Well that was a shambles.  Middle England was under attack as Little Jonathan would have had to (eventually) pay back (some of) the costs of his Media Studies degree.  And they still failed.  Where Blair, with a majority of twice the coalition, got a 5 vote majority – the coalition got a 21 vote majority.  And the students could have won, or at least squeezed out more concessions.

Any successful revolt in Parliament cannot succeed without the support of either the Tory right or the Tory left.  The Tory left are very, very happy with the coalition and will swallow hot coals to keep it going (for those searching for Ben Gummer’s speech on the student fees, it’s here).  With the high profile exceptions of David Davis, Julian Lewis and Mark Reckless the right wing dog did not bite.  The perpetual rebels such as Hollobone, Carswell and the other David Davis were obediently trooping through the government lobbies.  The rebels on student fees may have had “form” as rebels, but many of the rebels with form where nowhere to be seen.  It was these people that the students need to tap into.

Personally I found the arguments of the right wing rebels to be incoherent, and I am usually quite amenable to any arguments from that quarter.  I suspect that this was the issue that the other would be rebels foundered on, there was no real alternative.  The only alternatives that took into account the actual deficit were to cut the grants to poorer students (as the NUS wanted) or to drastically limit numbers as David Davis wanted.  There’s some merit in the latter argument, but it would probably hollow out our universities as training grounds for foreign elites.  As for a graduate tax, if people can’t see the disincentive for studying from a higher tax rate they would probably not have the brains to get into university.

And that was it.  The right would have loved to have rebelled but they couldn’t.  They needed some sort of attractive alternative that they could have sold to their fuming activists and they could have done without the riots.  Obviously the NUS need to step up their stewarding and start to actively report the student demonstrators who resort to anything criminal and to, ahem, vigorously, eject any Trots and anarchists over 24.  The trade unions used to manage this, when they wanted, and the NUS should do the same.

This should be a worrying day for the coalition.  The Tory right can rebel on non-defence spending, which is surely the most startling fact of the vote, although the “coalition against the cuts” finds it hard enough to work out that sometimes they have to be nice to the Lib Dems.  How on earth are they going to work out that they need to appeal to the Tory right.

“No ifs, no buts” really does help the Tory cuts.

Related articles

• Will David Davis’s anti-tuition fees vote remain a “rebellion of one”? (newstatesman.com)
• David Davis to join the Lib Dem revolt on tuition fees: Bombshell announcement could throw Coalition into turmoil (dailymail.co.uk)
• David Davis is auditioning for leader of the opposition (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• David Davis: ‘tuition fees encourage students to rack up too much debt’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• David Davis joins Lib Dem tuition fees revolt throwing Coalition into turmoil (dailymail.co.uk)
• Clegg concedes party is split as Tories defect too (independent.co.uk)