{"id":454696,"date":"2026-03-03T04:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T04:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454696\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T04:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T04:10:08","slug":"furious-graduates-give-uks-starmer-another-reason-to-be-fearful-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454696\/","title":{"rendered":"Furious graduates give UK\u2019s Starmer another reason to be fearful \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Times newspaper launched an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/topic\/end-the-graduate-rip-off\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">End the Graduate Rip-Off campaign<\/a>, and the popular consumer finance journalist Martin Lewis has made it a cause, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/money\/2026\/feb\/03\/student-loans-martin-lewis-rachel-reeves-graduates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">questioning<\/a> the morality of the freeze.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a complete mess,\u201d said National Union of Students (NUS) Vice President for Higher Education Alex Stanley, whose members recently held a protest outside parliament <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/money\/2026\/feb\/11\/nus-urges-rachel-reeves-to-reverse-changes-to-student-debt-repayment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">dressed as sharks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fault initially may not be theirs, but the responsibility is absolutely now theirs,\u201d he said of the Labour government, arguing the backlash poses an \u201copportunity as much as it is a threat\u201d to Starmer.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got a system that is costing students so much money that it risks putting off prospective students,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cThis is a very real burden on young people when it comes to the cost of living,\u201d says Curtis. The repayments are a \u201cdeep cause of the economic insecurity that many younger graduates are facing\u201d as they try buying their first home, he adds.<\/p>\n<p>Curtis supports a graduate tax, where university leavers would pay extra tax when they start earning with lower repayments, but in the near-term at least wants ministers to increase the threshold for loan repayments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Times newspaper launched an End the Graduate Rip-Off campaign, and the popular consumer finance journalist Martin Lewis&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[55110,625,3363,460,1398,461,4176,59,57,58,2923,12336,1431,814,465,420,12174,164155,50,423,4178,2023,70085,470,474,18638,56,54,55,7747,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-454696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-bridget-phillipson","9":"tag-british-politics","10":"tag-cost-of-living","11":"tag-debt","12":"tag-education","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-finance","15":"tag-gb","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-greatbritain","18":"tag-growth","19":"tag-higher-education","20":"tag-inflation","21":"tag-interest-rates","22":"tag-investment","23":"tag-keir-starmer","24":"tag-kemi-badenoch","25":"tag-laura-trott","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-parliament","28":"tag-pensions","29":"tag-retail","30":"tag-retail-consumer-finance","31":"tag-rights","32":"tag-tax","33":"tag-tony-blair","34":"tag-uk","35":"tag-united-kingdom","36":"tag-unitedkingdom","37":"tag-wes-streeting","38":"tag-westminster-bubble"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}