On 11 February 1999, a seminar led by the UK’s then Labour prime minister Tony Blair made what was recently described as “one of the great mistakes of the last 30 years”.
The meeting had nothing to do with war, or taxation, or the UK’s relationship with the European Union.
According to a memo from Mr Blair’s principal private secretary, the seminar – also attended by the chancellor, the education secretary, the trade and industry secretary and a clutch of advisers – endorsed a particular policy recommendation: “We should set a target of 50 per cent of 18 to 30-year-olds being able to enter higher education by the end of the next parliament (subject to a discussion on costs and priorities).”
That target for England ended up as a line in Mr Blair’s Labour conference speech in 1999. But the Blair target took up several more lines of prime minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative conference speech in 2023.
