How can you be a student and vote Tory?

A few weeks ago, I saw the results of a poll carried out by The Tab and saw that 49 per cent of students in Sheffield are voting for Labour. “Excellent news!”, I thought. “These Sheffield students are clearly tuned into today’s issues surrounding students and young people”.

At first glance this poll brought me a reassurance that not every young person is bored of politics. I thought this could mean that we’ve realised that despite politics being largely inaccessible to us students and also mind-numbingly boring, it changes everyone’s lives.

How can you vote Tory and be a student?

Maybe a few have realised that finding something boring doesn’t make it any less important. This first glance was nice, in fact, I really enjoyed it.

Then I looked further to find that 27 per cent of these voters were planning to vote Tory on the 8^th of June. My smile faltered, the sky went dark, a clouded question mark formation appeared in my mind. Why? This is almost 30 per cent, and 2,700 students.

But, the last time I checked the Tories had angled their entire manifesto toward a wealthy, ageing population? Why on earth were Sheffield students planning on voting for that?

Why were they voting for the people who have replaced grants with loans? Why are they voting for a party that makes students from poorer families need to borrow a bigger loan, and thus leave with a greater debt? Why vote for a party who are literally punishing poorer students for being poor?

This is something that has directly affected you as a student. Does this strike a chord with you? Any feeling? Any sense of “hold on a minute, what the fuck?”

According to the Huffington Post, the Tories plan to make budget cuts of £12billion. It is not entirely clear where these welfare ‘savings’ will come from, but we can expect Disabled Students’ Allowance to be one of them as well.

Why you should vote Labour

The Labour party’s manifesto pledges to cut tuition fees completely and reintroduce maintenance grants. This will hugely lower the debt you’ll carry into your life. They’ll give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote. They’ll also increase the National Minimum Wage to £10 an hour, meaning if you’re a student doing a part time job you’re left better off. Do these changes not directly affect a student, living and working whilst at university? Of course they do.

Labour pledges to bring down the threshold for the 45p rate of income tax down from £150,000 to £80,000. This means that at the moment, you only pay this amount of income tax if you’re pretty loaded. And let’s face it, students aren’t.

You are not an ageing pensioner. You are not a middle-aged person, working in a high-paid job, untouched by the weight of university debt, back in the good old days when University was free.

You are a student.

You are someone who will probably want to buy a house one day, yet will probably be unable to do so. You probably want your siblings to have the freedom to choose to go to university or not, regardless of their income.

You probably want all these things. So tell everyone you speak to today to vote Labour. Forget liking or disliking Corbyn. Forget the media’s silly bias reporting. Do something cool for your future as a young person.