Re-arranging the deckchairs of capitalist control: The departure of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain.

By Sunday, 15 November 2020 it was clear, Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, two of Prime Minister Johnson’s key advisers were to leave the government (The Guardian, 15 November 2020). Commentators were quick to paint the Prime Minister as someone who was asserting his authority and started speculating about potential policy changes. Looking at the charade from outside the Westminster bubble, however, it becomes clear that this has little to do with policy, and is more about trying to steady a ship, which has gone completely out of control.

A crisis of their own making: Covid-19 and the pressure on Higher Education in the UK

Since the Conservatives returned to power in 2010, the ‘free market’ has also been increasingly introduced into Higher Education (HE) in the UK. A hike in tuition fees to £9000 per year as the dominant way of financing the sector plus the removal of the CAP, allowing universities to recruit as many students as they want, has fundamentally transformed HE. In this blog post, I will argue that it has also prepared the grounds for the current crisis with many British universities facing large shortfalls in income and potentially bankruptcy (The Guardian, 6 July 2020).