The Oxford squad huddle as Hertford spectators converge on the poolside. Cambridge? Absent… but soon the mint shorts emerge. Loss will put Oxford bottom of the league. A win: third. Unsurprisingly, coach Tom deals tactics with his fingers nervously retracted up his sleeves. This Varsity match counts and there is extra attention when fingernails are measured – contact is expected.
20:00. The teams charge on the whistle. Oxford win possession and elicit a save from Alex H, the Cambridge keeper, controlling for 2-and-a-half minutes. That’s until Warren Handley can score from distance for Oxford. 1-0. The poolside tension is broken by grins and cheers. Cambridge surge to draw 1-1 within 20 seconds, and spectators’ faces refocus. Cambridge dribble, pass and press to trouble Oxford’s keeper, Joey Weinbren. Play is close until a penalty lets Will H score for Cambridge with 75 seconds remaining in this quarter. 1-2. Oxford’s tip-off leads to mixed play until Cambridge’s Kai shoots from afar. 1-3, worried faces grow. 45 seconds of purposeful Cantabrigian play break with Oxford’s counter-attack. 2-3. Yet, Oxford overstretch leaving Ryan K unmarked. 2-4. Cambridge’s next two efforts require intervention from the post and then Joey himself, who is applauded. A few tense seconds then half-time.
Oxford have the numbers once Kai is sin-binned and Matt Courtis scores. 3-4. Then Cambridge’s rapid attack lets Henry S-T put one beyond Joey’s reach. 3-5. In retort, Alex W, threads a wondrous ball beyond the Cambridge keeper’s right hand and into the net. 4-5. Clapping erupts. James, Oxford’s wing, makes an ambitious effort and smiles return to the poolside as shouts and whoops reverberate. 5-5.
13 seconds later, a Cambridge penalty is converted, but faces don’t fall this time. 5-6. Play is unremarkable, except a few speculative attempts, until Oxford romp on in the dying seconds. Time intervenes and the score remains 5-6 to the flatlanders.
8 minutes remain in the game and the first two pass with increasingly dangerous attacks from both sides. Decisive play offers Oxford a chance, and the crowd erupts. 6-6. Jakob Timmerman bowls it cleanly into the Cambridge goal and the supporters spring up, cheering. 7-6. Advantage Oxford, in style.
Jakob with a casual lob, places Alex C in prime position. 8-6. The win’s within reach. Kai, cap hanging loose, cannons a shot at the top corner but Joey rises, literally, to the occasion, maintaining Oxford’s lead impressively. A time-out with the shout ‘1,2,3 Cambridge’ has little effect. Joey finds Matt, the furthermost Oxonian, who lifts it over Alex H easily. 9-6. Surely it’s over.
Cambridge stretch Oxford, centre it and score, ending their 6-minute dry spell. 9-7. 162 seconds left, with Oxford dominating 24 before Ben Wharton shoots. 10-7. A clinical Oxford attack scores quickly. 11-7.
Cambridge, snatch a shot, earning nothing, but soon break, probe forward and score. 11-8. With eight seconds remaining, Jakob is in place. The shot is saved and play fizzles out. Final score. 11-8.
Oxford rise to third. Cambridge, fourth. The mint mermen have a long, late, journey home.
“Don’t you ever stop reading?” complains Mr Wormwood to his daughter in Roald Dahl’s much-loved novel Matilda. Snatching the book from her hands—a novel by Steinbeck—he asks her: “What is this trash?” And in spite of her insistence on the work’s merits, it’s clear that he has already made up his mind: “Filth. […] If it’s by an American it’s certain to be filth. That’s all they write about.” The scene reaches a climax as an enraged Mr Wormwood rends the volume’s leaves from its spine: thus prejudice and philistinism conspire to cut Matilda’s long story short.
Dahl’s characters are invariably hyperbolic. Matilda’s negligent parents, James’ ill-proportioned aunts and The Twits all share a quality of fairy-tale villainy, where evil rears its head without subtlety and is painted in grotesque colours that evoke overheated childhood imagining. It is thus justly presumed that the critique forwarded by Dahl in Mr Wormwood’s personage—led to destroy a book out of ignorance—was, at the time of composition, wholly of the author’s invention. But even his instinct for the outlandish has proven to be no match for the excesses of the 2023 activist class. Mr Wormwood, whether he knew it or not, was but a fictive forbear of the modern publisher, who, armed only with Tipp-Ex and a perverse disregard of authorial authority, blots blithely at the literature sworn to his protection.
The facts of the case have by now been much discussed. It began with an investigation by The Telegraph, bringing to light hundreds of changes made in Puffin’s latest editions of Dahl’s novels. These omissions, reformulations, gender-neuterings and wholesale reversals of meaning constitute a great slew of edits, whose professed intention—per a brief introductory note—is to “ensure that [the novels] can continue to be enjoyed by all today.” To take one example: no longer is the larger-than-life Augustus Gloop “deaf to everything except the call of his enormous stomach”; rather, he is simply “ignoring everything”. No longer do the Oompa-Loompas versify his fate as a “pig” who will “gorge and guzzle, feed and feast”; he is merely characterised as ‘vile’—an adjective which appeals to sensitivity readers in its useful ambiguity that makes no reference to weight. Elsewhere, it is difficult even to identify the cause of offence: faces are no longer “white with horror” but rather “agog”; and “crazy with frustration” is now rendered as “wild with frustration”—apparently relegating ‘crazy’ to a mental health-related slur. Predictably, the scalpel taken to Dahl—wielded by a hand far less skilled than that of the author himself—has left the text in a sorry state of mutilation.
But this time, the woke brigade wasn’t going to get away with it. Galvanized by The Telegraph and perhaps spurred on by glazed memories of pram-borne pheasants, pigtail-flung pupils and giant peaches, the adults in the room got talking. Sir Salman Rushdie—the cancelled author par excellence,who at one time had an entire Middle Eastern state hankering for his hanging—condemned Puffin for “absurd censorship”. David Mitchell, the stalwart humourist of the Guardianista set, made the high-status, anti-capitalist argument for opposing the edits—which to his credit is not unconvincing. In what was presumably a desperate act of damage control, Puffin promised to publish the original texts alongside their updated cousins, an announcement largely drowned out by the thunder of Britons fulminating against the evils of the anti-Dahl axis in pubs across the country. This is no mere exaggeration: I had politically disengaged friends roused to anger over what was seen as an assault on their childhood culture. And outrage is a sentiment Dahl would have shared: he once warned that if his posthumous editors should change so much as a comma, he would—from the grave—“send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.” It must be conceded that a crocodile of such proportions would make short work of a puffin.
