Polyphony's Politics and Economics Podcast with Gauri, Head Girl

Gauri, the head girl at Nottingham High School, shares her interests and experiences in an interview. She discusses her love for economics and politics, the financial challenges faced by university students, and the lack of interest in politics among young people. She believes that studying economics and politics can provide a better understanding of current affairs and encourages staying informed. Gauri also mentions the potential rise in political apathy and the issues facing the current government. As for the upcoming general election in the US, she believes that Donald Trump may not be reelected due to backlash and polarization in American politics. So today we're joined by Gauri, our head girl here at Nottingham High School. So, Gauri, would you like to just give a brief introduction about yourself and maybe a fun fact? Absolutely. So, hello. My name is Gauri. I'm currently in year 13 and I'm studying Maths, further Maths, Spanish and Economics. I remember that around the start of year 12, I was still unsure about whether I wanted to do Economics because I had never really had previous exposure to the subject in lower years. But almost two years on, I can confidently say that I've grown to love the subject and now wish to pursue it alongside Politics as part of my degree at the University. Last year, I was an editor of Polyphony, a role that my wonderful podcast host currently holds, and I really enjoyed exploring my interests in Economics and Politics by writing articles, editing them and even learning a bit about website development. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing where the new team takes Polyphony over the next year, and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to speak on the podcast today. You did ask me a quick fun fact. One fun fact is I really like learning languages, so I do Spanish A-level but also learn a bit of Mandarin out of school. That's really nice. Thank you, Gauri. So we're going to go on to the Economics side. So with the current economic trends and COVID and all of that, what challenges do you foresee for students entering university in the next couple of years? So absolutely, university students face a range of challenges, worsening mental health, social and financial challenges, and as you said, the impact of wider events such as COVID-19 and Brexit. But keeping the conversation sort of economics related, I think the main challenge is increasing financial pressure. Many UK citizens are facing it right now with the cost of living crisis, and that applies for uni students too. For example, the interest repayments on student loans are currently at a maximum of 7.8% for Plan 5 student loans, which I believe you'll be on if you're starting university after 2023. This is higher than the base rate, which is currently at 5.25%, and can be a debt toll on students who especially have to repay that money straight after leaving university when they earn over £25,000. Then looking at accommodation costs, the burden of which will obviously vary depending on your own personal circumstances and where you go to university, but they're constantly increasing. A good example is in London, where I'm actually looking to go to university, and the cost of living there is greater than other areas of the UK. Many students, particularly international ones who already pay a hefty tuition fees, will have to find peers with which they can share rented accommodation after their first year. And if we look beyond university, buying a house for the first time is harder than ever for current graduates, and data from March 2024 revealed that over a third of young people said that they don't think they will be able to. So yeah, some massive challenges there. Good, Gary. As a young person who takes a personal interest in politics, why do you think that today, in terms of readership of newspapers and things like that, people tend to take less interest in it? Well, I completely agree that youth disengagement is a massive issue in politics. As you said about reading newspapers, not many people do that a lot, especially with the rise of social media and the fact that information is often at your fingertips, and you don't delve as much, perhaps, into depth as before. In fact, in the UK, only 50% to 40% of young people aged 18 to 24 turned out to vote in the 2019 election, which was the lowest of any age group. So that's one of the worrying stats there. And I think one reason behind that is that because young people perhaps don't feel involved in the system, especially because of the age and value gap between themselves and more senior politicians. This might make them a demographic that perhaps policy is less centred around, thus failing to incentivise them to engage with politics where they aren't concerned. Another issue, as you said about lack of readership in newspapers, is precisely that, the information gap. We often get little or no information about candidates and their policies in local or even general elections. I only recently found out that my local mayor elections are actually today, which is quite surprising. So that's a massive issue there. And also in the media, on the other hand, we have ready access to big news headlines about scandals, broken promises and political self-interest, and that probably adds to young people's lack of trust in politics, let's say. Do you think, obviously, as you take an interest in these subjects, do you think politics and economics are essential subjects for students to learn? And do you think that taking an interest in this has shaped your view of the world in comparison to those maybe in your peer group or people you're friends with? That's a good question. And whilst I wouldn't say it's essential to study politics or economics A-level in order to have an understanding of current affairs, I think it's worth taking those subjects if you want to understand your political institutions and systems a little bit better. I would say if you're not taking these subjects, it's worth keeping yourself informed about current affairs on a daily basis and to get an understanding of changes that might affect you, especially as you leave school and even