INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS WERE SUPPOSED TO be the gold standard of the modern British economic model. Even if the hard sinews of British power had withered, we could still boast a leaner, more agile sort of greatness. Call it soft power, call it the knowledge economy, the creative industries or the service sector — in some intangible, postmodern fashion, we were winners.
There were many facets to this blissful Blairite dream, from the idea that buying stuff, but not selling it, could make Britain money, to the notion that pit villages could be revitalised if they were better connected to the internet. But perhaps the most shining element of all was the British university. Here was a field of endeavour we could portray as “world-beating” with at least some honesty — and we had the Times Higher Education league tables to prove it.
In 1999 Blair called for 50 per cent of Britain’s young people to attend university. This was the great West Wing idea that old, dirty, heavy industry would have to be shipped overseas, whilst ex-industrial workers would simply learn to code — or whatever the post-modern economy required. Borders would be open, both to immigrants flowing in and jobs pouring out.
Somehow a nation powered by spreadsheet jobs, Mandarin-speakers and shiftless creatives was going to form the nucleus of massive economic growth. History has not been