But perhaps it’s case closed? Compromise achieved? The pre-operative texts are, after all, now bound for the printing press. Sadly, critics who close the book on this affair so readily fail to see its broader significance. Because it was not long ago that works of literature were treated with a kind of reverence, a protestant-adjacent radicalism that emphasised the inviolable text. The author was a kind of sacred idea, not wholly accessible to the reader, but nonetheless the spirit that gave unity to any written work; if possible, every pen mark or key-stroke was to be preserved in amber. As much became evident to me when studying Of Mice and Men early in secondary school, where liberal teachers, from a department more keyed into the social implications of their work than any other, suddenly had students read aloud the most offensive passages of that book. The offence was of course discussed, analysed and contextualised—but never omitted. It was part of the book, and that was that. Of course, there are differences between what is discussed in a classroom of twelve-year-olds, and what is given to the child at the age of eight for personal reading. But the point stands: better surely to let helicopter parents ban Dahl to protect their fledglings from the possibility of offence, than to rob the whole corpus of its authenticity. Once a precedent for edits is established, the books will, one imagines, enter a state of perpetual flux, until eventually—like a latter-day Ship of Theseus—there will be no signifier of the past society in them, no relic that might (Heaven forfend) summon up traumatic visions of the old ways.
Thus the tyranny of the now seems to exert an irresistible gravitational pull. Modern editors aim to unanchor texts from their historical moorage—crudely replacing, for example, a reference in the Witches to women working as secretaries with a new sentence about their employment as ‘top scientists. We are left with Frankenstein texts whose fabric remains inalterably baked into the culture of their time and place, adorned with the limbs and digits of a different era, as incongruous as those of a different species.
The sensitivity reader has fired a warning shot. So deludedly emboldened to so crudely desiccate the writings of an author so recently passed—they have placed their cards on the table. We can be certain that they will befoul all the more readily older texts whose values are even further from those of the current moral order. And it’s a process the authorities abet: just last month, in a Prevent research document, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis numbered among an illustrious company with the dubious honour of being listed as red flags for white supremacist terror. These trends seem likely to worsen as a younger generation—for whom the cardinal sin is prejudice—come to dominate publishing and government alike. To the book-lover there is only one course of action available: buy the books you love, and stow them away under your mattress. At least then the greatest risk of desecration comes from a disgruntled Mr Wormwood-character, whom you can fight off with your hands, and not a great faceless publisher of which you know nothing and in the face of which you are powerless.
Smartphones have revolutionalised the way society is experienced, spatialized and performed. Never before in human history has information been shared so quickly and freely across the globe and within local and international communities.
The way we work has shifted, sped up by the pandemic, and engrained into the fabric of society, with work from home, remote learning and online team organisers taking a newly dominant role.
Here at Oxford, we earnt our place through academics alone, with no social profile needed to help secure our place. But here at Oxford is where that path comes to an abrupt end. How do we transition from academic excellence into real-world success stories? Sure, some will see academia as the end goal, but the vast majority of us see Oxford only as a stepping stone to going out and making a productive difference in the World.
When we think of the most successful University-aged figures in the World, Greta Thunberg, and Malala Yousafi, are some activists that come to mind, yet the vast majority are new influencers and celebrities like Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, TikTok’s Charlie D’amelio and Millie Bobbie Brown. Sure, it does derive from how you determine success, but having a celebrity platform today is vital to many roles, including philanthropic ones, that were more accessible in the past. For these roles having a presence on social media is vital, none the more so for anything political or involving civil society.
Jobs like journalism, business, media, investment, diplomacy, and more are all dependent on networks whose growth is fostered through social media. Whether it be Twitter for journalists or LinkedIn for business the impossibility of switching off is very real. Add to this the hundreds of daily emails. Messages and reminders once only received in person during work hours are now inseparable from our being with mobile phones glued to our hips.
But it’s not just in the workplace that devices have changed our world. Social media has become the main source of entertainment for countless young people. Gone are the days of playing with toys, in are the smartphone apps and screens. This revolution occurred during our childhoods – while I may have had my first phone at 12, many today are getting devices much younger – think 5 years old for iPads.
There’s an interesting psychology around phones that is alarming. In 2021 the average UK adult spent 4 hours on their phone. Half of all Americans agree with the following statement: “I can’t imagine a life without my phone”. Shockingly, nearly 1 out of every 10 American checks their phone during sex.
Catherine Price’s book ‘How to break up with your phone in 30 days’ is a great starting point for combatting this issue of modernity.
She outlines how our phones are designed to addict us with feedback. So the argument goes, if the brain learns that checking your phone usually results in a reward and subsequent dopamine release, the brain wants to check it more often. Dopamine is central to motivation and causes excitement. To captivate attention social media apps rely on intermittent reinforcements which always means new and surprising content shows up on your feed. They also harness FOMO to ensure we feel the need to be constantly updated. And tap into our human need to be loved, by making us want to be more popular on social media.
Social media is using the population as free labour, collecting our data after we produce it for free and then bombarding us with paid advertising that further generates revenue. We gain nothing but a shorter attention span. By interfering with our short-term memory, we are at risk of forgetting most of life’s experiences and being unable to fully experience the present moment.
So the effects are explicit, but how to balance this knowledge whilst simultaneously growing a career, maintaining a social life, and unlearning the habits of social media all while resisting the urge for constant phone-checking? Sounds pretty difficult, right?
Price maintains that you can improve your concentration, rebuild your attention span and improve your memory. The first step through mindfulness is to be more present. Then the next step is the ‘technology triage’ to understand your personal usage and take action. Price recommends deleting social media apps entirely and only accessing them on a laptop or iPad. However, what social media has done so well is integrate forms of communication within an entertainment app – think Snapchat, which focuses on communication, but has Stories, Tiles and Reels all waiting to draw you in – Instagram is the same.
Price then suggests coming back to real life and taking up a hobby or past-time you never had the time to do and taking up a sport. All this by week 1?