university. At the student level, being informed about policy from a range of different sources across the political spectrum means that you can get a better idea of what values are important to you as you go on to vote in the future. So saying that, keeping well-informed as a young person is also an important way of critically thinking about the decisions that your leaders make rather than getting funneled into one political ideology and agreeing with the party's stance just for the sake of partisanship. So, yeah, I would say whilst it's not necessary to study them, and I particularly want a better idea of how politics works and economics works and totally, I would say personally studying economics has helped me grasp economic and political jargon when I read it in the news, and that's definitely helped me understand it better than before, but in terms of my peer group, I can't say for them, I'm sure they have their ways of digesting the news. So would you say that there's going to be a rise in political amnesty in the future just because people have almost given up? We can see these decreasing voter turnouts. What are your thoughts on that? I think it's a good question. I think it depends on perhaps education and how much civic responsibility is emphasised in education. We're lucky that we get the chance to study politics and economics, and we often get speakers coming in to talk about elections, voting. As a school, we're quite lucky to have those resources, but if young people aren't taught about how important the right to vote is or keeping, as I said, informed about politics and economics issues, then I do see that happening, a sort of distancing from political issues, especially with, as I said, the rise of social media and other distractions. Another thing I would say is that given the problems that young people face, we already talked about financial pressures at university, cost of living crisis, a lot of these things are having immediate burdens on students' lives, and so maybe they're not so engaged as engaged with politics as they could be given these immediate pressures, and if they get worse in the future, then what you say might well happen. So what do you think the problems are facing the current government with a general election impending? What do you think is the biggest issue or problem right now in the UK? So again, there are some many big issues facing the UK, and I think the government, what right now, British United Government will face the issue of the fact that they've not necessarily met all of their five pledges that he made early in 2023 to perhaps their full capacity. You could argue that they have met the inflation target, so they have managed to halve inflation, I think it was 3.2% in March 2024, compared to that high of almost 11% last year. But again, whether that really has helped the cost of living burden is questionable, living standards are still falling, so it's really, I think what they're going to see, what's going to affect them in the general election is whether people really feel that they've met those pledges, and whether people feel that Labour can meet those goals better in the future. That's brilliant, but do you think we'll see, obviously there's a general election in America soon as well, so do you think we will see Donald Trump for another term in the White House? It's a good question. I'll speak with my sort of limited knowledge on American politics. I think it's not likely, because given how much backlash he's facing with the Hushmoney trials, that's an ongoing thing, obviously if he gets stabbed, if he's found guilty in that, I'm not sure if he is allowed to run for president for another term, if that doesn't go in his favour. Again, it depends on what the American electorate feel in that sense about who's done a better job at controlling these key policy issues, inflation, migration. One thing I do find interesting is that, and this is a source of concern for me in US politics, is increasing polarisation, which is a massive issue because it stops cooperation between different ends of political spectrums and different political parties. A good example is, we all remember that when Trump came to power, he said he'd build that wall to stop immigration and all of that, control immigration. Now, fair enough, if that's why the electorate had elected him in, he should have kind of tried to make good on that promise, but what's interesting is that recently the Democrats have passed a better migration bill than Trump had ever proposed, but the reason why it didn't go through fully is because Republicans and Democrats made it a political party issue, an ideology issue, and they rejected it on the basis that the Democrats had come up with that, which is, again, lamentable. It's about doing what's best for the country and following through on that, so I think that's another lamentable part of politics there. One other aspect we'd hope to ask you about was regarding university applications, particularly for politics and economics, so is there any advice you have for students applying for politics, economics at the university this year or in the future? Yeah, sure, so one piece of advice is keep up to date with current affairs, current developments in politics and economics. It's always good to add that on a personal statement to just show that you've read the main newspapers. Also, try not to use books or articles or sources from just one side of the political spectrum. I would use a few from across, especially even in relation to economics, because those books and that news can be quite politically charged sometimes, so I would look at both sides. A good example is when I was writing my personal statement, I did a program called the Future Thought Leaders Program with the Institute of Economic Affairs, and they're quite a free market think tank, so I tried to evaluate that and reflect on my experiences there and what I'd heard there by using a bit from left-wing government intervention sort of things in the economy and evaluating them against each other, so I would definitely consider, A, reading a bunch of sources, but also just pick a few to mention in your personal statement. I wouldn't go overboard with trying to read every economic