Tony Blair is wrong – again – on education, education, education

The suggestion, in a report published by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) this morning, that the percentage of young people who should go to university should rise to 70 per cent – 70 per cent! – by 2040 felt like an intervention from a bygone era.

It was, after all, Sir Tony’s new Labour government that was behind the still controversial target of 50 per cent achieving degree-level education.

As ever, in his latest missive the former prime minister is sort of right and sort of wrong. At its simplest, the TBI is right when it says that the country should aspire to have a better-educated workforce – and that this should be central to the future of the economy as we move towards an ever more digitised and technological future.