Week 2 focuses on changing habits like notifications, deleting apps that steal your time and changing where you charge your phone. Setting no-phone boundary zones means a complete detachment. And one that many of us in Oxford are guilty of: ‘phubbing’. This is when you interact with your phone whilst in an active social engagement.
Week 3 focuses on reclaiming your brain through mindfulness practice, an evermore conventional way of combating the freefall of time in the current age. This week concludes with a trial separation of 24 hours from your phone.
The final Week 4 includes a ‘Phast’ when the phone is turned off at particular times and events, and a ‘digital sabbath’ with phone-free weekends.
That all sounds lovely and convincing when on paper, but how feasible is it? I fear that in this modern age we have passed a threshold from which there is no return at an individual level. To isolate oneself digitally means to disadvantage oneself. Taking back control from social media and smartphones will require a concerted effort, but one that is unlikely to materialise.
So the key then is finding a balance. Resisting the TikToks and Instagram apps of the World. This is more straightforward. I for one have stopped scrolling Instagram feeds and limited screen time for my apps but I still find myself on my phone. Wherever one time-wasting app is curtailed, another develops.
Over the vacation, I will try the 30-day plan, and see how successful it really is. Will you?
Erasure
in the stagnant silence between sips of gin,
stunted syllables sit on our lips like
battery acid and dissolve our skin.
so instead we’ll pour our thoughts into that which can’t reply;
into the night sky curling back against the rising sun,
arching her spine as the day unfurls its soul.
we’ll listen to the drag of the ocean,
seduced by a masked moon,
and wonder if waves could wash our words
away into one clean hum.
we’ll let the unsaid float
on ripples of light,
on the echo of a gull’s cry,
on the clouds dipped in violet dye
and then stand by as
one
by
one
those sentences sink.
i’ve resolved to speak to her in unsent messages,
strings of sound that refuse formation
and hover on hold.
by Nicole Gibbons
only we remember
I think about the fall
of split-sky obelisks,
serapeum sultry with incense
boats sun-drowned and lotus-heavy
shards of the earthen pastoral,
the ruins of the mundane where
the child clutches his bird-amulet and
the women sing in the reeds
the past is a foreign country
remembered only in cipher,
set in rosetta
its indigenous ghosts linger
once-present and twice-lost
I think about what will be left
of us, remembered in
moon-bellied sunsets and
goosefeather on the lake
sharp-slick cities and
forever folded in frogspawn
loved in poetry, not in prose
I cannot conjure your smile, but
you smile anyway
now
god-kings lie silent in the valley
the sundial tells no time
the age of civilisation fades
and only we remember
so I think about the fall
the gentle frenzied fall
in love.
by Charlotte Lai
What constitutes formal wear? The first outfit that comes to mind might be a neatly tailored suit or conservative dress, possibly involving a tie or blazer. Some Oxford students may even be thinking of sub fusc. Allow me to clarify my question: what constitutes professional attire? And why does it matter?
It seems almost too easy to pin this development on the work-from-home policy of a certain recent global pandemic that I’m sure I don’t need to name. I propose another cause, evidenced by British Airway’s proud declaration that “More than 90% of the garments are produced using sustainable fabric from blends of recycled polyester” and HSBC’s use of “recycled polyester, dissolving plastic, ocean recovered plastic and sustainable cotton.” Modern companies are well aware of the power of social justice movements. By accommodating staff of all genders and religious minorities, and by combining practicality with sleekness and sustainability, these corporations signal that they have acknowledged and accepted their moral duty to create a welcoming workplace that places an emphasis on the well-being of its employees and customers.
Practical, stylish, inclusive, and strategic – these revamped uniforms are truly a display of twenty-first century innovation. But while it is admirable that companies are taking it upon themselves to give their staff more freedomwith how they dress at work, it is also important to remember that we shouldn’t have to rely on corporations to agree to allow their employees to wear practical options. We deserve a standardised law that demands equality and consistency in the workplace instead of hoping that employers deign to allow comfortable, practical alternatives to old-fashioned suits and gendered dichotomies. Double standards in office dress codes were catapulted into the public consciousness after Nicola Thorp, a PricewaterhouseCoopers receptionist, was sent home on her first day of work in 2015 for wearing flats instead of two-to-four-inch-high heels. She subsequently created a petition that gained over 150,000 signatures calling for the government to make such workplace double standards illegal to no avail. Although the government did debate the motion, no existing legislature was changed to explicitly criminalise forcing female staff to abide by impractical and potentially physically damaging dress codes. The Government Equalities Office eventually produced a document in May of 2018 with the specific aim of providing guidance to employers and employees about what comprises unlawful sex discrimination regarding dress codes, an endeavour that was condemned as “bland and vague, failing to make it absolutely clear to employers that requiring heels, makeup and skirts will virtually always be unlawful sex discrimination”. The guidance’s determination that such rules would only be unlaw if no “equivalent requirement” is demanded of male employees fails to take into account that there is no ‘professional attire’ for men which inhibits their ability to walk and run or demands that they spend extra time applying cosmetics. The guidance document states that employees (rightfully) must accommodate disabled members of staff as well as transgender employees and those who wear religious symbols or garments, but no such binding provision is made to ensure that women are not required to endure discomfort and debilitation caused by impractical uniforms.
So, I ask again – what is professional attire? What makes high heels and makeup professional for women and not for men? In what context should some employees be mandated to sacrifice comfort for appearance whereas others are exempt? With this year’s cohort of finalist gearing up for one last vacation of revision before taking their final exams, let’s remember that while the dress-code aspect of office culture certainly appears to have made great strides in terms of inclusion and equality, corporate permission is no substitute for legal regulation.
And if anyone is considering restarting Thorp’s petition, know that my signature will be the first one on it.
The University of Oxford has announced the implementation of a new policy regarding staff-student relationships, to take effect from 17th April 2023.
The policy, set to govern intimate or close personal relationships between staff and students, prohibits staff who have any responsibility for current students from entering intimate relationships. Furthermore, it “strongly discourages” any other close personal relationships which “transgress the boundaries of professional conduct.”
Failure to comply with the new policy will result in staff being disciplined in accordance with the University’s disciplinary procedures. With regards to existing intimate relationships, the University said: “Any appropriate protective steps taken in relation to existing relationships (reported after the policy came into force) will focus on avoiding conflicts of interest by ensuring the staff member ceases to have, or does not acquire, any responsibility for the student.”
