It’s November and ’tis nearly the season to be jolly. However, in the meantime, ’tis the season for pointless elections. America has finally chosen between two men whose enormous election spending will be surpassed in magnitude only by the winner’s inability to push anything past a hostile Congress. Meanwhile we Brits will soon vote for (or rather refrain en masse from voting for) new police and crime commissioners. Once again we’re told to vote purely to keep out the racists – clearly the primary motivation in any healthy democratic election.

Ever keen to outdo the rest of the country, we in Oxford have two even vainer elections coming up. This week campaigning reached full flow for our utterly pointless OUSU President. And, in a couple of weeks, those of us persuaded into forking out 200 quid for front seats to Kerry Katona will elect the President of the Oxford Union.

The Union is a strange institution. Those frantic imps in black tie running about at the start of the no-confidence debate are the first giveaway. By the end of your first term at Oxford the calls will roll in from former friends transformed into embarrassed hacks, desperately chasing a place on Seccy’s committee. Finally you realise that this ‘debating society’ is merely an elaborate front for a cult of self-promotion. 

At the end of my second term at Oxford I was invited out for coffee by some bloke I hardly knew. At first I feared the floppy hairstyle I had affected over the term may have sparked a case of mistaken sexuality. Keen to clarify that this would be a purely platonic liaison I turned down his kind offer of cake and coffee.

When the conversation’s rapid turn towards his Union ambitions made the meeting’s true purpose plain, I felt strangely disappointed. “Actually, come to think of it,” I interrupted, “I’ll have a slice of Victoria sponge…” 

The union is politics minus electioneering. After all, how can ideas or policies play a part in an election where campaigning is banned? Here’s my system: first I vote for my friends, then for the positions left over I pick the female with the most ethnic-sounding name.

Countless degrees have been lost on the Union election gamble. The winners are awarded prime networking opportunities and the glowing self-importance that comes from getting sloshed with the famous and influential. The losers are left broken and friendless. As your vote-wrangling alienates you from everyone outside the Union, your dependence upon it quickly increases. It is the port-swilling, tuxedo-clad equivalent of smoking crack behind Asda. But with better career prospects.

OUSU elections are also infamously inconsequential. OUSU meetings are a passionless yawn-a-thon, devoid of the defiant spirit and niche politics that characterise other student unions. The reason for this is simple: the elec- tion of representatives is essentially a constituency system.

Whereas at other universities the socialist- environmentalist-dock-workers and free-Palestine-and-pizza clubs may be able to muster enough support to win representation, a candidate with such unorthodox views will never win a majority in a college election. As such we have a neutered student union filled with the popular kids from each college. Instead of socialists and libertarians we get boring self- promoters. I should know: my successful hust for college OUSU rep focused on my having the least stuff on my CV and hence most needing the position.

If there is ever a place for radical politics, it is university. It is tragic that one as influential as Oxford should be so politically inactive. If we want a strong anarcho-feminist contingent in OUSU, and we do, then what we need is a mixed- member system, with some assembly members elected at a university rather than college level.

This would be a radical change that would reflect the fact that Oxford students are members of the university as a whole, not just individual colleges. At least the rainbow-flag-meets-hammer-and-sickle t-shirts would make sweeter eye-candy than the current reign of blue college hoodie and brown tweed.

Vote if you need the exercise, but don’t feel obliged to give any legitimacy to these self-important clubs. Instead, be thankful that you’re not in an institution where you have to spend the last week of each term begging your Facebook friends to vote for you.

Then again, that CV is looking a bit empty, isn’t it?

I remember a golden time when a dinner was just a dinner, having coffee was exactly that, and employability meant running around town desperately shoving C.V’s into Topshop employees’ faces. However, after one and a bit years in Oxford, these seemingly innocent pastimes strike the fear of Alan Sugar into me. What will I do when I graduate? How do I make the right impression at a function? Will Topshop take me back?! It appears that university life, academic life, is inextricably caught up in that most sleazy of grown up business words: networking.

