This article explores how the UK Conservative Government's Department for Education is taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to restructure higher education in England towards labour-power production. There is nothing new in UK governments seeking to reshape higher education for labour-power development. But under cover of apparent concern for students' well-being in the pandemic, the consequences for higher education institutions viewed as slacking or heel-dragging regarding their labour-power production drives have never been greater following the publication of Establishment of a Higher Education Restructuring Regime in Response to COVID-19 (DfE, 2020a): market exit and closure. The Great Interruption in labour-power production generated by COVID-19 can pose the question of whether we continue to assent to our labour-power being shaped for capital, or whether we redirect flows of labour-power development in directions of post-capitalist futures.