The change in policy comes after many months of development and consultation. It overrules the previous policy, where intimate relationships were strongly discouraged (and required declaration to a line manager), rather than prohibited.
It’s no secret to anyone who reads the news that British politics begins in the cloisters of Oxford (and, to a lesser extent, Cambridge) — but, for many of the thirty Prime Ministers our university has produced, this is only part of the story; more specifically, their road to Downing Street started on the leather-clad benches of the Oxford Union’s debating chamber, and in the cushy armchairs of its bar. Three of Britain’s post-war Prime Ministers — Boris Johnson, Edward Heath, and Harold Macmillan — held one or more of the Union’s four highest offices in their time at Oxford, and many more, whilst not elected to high-ranking offices, were well known in student political circles. The Union’s grip on real-world politics, however, doesn’t end here; to get a flavour of the role the society has played in producing the country’s ruling class, one need only take a closer look at the cabinets of the past 12 years, as we will do later in this article.
A common argument made by defenders of Oxbridge’s hegemony in Downing Street goes something like this: surely it’s not a bad thing that the country is run by educated people who graduated from its two most prestigious universities? Similar logic can be applied to justify the disproportionate influence the Oxford Union has exerted over British politics by supplying future cabinet ministers — surely it’s not a bad thing that our politicians not only are well-educated, but have experience in politics and an illustrious record of political achievements that go back to their time at said universities? Having seen much of the culture of Oxford and of the Oxford Union — with the near-termly headlines about yet another scandal and the indiscriminate hack messages that pour in before every election, the Union is inescapable even to non-members — I feel extremely skeptical about both of these statements. To me, as an outsider, everything about the Union, from the £300 membership fee to the exhausting slate drama on Facebook and the allegations of sexual misconduct that seem to have limited social repercussions for the abuser, has always signalled an extremely toxic culture that’s hardly an environment you’d want the people running the country to have spent the formative stages of their career in. Still, due to a lack of personal experience, I felt that I couldn’t be completely certain in my judgement. That changed last week, when I sat down with two former Junior Officers, KD and RM (initials have been changed for anonymity), to have a chat with each of them separately about their experiences with the Union.
KD is a woman of colour who served on committee before being elected to a Junior Officer post; RM is an ex-state comprehensive school student who served in appointed positions before his term as an elected JO. Both felt that conscious and unconscious biases against the marginalised groups they identify with had a big impact on how their Union careers played out. KD said that, when she served on the Standing Committee, the way she and the other women on the committee were treated by male members had clear misogynistic undertones — their ideas were not taken seriously and often ignored, but when others proposed largely the same things, their suggestions were taken on board. Whilst officers take care not to make overtly sexist or racist comments to avoid getting ‘cancelled’, implicit behaviours that make the Union a hostile environment for women and people of colour are still commonplace; casual comments about ‘incompetence’ are mostly targeted at women, she told Cherwell. This sentiment was echoed by RM: “When I ran for President, at scrutiny you could just see the hatred directed at my representatives who were women of colour that wasn’t present towards the other slate”.
Another deep-rooted issue within the Union which contributes to a culture of male privilege is reported to stem from members’ and officers’ attitudes to sexual misconduct, which women are overwhelmingly more likely to face in social settings. In the past, KD was sexually harassed inside the Union building by an ex-committee member — she recalled that, she felt nervous about calling out the perpetrator, fearing that others might assume her to be “electioneering” with reputational ramifications. According to KD, all the usual issues that survivors of sexual assault face are exacerbated in a Union context, where everything inherently has a political subtext: “When someone comes forward about sexual assault or sexual harassment, people usually feel bad for the person who’s being accused, and oftentimes they gain more support. Victims are often labelled as ‘psychotic’ or are assumed to be ‘trying to ruin someone’s reputation’, in part because there have indeed been cases of fabricated SA allegations, and women who want to come forward often need male support to be taken seriously. In general, there’s a culture of staying quiet about most things, and when someone has done something problematic, you feel uncomfortable calling it out because it puts the target on your back and you want to keep the peace.”
The culture within the top ranks of the Union seems to leave limited hope for change; as KD remarked, women and people of colour elected to Officer positions usually try to avoid “feeding into stereotypes” and rarely feel comfortable focusing too much on feminism or antiracism because they anticipate backlash.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a debating society which charges £300 for membership (£178.50 if you’re eligible for its access membership programme), many instances of classism among members are still reported.
According to KD, access is widely seen as a joke and candidates who care about it are looked down upon as “naïve”. “I’ve known former Presidents,” she said, “who cared about access before being elected but, whilst in office, felt uncomfortable making any real changes because they’d be seen as radical superwoke superlefties. Others have no actual care for access and only put it on their manifestos to tick a box.”
RM, who got involved in Union politics after being ‘coffeed’ by someone he’d met before university, had many thoughts to share about the Union’s relationship with access. “There was a lot of informal social etiquette I needed to learn that I would already have been familiar with had I gone to a different school. Already as an appointed officer I felt a bias against state-school students. I didn’t quite fit the mould in terms of knowing how to give a performance, and it took me a lot of effort to be seen as a serious person. State schoolers have to go much slower and put a lot more work in if they want to run for office because they don’t have the network that people who went to Eton, Harrow, Winchester and other schools like that do from the get-go.” He shared KD’s view that people who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are pressured into feeling uncomfortable talking about access issues and making reforms that threaten the status quo. “When I said I was working-class, that was described as an “openly aggressive statement”, and talking about my life was labelled “weaponising identity politics”. The newspapers were also hostile; during my interview for the Cherwell, one of the questions went something like “you talk a lot about access, but how are you going to help all the other members?” and I wasn’t even surprised because I’m very used to answering to that criticism. Talking about your identity is seen as inherently aggressive and perceived as ‘wokery’.”
The former committee members also gave examples of nepotism that they’ve witnessed – the legacy of the Bullingdon Club appears to live on, if with an extra veneer of (often performative) diversity. “Outsiders” have a hard time breaking into the inner Union circles to begin with: “People with similar backgrounds tend to form cliques within the Union and it’s hard to get in. Culturally, people who went to private school fit in easily, whereas people like me don’t feel welcome in the Union and wouldn’t spend all of our time there. There’s also a lot of insider information passed down within private school circles – for example, I recall two people from the same boarding house being elected to the Union a couple of years apart. It’s common to have parents turning up to vote, and even within the student body, there are lots of people who never turn up to most events but show up to vote for the candidate who went to the same school with even if they don’t like each other,” RM said.
