‘We need to hear more from Blair” is not a phrase that comes easily to a Conservative minister, nor, frankly, to the majority of the public anymore.
But when it comes to education and filling skills gaps, Euan Blair — Tony Blair’s son — is, unlike his father, right on the money.
He has said that the UK’s “preoccupation” with “one-size fits all” university education risked causing a “skills crisis”. And he is absolutely right. New Labour’s obsession with targets and quotas pushed people into university courses that didn’t get them into graduate jobs. As Philip Augar’s review of post-18 education found, 34 per cent of graduates in England and Northern Ireland are not in graduate jobs, more than all the other countries in Europe
