Put to the Test

17 April

 

• Labour launches its ‘youth manifesto’ – to mature students.

 

• Ed Miliband proposes a ban on paid internships.

 

 

WAS IT BIG head or big balls? That was the topic of conversation amongst some sections of the media en route to the launch of Labour’s youth manifesto at the unusually named Bishop Grosseteste University in the cathedral city of Lincoln. While it is almost certainly the former – from the French, ‘tete’ – just in case it’s the latter, local people tend to refer to the higher education institution as ‘Bishop Grost.’ A former teacher training college, it became a university as recently as 2012 and has a high number of mature students. So this might not have been the obvious place to launch a ‘youth manifesto’ that could have a little less relevance to them, given their average age. But the venue had been moved from Birmingham to this highly marginal seat where the Conservatives had a majority of little more than a thousand votes and precious few members, as Labour had become increasingly confident of snatching it back. They were to be disappointed come polling day.

The new announcement to help provoke interest in the manifesto – which contained otherwise familiar policies on student finance – was a ban on any internships lasting for longer than four weeks. It was another controversial reform of employment law – following the stated intention of getting rid of around 90 per cent of zero hours contracts. Interns would have to be paid at least the minimum wage after a month. This would be another front in Labour’s battle against exploitation. It was also a demand of the party’s biggest single source of income – the Unite union, which pays its own interns the ‘living wage’, higher than the minimum. In the week of the announcement Labour received £700,000 in donations from the unions. But it was the Blairite Liam Byrne, the Shadow Higher ­Education minister, who had championed the policy – and had been expropriated from him.

An article had appeared in The Independent in December 2014 suggesting he was about to announce that a future Labour government would ban them. In fact privately he had gone further and drafted amendments to the government’s small business legislation to ensure interns would be paid. But he was told by Miliband’s office to pull the amendments and instead announce a ‘consultation’ on internships.

They had bigger plans – paid internships would form one of their ‘retail offers’ at the election. It would create a dividing line with the Conservatives – who were expected to defend unpaid internships which Labour would then claim were making some professions, the media included, the preserve of people with well-off middle class parents. So Labour could claim to be on the side of social mobility while energising their core vote with a bit of class politics. While the policy was unashamedly controversial and designed to hit the headlines, in the wake of the previous night’s debate it received less publicity than anticipated.

Instead much of the focus – to the Conservatives’ delight – remained on whether Ed Miliband would need a deal with the SNP in the event of a hung parliament. Variations on this theme would continue to dominate the next week’s campaigning.