KD expressed a similar idea: “It’s not uncommon for people who are big in the Union to know top politicians personally, and even without those connections, people from wealthy families who went to private school have a much easier time getting elected. Slates play a big part in this. Most people who run for President place a lot of importance on ‘background checks’ when forming their slate: they make a long spreadsheet of names and then ask around within their college to find out what their reputation is, so if you haven’t got to know many people yet and can’t be background-checked, the slate leaders will usually go for someone else even if you’re a very strong candidate. Slating in Michaelmas is especially nepotism-based; there’s a large influx of new members who are eligible to vote creating uncertainty about the outcome of the election, so people try to find big names and go for people who went to Eton, Harrow, Winchester and St. Paul’s. It’s hard to get into Union politics for people who have few connections in the society; if you try to approach people as a non-insider, you seem like a try-hard, so the ideal way to get into the inner circle is to first get to know people casually by going to the same events – drinks, debates, hanging out in the bar – and only then try to get involved.”
On Union nepotism beyond Oxford, KD said: “People mostly get involved to network — it’s a good way to meet people who will be in power 30 years from now. Intergenerational connections are the way the people in power stay in power. Ex-Presidents often come to their Union even after university. Many of them continue to stay friends with other Union people long after graduation, they all move to London and socialise within the same circles. A lot of people get pulled into jobs by Union people they know. I feel that the Union network is a concentrated version of public school networks, and it’s still predominantly posh, white and male.”
RM spent much of my interview with him emphasising how inaccessible the circles he entered through the Union would have been to him otherwise: “A Union career gives you a lot of privilege, but at the same time, being an officer isn’t an easy job and in many cases, it’s a challenge just to make it through your term. So I’m not saying ex-Union people don’t deserve to be in the jobs they land, they just had a lot of legs up along the way and they come to disproportionately dominate institutions.”
Zooming in on the makeup of the past few Cabinets puts these sentiments on a more solid historical footing. Amongst the members of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet are 3 former Oxford Union Presidents (Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; Mel Stride, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions; and Jeremy Quin, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General), as well as 2 former Cambridge Union Presidents (Lucy Frazer, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and Andrew Mitchell, Minister of State for Development and Africa). As far as other Oxbridge political cliques go, Jeremy Hunt, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, served as OUCA President in his time at Oxford; OUCA’s Cambridge counterpart, CUCA, boasts two former Chairs (Suella Braverman, Home Secretary, and Greg Hands, Minister without Portfolio — the latter also served on the Cambridge Union committee) in Cabinet. Thérèse Coffey, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is said to have been involved in conservative student politics to the extent that her time at Oxford was cut short by her academic performance being sabotaged by “extracurricular activities”. In Liz Truss’ short-lived cabinet — in addition to Coffey, Hunt and Braverman — Jacob Rees-Mogg served as Librarian of the Oxford Union before being defeated for the office of President, and Simon Clarke and Graham Stuart chaired OUCA and CUCA respectively.
Somewhat unexpectedly, whilst Boris Johnson himself is one of the Union’s most notorious alumni, his premiership’s cabinets look almost like a hack-free oasis compared with Sunak’s. The familiar names Hunt, Gove and Rees-Mogg are joined only by Nicky Morgan, Baroness of Cotes, who served as Oxford Union Treasurer, but, like Rees-Mogg, lost her presidential bid later on. Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May appointed two former Oxford Union Presidents (Damian Green and Damian Hinds) and one former CUCA chairman (David Lidlington) to her cabinet. Going another Prime Minister back, the years of the Cameron-Clegg coalition were a good time to be an ex-student politico in Parliament; five Cabinet members (William Hague, ex-Oxford Union President; Kenneth Clarke and Vince Cable, both ex-Cambridge Union Presidents; Baron Young, who served on the Standing Committee of the Oxford Union; and, finally, Dominic Grieve, former OUCA President) started their political careers at Oxbridge.
My conversations with the former committee members I interviewed for this article were insightful, but hardly eye-opening. Everything they said was the sort of thing an Oxford student gets used to very quickly, and it takes a while after hearing them before their mind can take a break from the echo chamber of the Oxford normal. As has been abundantly demonstrated by the likes of Boris Johnson, the Oxford Union is categorically unfit to continue to serve as the factory of Britain’s ruling class — it is, at its core, resistant to reform, has been slow to catch up with societal progress and, in many ways, has done so only performatively. It is an institution whose prestige has done society more harm than good, and, unless we want our future politicians trained at the Oxford Union school of nepotism, something needs to change.
Fandom communities are harshly judged for their supposed disregard of the fabled concept of “originality.” Some people argue that fanfiction authors are inferior writers because they use other people’s characters and stories rather than devising anything of their own. Cosplay, while not as inherently controversial as fanfiction, raises a similar question: is replicating another’s creation as good as coming up with a “new” idea? Setting aside the argument that all forms of media are ultimately derived and reconstructed from the media the creator has seen, what exactly is the artistic process behind cosplay?
Like fanfiction writers, cosplayers are unbound. There is something freeing in making art which has no commercial value; you don’t have to worry about what will please an editor, producer, corporation, or potential customer, and its only purpose is to bring you joy. Cosplay is also a way to hone your skills; artists often start out by copying other works to practise their technique before trying to break new ground. But don’t underestimate the creative process of recreation, especially in the case of cosplay. Even the ones that are exact replicas from a film, television show, video game, theatrical performance, or another medium, require creative thinking.
While watching the series finale of Game of Thrones, my friend and I eagerly discussed what we would have to do to cosplay Sansa’s gorgeous coronation dress. NB: a few cosplayers on Instagram are working on this very costume, and it is taking them years to complete it. It is an intense and laborious process, especially since due to the obvious copyright problem most people don’t do this for a living and must work a paying job. It involves scouring the internet and bookstores for decent tutorials, digging through bargain bins, and getting inventive with old clothes and accessories.
First and foremost, cosplayers face the challenge of having to recreate something with resources that will never match those of a Hollywood costume shop. Figuring out how they did it isn’t really the point. They probably did it using professional equipment far outside your budget. The question is, how can you, an amateur costume designer with limited funds and tools, do it at home? Can you get some materials from a charity shop? Buy fabric on sale? And if there isn’t a pattern available resembling what you want to make, can you freehand it yourself? Or assemble pieces from different patterns?
