Will the Tory right oppose a graduate tax?

One of the vulnerabilities of the Coalition is that when Labour moves position one of its flanks can be exposed. When the Coalition agreement was drawn up, it seemed sufficient that the Lib Dems would maintain the right to carry on opposing tuition fees as both Labour and the Conservatives were in a favour of them. The Lib Dems would still be able to tell students, a key constituency for them, that they were the only party committed to abolishing fees. But as soon as the Labour leadership contenders started moving rapidly towards a graduate tax, the Lib Dems had a problem.

The Tory leadership rapidly accepted the need to help out their junior partners and began looking at ways that its plan for variable fees — eg a market that would allow Oxford to charge more for economics and management than the University of the West of England does for a BA in media and cultural studies — could be turned into a graduate tax.