Rishi Sunak has a new pledge as well as a new slogan, ‘Long-term decisions for a brighter future’. It might not be catchy and it might not be bearing itself out at the moment, but for me and millions of young people across the country, it feels like a kick in the teeth. Alongside other failures on university housing, strike negotiations, and environmental pledges, the choice to leave the Erasmus scheme and the failure of its placement have been disastrous. The last thirteen years of Conservative government really could have done with some of that ‘long-term’ decision-making.
Let’s kick things off with Brexit: a flawed plan in the eyes of many, especially the young, but not necessarily one that had to have the catastrophic impact on students and young people that it has. Perhaps most problematic has been the end of the freedom of movement and the Erasmus+ scheme, enjoyed by Britains since 1983 and expanded even further in 2014.The Turing Scheme, the British replacement that the government hailed as an improvement thanks to the global opportunities that it offers, has proved complex, insufficient, and chaotic for universities and students alike.
First, it is worth outlining the key differences between the Turing and Erasmus+ schemes. As of 2014, the EU scheme encapsulated all education, training, youth, and sport programmes covering both tuition fees and some living costs on a reciprocal basis. The result has been thousands of university courses across the country that offer ‘years abroad’, generally in the third year of a four-year course, in which the student is expected to spend a set amount of time abroad either working or studying: I am enrolled in one of these courses myself.
Despite the promise of ‘global opportunities’, something that Erasmus admittedly didn’t offer, the Turing scheme has been a sorry excuse for a replacement. Most obviously, the fact that it doesn’t cover tuition fees has completely changed the landscape. Host universities are expected to simply waive these costs but the vast majority don’t and individual universities are left to establish their own reciprocal arrangements with partner institutions. Evidently, this puts smaller and less well-established institutions at a huge disadvantage and even the largest are only able to offer a fraction of the opportunities they did in the past. The paperwork and processes of setting up these agreements simply takes too much time. Even the University of Oxford, perhaps the most well-established of all higher education institutions in the country, only offered eleven funded places for Spanish students in the academic year 2023/24.
The government points to the Turing Scheme’s support of disadvantaged students as one of its primary advantages and indeed, it offers top-ups to the stipend that others receive on a needs and destination-assessed basis. Depending on whether your country is categorised as high or medium cost, students from disadvantaged backgrounds can receive as much as £490 a month if their stay lasts more than eight weeks. In reality though, that funding is allocated to fewer institutions on a much less reliable basis.
The Erasmus+ scheme reviews its funding every six or seven years, meaning that universities are able to plan ahead significantly and advertise accurately to prospective applicants. In stark contrast, the Turing Scheme reviews its funding each and every year with its first two years showing huge variation (the University of Warwick saw funding fall by 30% in 2023). Even worse, universities discover the total funding that they will receive in July at the earliest and often not until August, leaving students in the lurch and unsure as to whether they will even be able to complete their travels and studies.
Furthermore, students wanting to spend any more than 90 days inside the EU now have to apply for VISAs. Not only is this a costly process that requires paperwork and often certain proof of income and/or funding (clearly disadvantaging students from lower economic backgrounds) but it also forces long-term planning, usually starting six months in advance. Despite this, students beginning their studies in September won’t know how their university has chosen to allocate its funding until August at the very earliest. Again, well-established institutions such as Oxford University are able to offer guarantees and cover the costs if their funding varies: others are left with reduced funds or nothing at all. Despite the fact that now the entire world is ‘open’ to students as opposed to the ‘confines’ of Europe, the Turing Scheme still only paid out £106 million in 22/23. That is £22 million pounds less than during our last year as members of the Erasmus scheme in 2020.
