The New Statesman.

Hello and welcome to Daily Politics from The New Statesman.

This is an episode we like to call You Ask Us.

I'm Anusha Kellyan and I'm here with Rachel Cunliff to answer your questions.

Thank you so much for sending all your questions in.

Hello, Rachel.

In the mailbag today, we've got questions on the factions within Labour, whether there's

such a thing as Farageism and what's going on with local councils.

But the first one, in fact, we've had two questions on this topic.

Rachel, you and Ollie recorded an episode last week about student loans, which is a great

episode, by the way.

It filled me with rage, which is usually a sign that you're doing well.

Which everyone should listen to if they haven't already. But it prompted a few questions from our

listeners. So first, we've had a question from Leila, who says she's fairly new to the UK and

haven't realised quite how bad the situation with student loans is. She asks, why would any government

do something like this? Is it wrong to

assume that this was effectively a massive handout to Conservative Party friends in the city, effectively

state-back loans, many multiples higher than the Bank of England rate? I'm not sure what would be

worse, the engineering of a blatant decades-long transfer from productive workers to rent-seekers,

or that such a

horrendous mess wasn't even intended and that there isn't any coherent explanation for such a

cruel, debilitating screw-up.

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