date but I suspect it’s a sly shot at Rishi’s many detractors inside his own party. So, whatever the point of the date, since he called on the General Election Rishi Mouse has been spewing out gimmick policies in all directions.
We have:
- The insane National Service for all 18 year olds
- The triple lock plus pension promise, a restoration of a policy his government abolished, and
- The ‘let’s get more young people into apprenticeships‘ policy, after 14 years of ignoring the issue
- (And let’s not forget the send the bad-guys to Africa policy while we’re contemplating Rishi Mouse’s political legacy).
The entire campaign is looking more desperate and woeful by the day and I don’t imagine many people will fall for it. Although Rishi seems to think he can con enough voters to give him a chance of re-election, otherwise why else would he be staying in office until the bitter end? Resignation would seem the most honourable act just now, but who else would volunteer to captain the sinking HMS Tory?
Let’s start with the bonkers national service policy; in this age of high-tech military warfare what would the MOD do with thousands of young recruits? It’s not like we have a bombed out country to rebuild like we did in the 1940s. We don’t need to train soldiers, but we do need skilled builders, so people can have a decent place to live. So why not a National Apprentice Service, to train 18-year olds in the skills that the UK so desperately needs?
Then there’s the ‘Triple Lock Plus’ pension promise, to reduce the tax threshold at which pensioners pay tax. I ask you why would pensioners who have been ignored by the Tories for more than a decade fall for this blatant bribe? I don’t think they will.
And finally (for the minute) as I think there will be more gimmicks to come, let’s talk about the government’s new apprenticeship policy that will allegedly create 100,000 new apprenticeships at the expense of so-called ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’.
Ten years ago we were not training enough skilled workers, even though apprenticeship starts were at 500,000 a year. In the last year we started 337,000 apprentices on their way to a great career, so the 100k new places, even if it was true, doesn’t even get us back to where we were in 2014.
We have a huge emergency in the UK and the current government has no clue how to turn things around. That’s not to say that I think the Labour Party is the answer; with their woke, anti-business ethos, they will only make things worse. I wish there was a horse I could back in good conscience for the top job but there isn’t.
I will say this though; after this election where Keir Starmer’s anti-business Labour are a shoo-in, the Tories will soon become a thing of the past, just like the Wiggs and the Liberal Party, and Reform UK, or an offshoot of it, will be in government come 2029.
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