The Erasmus student scheme – often billed as enabling British students to spend a placement year in an EU country – is being brought back by Starmer. It was junked in the Brexit deal for very good reason…
Erasmus was always hugely expensive to British taxpayers. Prior to the UK leaving, it saw twice the number of EU students come to the UK than Brits to the EU – an imbalance underwritten by British taxpayers to the tune of at least £200 million a year. A British state-funded free year for the European middle class…
Now Starmer’s ‘EU Relations Minister’ Nick Thomas-Symonds has announced the return of Erasmus just as Westminster winds down for the Christmas recess. The government says it will cost £570m in the 2027/28 academic year – a payment directly to the EU. What happened to ‘taking back control of our money’?
The bill reveals the true direction of the revenue raised by Reeves’ hated measures such as the family farm tax (it will pay for less than one fifth of this scheme) and the plethora of other tax rises. Are British taxpayers going to be happy when they work out these tax hikes are just going straight into EU coffers?
Shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns told Times Radio she would have put a precondition on a China trip if she were PM:
“I would have put a precondition that I was not going to go if I was prime minister, unless Jimmy Lai was coming home with me. I would also put a precondition in the six months leading up to the visit that I wanted a reduction in hostile acts against our country. But that’s not what we saw. And actually, in contrast, what we saw was clearly the Chinese Communist Party did put a precondition, which was that the new embassy in London had to be signed off. So why is it okay for China to set preconditions and to make very clear red lines about what they require for a visit, but we go without having put any ourselves?”