HE ‘broken’, says Braverman as she takes Reform education brief

Reform UK has announced that Suella Braverman will become the party’s education spokesperson, three weeks after she defected from the Conservatives. 

Reform leader Nigel Farage announced his top team in a press conference on 17 February. 

Braverman, who first served as home secretary under Liz Truss’s Conservative government in 2022, will take up the role of education, skills and equalities spokesperson. 

Speaking at the conference, Braverman said she had been “passionate” about education for years, but said “too many of our universities are failing our young people”.

“Today, 700,000 graduates are unemployed, each of them carrying, on average, £50,000 worth of student debt. 

“The truth is that too many of our young people have been sold a lie about university, wasting three years of their lives on Mickey Mouse courses, all while we have a chronic shortage of nurses, builders and care workers.”

She described the higher education system as “broken”, saying that 50 per cent of young people should instead be “going into the trades”. 

“That’s what will produce the next generation of carpenters, electricians and technicians that our country is crying out for all to work in a thriving manufacturing sector.”

She continued: “To those universities that have descended into hotbeds of cancel culture, antisemitism, and which survive really thanks to the cache of foreign students, and keep conning young people into worthless degrees, Reform is putting you on notice.” 

After Truss’s resignation, Braverman went on to serve as home secretary again between October 2022 and November 2023 in Rishi Sunak’s government. 

While in post, she introduced a controversial ban on most international students bringing their family members with them to the UK, which has widely been seen as driving a decline in incoming enrolments. 

Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, has also been appointed home affairs spokesperson. Speaking at the party’s press conference, he criticised the scale of both legal and illegal immigration to the UK.

Meanwhile, Robert Jenrick, another Conservative party detractor who has previously accused international students of using universities as a backdoor immigration route, was appointed treasury spokesperson. 

While Reform UK has few concrete policies related to universities, party officials have been outspoken about their views on the need to crackdown on the sector. 

Speaking on a podcast in February, Matt Goodwin, a former academic who is set to stand as Reform’s candidate in an upcoming by-election, claimed universities are full of “childless women” and have become hotbeds of “politically correct authoritarianism” as a result. 

He went on to criticise the “feminisation of higher education over the last 50 years”.

In recent months, vice-chancellors and sector groups have attempted to engage with Reform’s policy teams as the party works on a detailed manifesto. 

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com