Half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money will be spent on rejoining the EU’s Erasmus+ student exchange programme. With libraries closing, criminals being let out of jail early and funding for maths and classics in schools slashed, it is the clearest indication yet of where this government’s priorities lie.

Rejoining Erasmus+ simply means that working people will now be funding these young people’s excursions

The decision to re-enter the Erasmus+ is widely touted as ‘permitting’ UK students to access study opportunities on the continent. The reality is that many university courses have always offered students the opportunity to spend some time studying abroad, whether in the EU or elsewhere. Rejoining Erasmus+ simply means that working people will now be funding these young people’s excursions – and that European students will be able to attend British universities with their fees subsidised by the UK taxpayer.

When one scrutinises the fine print of the new agreement, it becomes apparent that the government has deployed the same negotiating acumen that was seen in its ground-breaking Chagos Islands deal – under which the UK will be handing its sovereign territory to Mauritius and paying it £3.4 billion for the privilege.

The £570 million cost for a year’s participation is over 50 per cent more, in real terms, than the £300 million-a-year or so we contributed before leaving the EU. Furthermore, the lion’s share of that will be spent not upon British, but upon EU students. Historically, twice as many European students came to the UK as went in the other direction – with the result that in 2020, the last year in which the UK participated, the UK received only £126 million of benefits from Erasmus+. If we assume similar levels of participation in the new scheme, it is likely that only around £170 million of our participation fee will accrue to Britain, with the remaining £400 million being used to subsidise students from the EU.

£570 million is not chicken feed. Spending this amount on our justice system would go a long way to reducing the trial backlog, open up more of our shuttered courtrooms (artificially constrained by the number of ‘court sitting days’) and perhaps enable the Justice Secretary David Lammy to shelve his illiberal plans for trial by jury. As Policy Exchange set out in Beyond our Means, with £114 billion being spent annually on servicing the nation’s debt interest, the government should be looking to curb profligate spending, not creating new sources of largesse.

Over the last few years, the government has announced tax rises of £66 billion a year. Despite their protestations to the contrary, the burden of this does fall upon ‘working people’ and many – including changes to Employer’s National Insurance and freezing of income tax thresholds – will have the greatest proportional impact on low and modest earners.

Some of their spending decisions have been understandable. While I would not personally have lifted the two-child benefit cap, doing so was a long-term priority of Labour backbenchers – and one can see why those with more heart than head would support it. It is, at least, directed at the poor. But why would any self-respecting left-wing government raise taxes on working people to fund foreign jaunts for the already privileged?

The clue, again, comes in the small print. Not all of Erasmus+ funding goes on student exchange. Some of it goes on so-called ‘Jean-Monnet actions’, which ‘supports people to learn more about the European Union (EU) and its policies, especially in schools and universities.’

All now becomes clear. The Erasmus+ programme’s four priorities include ‘environment and fight against climate change’, ‘inclusion and diversity’ and ‘participation in democratic life’ – which they define as including ‘understanding of shared EU values’ and programmes that ‘develop a stronger sense of belonging to the European Community’. In other words, extolling the benefits of the EU, funded by the taxpayer, and designed to build the constituency for reversing Brexit.

It could be argued that Erasmus doesn’t really matter. It is not a sovereignty issue – and £570 million a year pales in comparison to cost of the state pension triple-lock, or the projected £100 billion bill for health and disability benefits. But the decision to rejoin such a scheme reveals the true values of our governing classes – and epitomises how the interests of working people, and of the nation, are repeatedly sacrificed upon the altar of elite virtue-signalling.