Comrade Hodge?

Higher education minister Margaret Hodge injected a little old Labour into the party's annual conference in Brighton this week. Mrs Hodge told a Universities UK fringe meeting that the drive to widen participation in higher education by poorer people was a clear class issue. The class perspective was central to her ideas about university participation, she said. The proletariat no doubt awaits Comrade Hodge's announcement of the restoration of maintenance grants.