With every new project, a new skill is learned, such as careful hand embroidery to fashion a Stark direwolf or moulding foam into armour and weapons. Photoshoots and editing images are a beast in themselves; some pros specialise in cosplay photography, but many cosplayers who want to share their creations with the world will resort to scouting nearby locations, assembling mini sets, co-opting family and friends as photographers, and building up their photoshop skills over time. When they finally complete a project, even if it looks exactly like it did in the show, who will dare say that they didn’t think creatively to get there, or that it is not art?
However, there are those who still think that ‘copying’ someone else’s work shouldn’t be considered ‘creative’. What qualifies as creativity? The process or the final product? How different does it have to be? I find that when cosplayers reassemble old clothing into something that looks enough like what the character wore to convey who they are supposed to be, they still end up with something distinct. And while I will always celebrate cosplayers for the time and energy they put into ‘copies’, there are still many examples of how they come up with their own original ideas. The cosplay community is by no means restricted to only recreating things—in fact, I would argue that they would feel very confined by that.
Some cosplayers will borrow a concept or aesthetic to get started, such as the colours and images associated with a specific character or piece of media. If you have a look at @starbitcreation’s Rapunzel dress, you can see how it was inspired by Disney’s film but is still her own. There are a plethora of additional ways to put a personal spin on costumes seen on screen. Mashups are so much fun, such as Merida wearing Hawkeye’s gear (@armoredheartcosplay), Rey’s Jakku garments layered with Hamilton’s military uniform, or Loki wielding a lightsaber (@silhouettecosplay). Some people will transport a medieval princess to the modern era or gender swap a superhero or anime protagonist. The only limit to what you can do with a character is your imagination.
Yet some cosplays do rely on completely original visualisation, such as book characters with no corresponding adaptation. Book cosplays are some of my favourites; cosplayers are given a general idea of what an outfit might look like, but it is still up to them to design the costume and bring that vision to life. Characters from Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone were very popular on Instagram long before Netflix adapted the series, and you can see how many different people were given the same basic framework, but all delivered unique results. Finally, cosplayers occasionally dress up as characters of their own—I have seen a few people bring their D&D characters to life this way.
Cosplayers must think creatively, otherwise they would just buy a costume on Amazon. Trying to recreate something that was made in Hollywood or Broadway takes hours of conceptualization and planning, watching DIY videos on YouTube, ripping up your work and starting again. Cosplayers are creative, persistent, and come up with new things every day. Ultimately online fan communities are a way for the fans to express themselves through the characters and stories which inspired them.
The Asian community was repeatedly promised a film that would provide Asian representation in Hollywood.
The film Crazy Rich Asians, set in my country—Singapore—and with a 100% Asian cast seemed like it would fit the description. It was instead an unrelatable mess filled with billion-dollar bachelor parties and expansive estates: the central conflict being that the super hot trust fund baby’s family may disapprove of you as a potential wife. It represented me as well as a zebra crossing represents a zebra. The colours were the same but everything else was frustratingly unrecognisable.
Then, it was supposed to be Shang-Chi. The first Asian superhero! But again, I—understandably—found it difficult to relate to the plot of: “my father is an evil dictator with the powers of an alien superweapon and he tortured me as a child to be a fighting machine”. While it delivered the important message that Asian dudes have hot abs too, it needed more.
Then came Everything Everywhere All At Once (EEAAO).
Who would have thought that a movie about jumping through universes, hotdog fingers, and a racoon that controls a chef Ratatouille-style would be the film that captures so much about what it means to be Asian. If you have not watched it, please do, and prepare some tissues.
Disappointing your parents. I would never dream of claiming it as an exclusively Asian experience. However, in a culture known to produce ‘tiger mums’ and ‘helicopter dads’, this theme hits home hard. Perhaps it is because family values are heavily emphasised, and generations are culturally inclined to pin their hopes and dreams on their progeny. Or it is because instead of discussing the weather with strangers and friends alike, we competitively compare our children (our height, grades, schools, incomes, and partners). Parental pressure has always been a consistent theme in Asian media, from Bollywood’s 3 Idiots to Korea’s SKY Castle. In small doses, it feels good to be loved and supported by your parents. E.E.A.A.O. captures the feeling of when one has an overdose. Joy feels shirked and unloved by her mother Evelyn. In a classically Asian manner, Evelyn has replaced “I love you” and “I’m sorry” in her dictionary with “You should eat more” and “Why don’t you ever call?”. Throughout the course of the film, we also find that Evelyn herself has suffered from the disapproval of her father and highlighting the presence of an intergenerational trauma cycle. This is why when Evelyn does express her love to her daughter in the end (as a rock, or when they’re getting sucked into a black-hole bagel), millions of traumatised Asian children worldwide experience a moment of deep catharsis. Some have even joked that Michelle Yeoh deserves an Oscar just for portraying the inconceivable idea of an Asian mother apologising convincingly. Such a collectively shared Asian experience being touchingly portrayed in the film is one of the reasons why this film is a gem. For those who have felt underappreciated and overly scrutinised, this film offers both an apology to the children and an explanation to the parents. In the end, in the small specks of time we get to spend in this ever-expanding multiverse, we would still like to spend them being surrounded by the people we love.
For an Asian kid, there is only one critic harsher than your parents. Yourself. Maybe it is the internalised pressure from said parents. Maybe it is the inherently competitive cultures many of us hail from. Maybe it is an overemphasis on hard work and an underemphasis on balance. Honestly, if a multiverse version of my partner told me I was chosen because I failed at everything I have ever done, I would not know what to do with myself. Evelyn similarly struggles with her life choices. Was she doomed to living the rest of her days frustrated and burnt out, running a failing laundromat embroiled in tax issues? Through her going to different universes she sees what she could have been – including a world where she realises her fantasy of being a movie star. But of course, with every universe comes its own regrets. She does not end up with her current husband, Waymond. In a heart-wrenching Wong Kar Wai-esque scene, Waymond breaks her and the audience’s hearts when he says: “So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.” Sure, we all want to be “movie stars”. Especially here in Oxford, the default is that you are ambitious and want to seize the world. While we are all striving to be the best, EEAAO reminds us that appreciating the magic in every day, and the blessings we do have, is sometimes all that we need. Put some googly eyes on your bags to laugh a little. Dance when there is good music. Appreciate the laundry and the taxes of life.
