Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

Former BP boss Lord Browne, who has presented his proposals to allow a proper free-market into higher education, has been in the news headlines over university fees once before. The peer, whose cost-cutting regime at BP still provokes comment, was compelled to resign from the oil giant after a High Court judge found he had lied about how he met a former boyfriend, a Canadian half his age, through an escort agency, for fear of embarrassment and shame.

The disgrace meant Lord Browne had to forfeit £15.5 million in pay and bonuses after Mr Justice Eady criticised the veracity and honesty of the executive’s testimony. The peer went to extraordinary legal lengths to keep the relationship secret and cast aspersions on his former boyfriend after the four-year relationship ended. The younger man made contact when the Mail on Sunday showed interest in running a story about how the peer had arranged for his lover to enrol at the University of Westminster so he could stay in this country on a student visa. After the relationship ended, he sought £300,000 to complete his studies. Compared to this, the estimated £90,000 it has been predicted it will cost to earn a degree at a London college under Lord Browne’s proposals almost seems like good value.

Maggie Thatcher must be gutted. Too ill to attend her big 85th birthday bash and the only thing worth watching on the telly is the story of miners celebrating.

Tory peer Lord Wilson, who organised the letter signed by 35 leading retailers and business people calling on George Osborne to hold his nerve and go ahead with his scorched earth plan, says there was nothing political about his little wheeze. He’s right, it was just hard-wired. Why else could the bosses of companies ranging from M&S to Asda not see that the cuts and the coming VAT rise are going to choke off consumer demand, jettison jobs and increase, not decrease the deficit? Could it be that keeping the Tories in power is worth the price, a price that they won’t be paying?