Yes, I am being dramatic, and yes, I am well aware that I cannot run around Oxford waxing lyrical about the nice pointy rooftops forever, but still, there is something about the idea of socialising with intent which I fundamentally cannot get my head around. According to Wikipedia, it is a ‘socioeconomic activity by which groups of likeminded business people recognise, create or act upon business opportunities.’ This probably covers the finance and law events we all too often receive emails about, which are inevitably slightly uncomfortable parades of fixed smiles and fixed interest rates. At least the business events, those which favour the Randolph Hotel and seduce you with promises of canapés and an office with a view, accept what they are. They unashamedly market themselves as ‘networking’ events, they unashamedly say ‘FEMALE OXFORD GRADS, WE WANT YOU TO DIVERSIFY OUR COMPANY’, and they unashamedly bribe you with wine to attend. It is not this type of networking that we should approach with caution. It is the networking that filters down through university, from society recruitment events to desperately trying to befriend the latest treasurer of OUDS in order to get funding.* When does it all end? At what point does a drink with a friend become collecting a potential contact for the future? 

Becoming ’employable’ is obviously an important part of being at university, but it’s not the only reason we are here, nor should it be our main motivation for getting involved in university life. Just consider the sense of ego that comes with running for a Union position. Are you there because you feel you can contribute to the running of the university and the welfare of its students, or are you there because striding down those panelled corridors makes you feel pretty darn good. Most likely the answer is neither. More likely is the answer; it will look good on my C.V. Cynical and a bit grumpy, maybe, but a recent Cherwell article did show that on average 1 in 3 ex-Union Presidents could network themselves all the way to Parliament. However, the Union is just one example, Oxford another, and this isn’t a discussion about career politicians and Old Boys’ Clubs. All universities are judged by how employable their grads are, and I am extremely grateful for the opportunities that this particular establishment affords. It’s just that the idealist in me wants to get by with good honest graft, rather than a purse full of beautifully embossed business cards.

The fact is, the whole concept of networking seems a little contrived. Everyone knows that it is a part of university life, but we are reluctant to acknowledge that we do it, and even more reluctant to acknowledge that some of us consider it to be quite a skill. Sadly, I am not one of those people, but as much as I dislike the concept of networking, I find myself doing it almost unconsciously. One of my worst habits is a tendency to blend into the given situation, to become a ‘likeminded business person.’ Drinks with tutors equates to passing comment on the wine and name dropping a few articles, finance events involve dressing sharply and having a quick glance at the FT website beforehand, and somewhat humiliatingly, Cherwell Drinks meant hovering around whilst loudly discussing potential article ideas. It’s as if we are playing at professionalism in our safe little university circle, and we are most certainly playing characters. Today, in my head, I am a journalist. I may as well be drinking black coffee, chewing a cigar and hammering away at a typewriter. (If only).

The question is, do we really believe it? Do we believe ourselves in these roles? Those who do are probably far more likely to fall into a job than the few, like myself, who sit angrily in a corner and complain about ‘connections’ instead of making them. The strange thing is, I respect people who are natural networkers. They fascinate me because they have a goal, and they go for it, their pockets brimming with canapés and business cards. Good for them. I hope they are very happy in their job that neither I nor they fully understand. That said, I think I prefer my shamefully comfortable seat on the networking bench, where the contacts are in reach, but my soul ostensibly remains my own.

*Hypothetical example. Probably.

Oxford is full of over-achievers. Everyone knows one, the person who will not rest until they’ve ascended the top societies; the suit who walks around town with the air of the Cabinet Minister they will one day become.

Michael Crick, previously Political Editor of Newsnight, and now Channel 4’s Chief Political Correspondent, was of this sort. He was an absolutely massive hack, editing Cherwell, chairing the Democratic Labour Club and becoming President of the Oxford Union – to which he returned last Thursday to participate in the Media and Politics debate. He’s a little embarrassed about it now – “It was awful. It was office accumulation for the sake of it” – but not at all remorseful. And why should he be? For it helped launch a glittering career in political journalism.  

After Oxford Crick joined ITN, helping to launch Channel 4’s news team in 1982, and then working as its Washington correspondent, winning an RTS award in 1988 for his coverage of the Bush-Dukasis Presidential Election. From there he swapped to the BBC, first with its flagship investigative programme Panorama and then with Newsnight, becoming its political editor in 2007. But last year he hopped back to 4; he is now the Chief Political Correspondent of the network he joined as a lowly trainee three decades ago. He is famous for the political ambush, the prickly question and the chase. His greatest hits are when he does all three. When Iain Duncan Smith faced a leadership crisis, he delivered a speech at Party Conference famous for the line “The quiet man is here to stay”. Ironically he refused to take questions after the speech. Crick followed him to the next event, from which, as Duncan Smith left, he yelled: “Aren’t you taking this quiet man thing a bit far?” It is in no small part thanks to Crick that we have political satire like The Thick of It. 