Waymond Wang. Waymond Wang is proof that empathy and kindness is strength, not weakness as some Andrew Tate-esque followers of toxic masculinity might suggest. When we first met Waymond he seems like the classic bumbling idiot. He is carefree while Evelyn is a ball of stress. But by the end of the movie, we see that this is his superpower, not his weakness.
As Waymond says: “When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything… I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight.” He’s right. His ability to empathise and love is what gets through to Evelyn, enabling her to save Joy. His ability to find happiness and spread happiness is a superpower. As a man, representations of what it means to be powerful and to save the day have always been about stoic and often muscle-bound aggression. Take Superman or James Bond. For Asian men, the media has given us the martial arts icons of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Waymond initially saves the day with his fighting skills as well, in a hilarious spin on Bruce Lee’s nunchucks technique using his fanny pack. His ultimate power lies not in his fists but in his heart. He shows that to save the day, it’s not about being physically imposing or knowing how to smash your way out of anything. You don’t need to be a calculated, cold Michael Corleone or a brash, aggressive Scarface. You need to empathise with the people around you. I have had an abundance of Kung Fu stars show me that I can fight, in a million different martial arts forms. Waymond, portrayed movingly by Ke Huy Quan, showed me how I can love too.
Waymond’s doodly eyes show that his perspective on life has always been the solution to Joy’s (and our) existential dread. Joy’s “everything bagel” black hole is black on the outside with white in the centre. It shows a dark view of the world, where most of it is filled with corruption and evil. Waymond’s doodly eyes are the perfect opposite, with a white outer layer and a black centre, showing that life is filled with mostly goodness. His eyes were first portrayed as a sign of his childishness. Evelyn angrily scolds him, telling him not to put them everywhere, making a mess. When Evelyn puts the doodly eye on her forehead during the climax, showing that she has embraced his way of life, she sees what we see. That the eyes are not a sign of weakness, but the philosophy that will save us from our humdrum, mortal dread. The philosophy of seeing the fun side of things, of making the everyday interesting, and of finding the good in the bad.
The film itself is supposed to be an attack on your senses. Jumping from universe to universe, with intense colours, choreographed fight scenes and hilarious goofs, all while our protagonists are hurtling toward the end of reality. At its climax, however, it gives us a scene in a universe where life did not form. Our protagonists become two rocks, speaking to each other in subtitles. The theatre that was bursting with noise just seconds ago is left in a deafening silence. It is in this silence that our hero, Evelyn, gets her moment of clarity, and manages to get her message across. That Joy is loved, and while everything is nonsense, love is the meaning of the universe. It perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being overwhelmed in the modern world. With assignments, the never-ending doom scroll, and a million television shows on a billion streaming platforms, one could easily feel overwhelmed. Sometimes, we just need that moment of stillness, of clarity. To breathe and just… be a rock. This might be especially important in the Asian context. Those who have been inside an authentic Chinese restaurant could attest that the interlaying sounds of chefs clanging pots, waiters shouting dialects and customers having loud conversations are part of the experience. Those who have watched Chinese news or any Japanese or Korean game show would tell you that every inch of the screen is filled with blaring text or reaction shots. Breathe. Just be a rock. Maybe the way to solve our own doom spiral is to find that moment of stillness for ourselves.
EEAAO is a boundary-breaking, deeply entertaining film that deserves all 11 of its Oscar nominations and more. For the Asian community, it is the first true piece of Hollywood representation that has resonated with us. For me, it’s the film that showed me my past, present and future. What I could be, what I should be and what I am. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.
Politics and Oxford are closely assimilated. Of the total 57 prime ministers to date, 30 were educated here at Oxford, and the relevance of Oxford on the domestic and international political scene is unquestioned. Cherwell wanted to find out what the current students, who will decide tomorrow’s political future, believe. Are we, as Senator Sanders called our student body, “the most progressive generation yet”? Or is Oxford currently host to the next batch of Boris Johnsons and Liz Trusses?
Cherwell’s 2023 Politics Poll received nearly 500 responses from students university-wide, mostly from undergraduates. In general, they were dissatisfied with the current UK government with only 4 percent of students somewhat satisfied or extremely satisfied.
Party time
If a general election were to happen tomorrow, Labour would win strongly, with 61 per cent of students hoping to vote for that party. The Greens would be in second, just a percentage higher in popularity than the Conservatives, while 7.7 percent of students would support the Liberal Democrats. Smaller parties received less than three percent of the vote and 5 percent of students answered none and or that they would abstain.
At the college Level, University College is the most staunchly Labour with 100% of respondents supporting that party in an election, beating out famously-lefti colleges like Wadham.
Stereotypes held true on the other end of the spectrum. The top three Conservative colleges are Oriel, Christ Church and Regent’s Park.
Subject-wise, the top Labour degrees were History and Politics, Human Sciences and Law. Classics and PPE did not top the list of Tory degrees. Instead, Theology, Philosophy and Classical Archeology and Ancient History came out on top.
When asked to choose between Labour and Conservative, 83 per cent of respondents answered Labour, with only 17 per cent Conservative. On the whole, most students feel that Oxford’s student body is progressive, regardless of party affiliation. In terms of more precise political ideology, 50.8 percent answered Socialism, 23.8 percent Liberalism and 8 percent Conservativism. Despite academia’s far-left reputation, 1.8 percent of respondents answered Communism. When offered the choice between Capitalism and Socialism, most favoured the latter system.
A Labour supporting student said “capitalism has left millions of people in the UK alone to freeze and/or starve this winter while energy companies announce record profits.” One other said “nobody should be 20,000 times richer than someone else.” “Socialism is the next step in the development of human kind” claimed one respondent, “The late stage capitalism system is a failure that benefits only the few”. Arguments against socialism given in the 2023 Politics Poll pointed at historical failure of socialism, contrasted against the possible freedoms and wealth in capitalist societies.
The future politicians: they’re not just PPEists
Just under a quarter of Oxford students would enter politics in the future, while 77.9 percent had no intention. However, if the job of Prime Minister was offered to them 43.9 percent would take up the post. The majority of students would not like to be Prime Minister and around the same number are unhappy that so many Prime Ministers have been to Oxford University.
