DESPITE the revision in recent years of its socialist doctrines, it still ill-behoves Labour to be party which axed the principle of free higher education - if only because it will hurt the middle class whose votes it courted in order to get elected.

True, it is seeking to dull the pain by deciding that only students from families who earn £34,000 a year or more will have to pay the new £1,000 annual tuition fees in full.

But even with the sliding scale for fee-payment, which exempts only those whose parents' income is below £16,000, there will be a lot of middle-class families who will feel the pain and be angry.

For already, due to the continued erosion of the student grant over two decades, many of them are hard-pressed financially while supporting their children at university or college.

And though the £3billion gap in university funding may require Labour to forsake principle for necessity, the introduction of tuition fees will be widely regarded as a retrograde step.

That is not only because a cherished right has been scrapped, but also because this step will be seen as the thin end of a wedge - by which the means-testing may be adjusted in future or the fees themselves may go up.

Setting a price on knowledge may cost the government's popularity dear.

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