The job of political correspondents is to follow the day-to-day dramas that typify public life, and to analyse the characters of their subjects. Extraordinarily however, given the enormous pressure they exercise on the political class, what is often overlooked is the character of the journalists themselves. 

Crick exudes the same characteristics in person that he gives out on screen. He is sharp, boisterous and funny. Opening his speech at the Union, he pivoted around the despatch box to address the President, John Lee, to deliver a phoney tribute that concluded with a description of the relationship between the Union President and Standing Committee as akin to that between a “villain and his sheep”. He is totally absent of any deference to the Establishment, for the simple reason that he had already outgrown it by the age of 22. But he’s very different from Jeremy Paxman, to whom this description could also be attributed, because he doesn’t take himself all that seriously. He is entirely prepared to accost politicians in the street, or chase them down corridors at party conferences, to demand an answer to the question of when exactly they stopped beating their wives.

The reason Crick totally lacks humility with politicians is because he knows the game so intimately from his Union days. Alan Duncan, the International Development Minister, was a contemporary – beating him to the Union Presidency on Crick’s first attempt. He learnt from that, and won next time around. “The best elections” he tells me, “were when you frightened off the opposition so there wasn’t any, and there were a few of those.” This sound very much to be the school of Robert Mugabe electioneering, but then again it is the Union. During his campaign Cherwell “gave me a two page spread [fully one third of the entire paper in those days] – it was basically a manifesto for my candidacy.” Given the opprobrium regularly poured by the student press on the Union nowadays, I find this hilarious. But just as the country at large treated politicians with greater reverence in those days, so the Union was seen then as more of a serious focal point of student life.

And Crick has had no small role in smashing that wholly undeserved reverence. He clearly loves the job, applying the same skills he acquired as a student hack to making politicians squeal in front of camera. What makes a good hack, I ask? “It’s about getting people to do things when you don’t actually have much power, just the power of ambition” is the straightforward reply. The same applies to journalism. After the Leveson Inquiry the media industry is currently on its knees, but the importance of holding power to account has never been more important. 

Predictably perhaps, Crick’s familiarity with politicians has made him totally immune to their charms and suspicious of ideology. He left university firmly in the Labour camp, though “to the right of 1980s Labour”, a natural stance for a grammar school and Oxbridge lad of that generation to take. This soon changed. “You have an opinion-ectomy when you go into broadcast journalism” he says very matter-of-factly, though print journalism is of course an entirely different kettle of fish. At Oxford he had “always intended journalism to be the means into politics”, but when the opportunity to stand in a by-election in a safe Labour seat presented itself, he turned it down and has “felt liberated” ever since.

More than that though: thirty years of close association with Westminster life has hollowed out the politics in him. As a leading political observer he is constantly asking ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘when’, but in doing so he has unlearnt and rejected the ‘ought’. It’s dispiriting to hear him say, both because of what it tells you about the cynicism of Parliament by those closest to it and the implications of that: that we’re going to continue to see dull humanoids occupy Parliament. So apathetic is Crick that he “[doesn’t] vote at all, partly because of the job I do but partly I don’t know what I think any more. The only view I have now is that I’d bring back capital punishment, but only for people who drop chewing gum on pavements.” 

What words of wisdom does he have for those who want to follow him into media career? “Build alliances” is his answer, “stay in touch with people you meet at Oxford.” The implication I take from this is that journalism is nepotistic – if you look at how many journalists had parents or close family in the profession then you’ll understand how true this remains. Crick however claims never to have obtained a job through contacts, but as the industry contracts and graduate schemes become scarce, they will be increasingly important. “Being a journalist employs a narrow range of skills” is his last piece of advice, so it’s vital “to master those skills” and develop a specialism in the area you want to cover.

That powerful people go to great lengths to avoid Crick is a testament not only to how well he does the job, but to how much a spirited and informed democracy relies on quality, investigative journalism. As Newsnight, Crick’s old haunt, has been thrown into crisis in recent weeks, that point should be made with all the more force. Whilst I can imagine despising the nakedly ambitious Crick as a student, the grown-up version is almost impossible not to warm to. In that sense the message for today’s generation of hacks is far from bleak.