The British constitution is about to do the thing it does best and explain least. A prime minister who won a landslide twenty-three months ago is preparing to leave office, and not one voter will be asked to ratify his replacement. Labour’s 2024 majority was never Keir Starmer’s personal property. It belongs to the party, and the party can hand it to whomever it likes. This is not a loophole. It is the system working as designed, and it is the reason the Conservatives are spectators to a drama that decides who governs them.

The numbers are not in dispute. Foreign nationals studying in the UK borrowed more than £4 billion in taxpayer-funded student loans in 2024–25 — up from £3.2 billion in 2021–22. Suella Braverman and Reform UK are now making it a central political issue, framing it as universities exploiting an immigration-adjacent subsidy at the British public’s expense. Too many universities are selling immigration, not education. Last year, about 250,000 foreign students took up taxpayer-funded student loans to pay for their courses in the UK, worth £4bn.