Glad tidings

Whisper it, but Erasmus is the EU writ small

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Five years ago Boris Johnson ended Britain’s participation in the Europe-wide Erasmus programme, which has organised exchanges for students across the continent since 1987, and apprenticeships since 2014. Johnson said it had been a “tough decision” but that the scheme did not offer the UK value for money.

He was wrong on both counts. It was not a tough decision so much as a bad one, in bad faith, ignoring an assurance he had given 11 months earlier that Britain would stay in the scheme — which did offer value for money including a net benefit to the UK, according to one study, of £243m annually.

Johnson’s decision has now been reversed by the unflashy paymaster general Nick Thomas-Symonds, who announced last week that Britain would rejoin Erasmus and that more than 100,000 young people a year would be able to benefit, starting in 2027. The reversal is an object lesson in the damage that can be done by ideological decision-making — and the good that can come of taking politics seriously.