I don’t envy my friend Jacqui Smith having to look after the university sector. In some ways it ought to be one of the most enjoyable jobs I government. But then you read the lead story on page 2 of today’s Sunday Times and you realise what she’s up against. She’s up against twats like the vice chancellor od the University of Portsmouth, Professor Graham Galbraith, who seems to believe that his university should be protected from the success of our top universities, who are, well, more successful than his institution. He thinks foreign students, and top grade students should, in some cases, not be allowed to go to a Russell Group university, and instead be allocated to him. I ask you. How about this for a thought, Professor. Make your university as good as Durham. York and the rest, and perhaps you’ll be able to attract students on your own merits. It’s not as if his university isn’t on the up. In the rankings Portsmouth has gone up from 65 to 55 over the last twelve months, so clearly things are improving.

Back in 1979 I remember considering applying to what was then Portsmouth Polytechnic to do a German degree. In those days it was in what was the equivalent of the Russell Group of polytechnics. It did exactly the kind of course I wanted to do, but in the end I decided to go to UEA, but not because UEA was a university. If I had made the decision due to snobbery, I’d have gone to York, which also offered me a place. I continue to believe that it was a major mistake for the Major government to transform all the polys into universities. They were called polys for a reason, and that was because the courses were by and large much more vocational. They were distinctive, yet nowadays they’re all called the same thing and the battle for students is therefore much more competitive. All universities have a reputation and you can only build a reputation over time, yet Professor Galbraith appears to think his institution should be given a leg up through penalising the success of the universities higher up the league table. It’s the ‘All Must Have Prizes’ ideology, which I thought we had despatched to oblivion. Not in Portsmouth, it seems.