One of the major problems the UK now faces is that the negotiations to withdraw from the EU were so dominated by the red lines laid down by Theresa May that quite a few babies were thrown out with the bath water.
The Erasmus scheme is just one example, the UK could have paid some money into the scheme and stayed in if it had tried hard enough, it didn’t even ask as far as I can tell. I imagine at some level Erasmus comes under the rule of EU law and therefore the ECJ and so it had to die. A chance to study on the continent, learn a language and a new culture have disappeared.
The theory is that the scheme will be replaced by a UK version named after Alan Turing. The LSE, however points out that Turing is less generous, doesn’t pay tuition fees and is means tested. The government says it expects tuition fees to be waived but Turing is a pale imitation of Erasmus and like much of the best British education will be much more readily available to those students with wealthy parents.
Erasmus is just one of many EU schemes that were useful, well organised and to the UK’s benefit, but they were EU schemes and therefore a bad thing. The fact the UK is now trying to copy them at great expense and with less success tells you how ridiculous and dangerous it is to have ideology guide your negotiations.
I would say this is a lesson for others, but it is a lesson they don’t need to learn.
https://jonty.substack.com/
"How ridiculous & dangerous it is to have ideology guide your negotiations." And yet there are others who would question why change something unless you hold a fundamentally different opinion. We invoked Brexit because we did not want to be on the same journey to the same destination of a federal EU. Our guiding ideology was different. Both sides (EU & UK) had ideology guide their redline position negotiations. Nothing wrong with that in my book. And if the PM had come back with "I sort of may have an oven ready deal solution you'd have been one of the first to dry roast him and with some good cause.
Erasmus is a casualty but there are about 200 countries in the World and 27 EU so there are plenty of other places that students can go.