theory or political book out there. Just focus on an area of interest and develop that, I would say, is a really important thing. Right, now going back to UK politics, can we just talk about, so we talked about the general election, but how would you say the downfall of trustonomics and the Johnson government contributes to the general election and the outcome? Definitely. I mean, it's not a real fair case, has it, for this next election? Well, as you said, it's worth mentioning 2022, rather. It's a rapid succession of prime ministers, quite frankly, a ministerial merry-go-round, and I think that really limited the ability of the civil service in that period to make effective decisions for that year, and it distracted them from their priorities of the objective switch from one to another in terms of economics. Obviously, the example there being the trust-quartering budget that I think blew a $90 billion pound hole in the economy. So obviously, this really put Rishi Sunak in a hard position, taking over as prime minister, and so that's one downside from earlier on there. I think another downside or challenge for them has been the Rwanda scheme. Even if the government insists that the scheme is about fairness in the processing of asylum claims, which also seems to be a really inefficient process in this country, it has been a hugely costly one and counterproductive, not to mention unlawful, based on the 2023 November Supreme Court ruling, obviously voting in favour of that scheme. Personally, I see it more as a source of protecting government pride rather than a fair way to control migration, and as a student who studies Spanish, I find it incredibly strange that there's almost no migration panic in Spain, which is a country with about two-thirds of the population of the UK and many more migrants coming to their shores each year. So I wonder how they handle it in less and more cost-effective ways. I was wondering, obviously, as we're based in Nottingham High School and all students here, I was wondering what you think the effect of Labour's proposed policy of VAT on private schools will be. Yeah, definitely. That will be a toll on everyone coming in who pays private school fees, and I guess, yes, it doesn't help with equity because a lot of people who come here, yes, we're privileged and we're quite lucky to be in a position where we can afford these fees, but also a lot of people can just about manage that and aren't perhaps so financially well off as the rest of us and might need to use schemes like bursaries. So it is an unfortunate toll, but I guess it depends on what they're using VAT for. If they use it as promised to improve the quality of education nationally, then we might have to distance ourselves from looking at it individually and think about it for more macroeconomic impact. But yes, that will depend on what that's used for, I'd say. Would you say that the VAT and school fees would lead to a flooding of the public-funded education system? Because obviously it could lead to people not being able to afford school fees at private institutions such as here and may be forced to move to public state schools. Would you focus on that? Yeah, yeah. That's definitely an issue. And as I said, it kind of depends on how substantially the fees that they raise and the revenue that they raise helps to better the quality of state school education so that those people that have to transfer don't see a massive difference in education, hopefully, in education levels. Again, how realistic that is, only time can tell, I think, again, depending on how they use it. But I do see that point that public schools will definitely have more pressure because of that transfer. That's definitely a big downside to policy. Now, we were really interested to see what you thought was the most prominent issue facing the UK today. So if you were PM for the day, what would be the first thing you'd change? Well, firstly, I have to say I would be completely overwhelmed and evidently underqualified for that role. I think it's really, given the current state of economics and politics, it's really an unenviable position to be in. Particularly being in the job for a day wouldn't help me because I often talk and I think a lot in economics about how policy should be for the long run and not just for the short run. They should combine those. So yes, a day wouldn't help. On a macroeconomic level, based on what I've learned in economics, I'd probably focus on implementing supply-side policies, such as increasing capital spending on infrastructure, cutting corporation tax. So they did increase that to 25% from 20% in 2023, which I think isn't the best for UK competitiveness, given, obviously, our exit from the EU as well and our exit from a lot of trade advantages that gave us. Given the uncertainty amongst businesses right now, I think maybe increasing that corporation tax wasn't the best move. Also, investing in training schemes for an increasingly less productive UK workforce. Productivity is a massive issue in the UK and it's been falling compared to our G7 counterparts over the last few decades. So yes, mainly my whole emphasis would be supply-side, capital spending, productivity, all of those. But on that note, though, I can say for certain that whoever wins the next general election will face tough choices when it comes to public spending, especially in the wake of recession. So I say that all year. I say all of these supply-side policies are in a quite privileged position of not actually being prime minister. So really, whoever takes over will find themselves in a position of probably having to raise taxes in order to get the revenue that they so desperately need to give public services that breathing room that they don't have right now. And obviously, the current debt stands at almost 100% of GDP. So if the government has to borrow to fill that gap, that's an even greater burden on them in that regard. Right. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And we've really enjoyed hearing your opinions and thoughts on the political and economic world. Thank you. Best of luck for your upcoming A-levels. Take them by the scruff of the neck. I'll try to. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.