Ed Miliband holds firm to 'financially illiterate' scheme

Ed Miliband is right to reach out to the younger generation – but do his numbers really stack up? Emily Hohler reports.

Last Friday, four years after Labour leader Ed Miliband first announced that the party would cut university tuition fees from the coalition's maximum of £9,000 to £6,000 a year, he confirmed that the pledge remains firm. The £2bn cost would be funded, he said, by cutting tax relief on pensions.

Politically, it's not hard to see his reasoning, says The Guardian. In a close election where every seat matters, student votes in a handful of constituencies could make all the difference. Plus, the coalition has been "inexcusably generous towards pensioners", says the Financial Times. Miliband "strikes a chord" when talking of the "faded hopes of the younger generation".

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.