Over the weekend, the Conservatives appeared to suffer a crisis of confidence. As calls for Theresa May to scrap the public sector pay cap grew, many Tories appeared to give up on the long term economic plan altogether. Damian Green called for a 'public debate' on tuition fees and Justine Greening 'demanded' £1bn to protect school funding. Add to all this the small fact that Philip Hammond still needs to account for the £1bn DUP deal and NICs U-turn in the Autumn Budget and the Tories' economic record looks at risk.

As the government embraced its inner Corbynista, the man himself was quick to make some political capital out of the situation. Jeremy Corbyn used a rally to put pressure on the government over tuition fees. He said that it's time to 'scrap tuition fees' as 'fewer working class young people are applying to university'.

https://twitter.com/UnitePolitics/status/881175813751799810

This is, at best, a dubious claim. While the loan repayment system could no doubt be improved, to claim that tuition fees result in fewer applications from working class young people is wrong. In 2015, UCAS reported a record number of students applying to university, with young people from the UK's most disadvantaged areas more likely than ever to apply to higher education. This year, Mary Curnock Cook, the UCAS Chief Executive, said that application rates for disadvantaged groups continue to rise. What's more the IFS has said that scrapping tuition fees, which would cost a cool £8bn, benefits the middle classes the most. In short, it would be a regressive move.

However, the bigger problem here is not Corbyn's 'alternative facts', but the fact that senior members of the Cabinet are now shying away from making this argument.