Combined with the ending of free healthcare and the difficulty in obtaining any kind of work visa, students and young people are simply discouraged from undertaking long-term study periods or work placements. Instead, there has been a substantial rise in those finding short-term solutions, sometimes only lasting two weeks. The depressing thing, of course, is that it didn’t have to be like this. During negotiations, the European Union invited the UK to become an associated third-party member of the Erasmus+ programme alongside Turkey, Iceland, and others. Instead, much like until recently with the Horizon science programme, the UK declined the invitation. Unlike Horizon, the UK will now have to wait until 2027 to get another opportunity.
The impact of a hard Brexit, of course, goes far beyond university students and the shortcomings of the Turing Programme. Those travelling and looking for work before, after, or instead of university study are hugely limited. Personally, leaving school in the last year of the transition period, I received several internship and job offers from across Spain, even during the COVID-tainted summer of 2020. Now, with vastly more experience in an array of industries and in the third year of a degree at the University of Oxford, I have not succeeded in securing any of the 56 that I have applied for to date.
As much as some bemoaned the influx of young people from across the continent and the diversity that they provided across several industries, especially hospitality, before Brexit, the same is now true in reverse. It is simply not possible to obtain a right to work in the vast majority of EU countries without a job offer and the vast majority of companies won’t even process an internship or job application without the right to work. Try squaring that circle.
All that said, I am writing this in a café in Sant Pol, just outside of Barcelona. I have indeed made it here to study on a master’s course in hospitality management – albeit entirely self-funded. I’ve managed to make this small part of this year work but my biggest concern is not just for the rest of my twelve months and my life, but for those who aren’t able to pay their own way onto such courses. Slowly but surely, the UK government’s ‘Long-term decision making” is putting language learning and the most valuable of cultural experiences behind a paywall. That future isn’t feeling so bright…
Image Credit: Andrew Parsons/ Number 10 Downing Street CC BY 2.0 Deed via Flickr
Waking up to Russell Brand’s ‘razzle-dazzle’ misogyny
“Hello there, you awakening wonders.”
This messianic flair is typical of the way in which comedian-turned-conspiracy theorist Russell Brand addresses his millions of online followers. The short statement posted on his (now demonetised) YouTube channel on 16th September, in which he denied five allegations of sexual assault and rape, was no different. While still striking an intimate tone, his words had clearly been well thought through – unsurprising, given the severity of these accusations. Yet the very language which Brand has deployed in his defence also serves to highlight one of the most unpleasant aspects of this case. Many of us may well be awake now – but not in the way he intended.
The truth of the allegations reported by The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches has not yet been determined; Brand and his supporters maintain that this is an attempt by the mainstream media to silence him. But irrespective of these new claims, Russell Brand’s misogyny is and has always been a well-documented fact. Some of the most shocking scenes in the Channel 4 Dispatches investigation are nothing new – archive footage of endless stand-up routines, talk show appearances, and television broadcasts, all presenting variations on the theme of objectifying women. The material is highly crass – suggesting that a female interviewee remove her underwear and then miming masturbation, praising “them blowjobs where mascara runs a bit” and making exaggerated gagging noises (all the while claiming “It was her idea!”). Yet it’s all delivered with a cheeky smile and a knowing wink, to the tune of laughter and whoops from his audience. It’s all part of his act, right?
Brand certainly appeared to be disarmingly candid about his exploits. “I was always transparent about [what he refers to as his “promiscuous, consensual conduct”] then, almost too transparent, and I’m being transparent about it now,” he declared in the statement. On the surface his performances certainly had a frank, confessional air; yet while his remarks seemed uncensored and off-the-cuff, their earthiness was offset by eloquence. Lewd jokes were made more palatable by a veneer of verbiage, producing such whimsically stark juxtapositions of register as “the sexual apotheosis that is bumming”. Likewise, Brand’s flamboyant style and animated, at times even earnest, delivery served to further underplay his degradation of women. It’s just a bit of fun! Lighten up!
