My thanks to sometime beard wearer and biographer of Karl Marx Francis Wheen for dredging up a letter that Gavin Williamson wrote to the Guardian on 19th June 1997.
He wrote as Vice Chair of the now defunct (but very right-wing) Federation of Conservative Students in support of ‘free education’ and against Labour plans to introduce a modest tuition fee of £1K. Unusually, indeed possibly uniquely, he was right.
Unfortunately posterity has not treated Gav’s letter well, given the level of fees the Tories later introduced. Still every letter writer may well fall down if judged by history.
Overall though its difficult to avoid the point that Mr Williamson might have done better if he had just stuck to the letter writing, as I mostly have…
[…] Gavin Williamson: Guardian letter writer. Where did it all go wrong? […]
Thanks for this John. I’d love to read Gav’s response to himself now.