Sir Keir Starmer has answered Rishi Sunak’s attack on the last Labour government’s target for higher education expansion in England by accusing the prime minister of seeking a “levelling down of working-class aspiration to go to university”.
In his speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool, the party leader took on the prime minister after the latter set his sights on Tony Blair’s 1999 pledge to ensure 50 per cent of young people gained a higher education qualification.
Mr Sunak said in his speech to the Conservative conference that “the Labour government pursued the false dream of 50 per cent of children going to university and abandoned apprenticeships”, which he called “one of the great mistakes of the last 30 years”.
Sir Keir said: “I never thought I would hear a modern Conservative prime minister say that 50 per cent of our children going to university was a false dream.”