Although he has since abandoned his salacious material and reinvented himself as a wellness guru standing up to the establishment, these distraction tactics are still present in Brand’s recent statement. The language used is oddly ornate in places – the word “litany” is repeated numerous times, and his “transparency” has not just been “twisted” or “distorted” by the media, but rather “metastasized into something criminal”. The use of this word is unusual outside of a medical context, since it describes the multiplication of cancerous cells. It seems clear that it has been chosen for deliberate rhetorical effect, in order to underscore his point about a hidden “agenda” behind this report, and also perhaps to provide an air of respectability and intellectualism. It’s easy to forget that this is the same man once known for assertions of a wholly different sort. “I like to have it off, right? Yeah, why not?”
There is also an irony to Brand’s dismissal of “this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks”. While presumably intended to paint the accusations as absurd confections of the mainstream media, the word “baroque” is also a fitting descriptor of his own persona and discourse. The images and associations it conjures up are of extravagant ornamentation, exaggeration, bombast, heightened emotions. There’s also a hint of decadence – the style was a staple of the counter-Reformation – and a whiff of artificiality too: churrigueresque excess bordering on vulgarity, wood painted to imitate gold and marble. Far from transparency, the aesthetic speaks of concealment and embellishment. And long before his transformation into a modern-day prophet Brand was a fan of religious iconography, once even performing a stand-up routine in front of a huge image of Christ. He closed this particular live show by rapturously declaring “I worship divine sexual female energy!” Outwardly more positive than rape jokes, but still ultimately reducing women’s worth to sex. And entirely undermined by the follow up remark about how this ode to womankind has been carefully calculated – “there’s no way I ain’t getting laid after the show tonight!”
The most disturbing thing about this whole affair is that Russell Brand was so successful for so long. Even in the context of the lad culture of the early 2000s he was considered risqué, and was eventually fired from his BBC Radio 2 show for taking things too far. In a prank call to actor Andrew Sachs, Brand boasted of having slept with the actor’s granddaughter Georgina Baillie. But even then, the focus of the scandal was on the embarrassment that this caused to Sachs, and not the impact on Baillie of having had details of her sex life divulged on national radio. Equally, what about all the other nameless, faceless women who comprised the material for Brand’s anecdotes of debauchery? Did anyone consider them? Or was it easier to laugh along?
It seems it was not just members of the public who were dazzled by Brand’s showmanship and devil-may-care attitude. “His language is magnetic and he’s charismatic […] there’s something about him” – journalist Emily Maitlis stated on her podcast The News Agents, reflecting on how the comedian had won her over during an interview. She was far from the only one. Too many powerful people, the media establishment that Brand now makes a living from criticising, simply sat back and let him spew degrading remarks under the guise of banter or “ironic” comedy. And too many people kept buying tickets to his shows, kept tuning in to his broadcasts, bought his books, went to see his films. Only now that the possibility has emerged that all those words could have led to action are we examining and questioning the content of Brand’s routines.
Still, surely it’s reassuring that now, at least, his past comments are widely seen as sleazy and extremely sexist. No one would get away with that material today, let alone build a media career and become a Hollywood star on the back of it. But we shouldn’t rush to congratulate ourselves and speak of a “different time”. The height of Brand’s fame on British television was less than 20 years ago, and while blatant misogyny is no longer socially acceptable it continues to rear its head. Lawrence Fox’s comments about political journalist Ava Evans on a recent GB News broadcast are a prime example. “Who’d want to shag that?” Once again, women’s only importance lies in their sexual attractiveness and fulfilment of male fantasies.
Fox has subsequently been suspended from presenting duties and the channel has issued an apology. But if there’s one thing we should learn from the Russell Brand case, regardless of its eventual outcome, it’s that it is never just about one individual. Brand may be the subject of these allegations, but there are many more people who enabled his appalling attitude to thrive. The legacy of this exposé should not be the demonisation of one man, but the consideration of the social systems that both shaped him and gave him power and influence. We should all consider the ideas and attitudes which we’ve received and supported; whether we’ve since come to regret them or still uphold them, whether we’ve expressed them actively or passively. This needs to be a wake-up call for everyone.
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