Unsurprisingly, the PPEists were the most eager politicians, but still less than half of those students admit to wanting a career in politics. Historians were next likely to aspire to politics, followed by Lawyers, then Classicists and Geographers.
23 per cent of Labour supporters want to enter politics, while 32.5 percent of their Conservative counterparts do.
One Labour student wrote that “it seems that those that most want to hold leadership positions are actually the least qualified to hold them (looking at the Union and the characters that it attracts).” Another student is disheartened at “the thought that all the Oxbridge educated politicians were just hacks ”.
One Conservative student said Oxford politics is “extremely toxic. JCR Committees and the Oxford Union should both be abolished.”
Freedom to preach
A large majority of Conservative students believe they cannot express their political views in Oxford for fear of potential ramifications. This is juxtaposed by 76 percent of Labour and Green voters who said they were able to express their views freely. Lib Dem voters were split 50/50.
One Conservative said “You are sometimes not allowed to express any view out of the consensus of the student body without unreasonable scrutiny or social loss. I might be allowed to say what I want, but it still comes with consequences.” One Reform voter in the 2023 Politics Poll echoed this sentiment: “It is true what they say… [Oxford] is very left wing dominated, especially by academics. Any slightly right wing comment and you’ve been branded as something you’re not.” Another ‘moderate left’ Labour supporter described the cancel culture as ‘worrying’.
Nevertheless, there are many political forums in Oxford. The Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) and Oxford University Labour Club (OULC)both hold debate and drinking events. OUCA has Port and Policy, and OULC has Beer and Bickering. Only a small fraction of respondents had been to either: 16.9 per cent for Port and Policy, and 22.7 per cent for Beer and Bickering. Those who attend attest to prejudice at times, including one student who “despite being a socialist, had very unpleasant experiences with those politically involved on the left” due to their attendance of Port and Policy.
The reputation of these groups is not good overall. One student said that “the only thing worse than the OUCA (private school Tories who are completely out of touch) are the private school commies who are completely out of touch.” Another claimed “student politics is mostly useless. The big names in OULC or OUCA won’t be the Oxbridge graduates who make big change in years to come.”
When asked about the political scene in Oxford one student said: “There’s the joke that everyone at Oxford wants to be prime minister. I mentioned this to some of my friends, one said “oh no, I only want to be a SPAD”, the other said, “well, I’d be happy with a cabinet position personally”. The thing is they weren’t even joking.”
Another student believes that there are students with the intelligence and empathy to solve political problems, however, “those people are not likely to be the people that go into politics. Unfortunately, politics tends to select ugly people that crave power and status.”
One disillusioned student also hated this trend and the “union to Westminster pipeline”, which creates politicians who “think politics is a game, and it’s like they’re still at Uni.”
Re-drawing party lines and re-writing political discourse
Students were asked if they feel represented in the political discourse of today. Most answered no. When broken down at a party level, Greens felt the most left- out, followed by Conservative students, then Labour supporters and Lib Dems.
Socialist and conservative students had many grievances. Green students told the 2023 Politics Poll that “the mainstream political discourse is between outright fascism on one side and a socially conservative economic liberalism on the other.” One student who chose Labour said: “Kier Starmer is a red Tory”, another feels that “champagne socialists have taken over.” Disillusioned Conservatives students complained that they didn’t feel represented in the House of Commons or Lords.
Many students complain of a lack of centrist options or nuance in contemporary politics. One noted that there is “no credible centre-centre-right option”. Another pointed out that their “views (perhaps because they are so divergent on various issues) are not well-represented by the political elite, even though [they] may mix with the future political elite.” One simply because “Nobody is nuanced.”
Political discourse and party power angered many. One student bemoaned a lack of “serious opposition to Brexit within political discourse”. Lib Dem students said the “Political discourse is too focused on the power of parties and not making meaningful changes.” One Reform UK student said that “there is no party that wants low government intervention anymore” another said “too often people are put into one group or another based on one viewpoint they have or even based on appearance.” One SNP voter worried that “in the day and age when MPs tell everyone 15-minute cities are an attempt to “take away personal freedom” I don’t know if we’ll ever approach reasonable and informed political discourse.”
Non-traditional parties do thrive at Oxford, with one Monster Raving Looney Party supporter expressing that the voices and issues they care about “are shut out by many other louder voices on much more menial topics.”
Rule Britannia?
Students were asked, if applicable, whether they were proud to be British. A narrow majority of 54 percent said “No”, while 46 per cent said they were proud to be British. Nearly all Conservative voters were proud to be British, while the vast majority of Green voters were not.
Most of those who are not proud to be British are Green and Labour students. One Labour student said “I love my home, but when I think of Britain as an entity in both the past and present it’s hard to find much that’s worth being particularly proud of – even our “successes” are built on blood.” Some others said simply because “We left the EU”, “the police are corrupt” and that they were proud “sometimes when we play football but don’t like all the colonial stuff.” Numerous respondents referred to Britain as “Terf Island”.
Many Labour student opinions were related to the current government. A further student surmised: “The way the government has conducted itself in the last few years is disgraceful, and makes me ashamed to be associated with what they represent about Britain.” A second labour student was more explicit: “First world country that oppresses its poorest. Why would I be proud of this?”.
Those who answered in the affirmative did so for a variety of reasons. Conservative and Reform voters were almost wholly found in this category. Many said “we are the most important country in world history”, with “great culture”, a “glorious history” and “wonderful Tradition”. One called the UK the “Stronghold of Protestantism and the beauty of the Anglo-Celtic union.” Another said “luv me country, luv me beer, ‘ate the french. Simple as.”
One proud Liberal Democrat student said “while flawed in many ways, Britain has one of the most successfully multicultural societies in the world and, as a result, an amazingly diverse culture, especially in the cities.”
There were a good number of Labour voters who were proud of being British. One student answering the 2023 Politics Poll said that “humour and pubs are good”. “Our great universities (both of them)”. Others mentioned the UK’s “great queues,” “Monarchy,” “The North, “sport, history, culture, national values.” “Our shared knowledge of those random Christian songs we sang in primary school. Our inability to decide what a roll/bun/bread should be called.”
When it came to one of Britain’s most famous institutions, the monarchy, most students would abolish it. A strong minority however, believe it is important. This minority values its history and sees royal power as the essential referee in our political system.
This question had a strong partisan divide: 85 percent of Conservatives would keep the monarchy, while 56 per cent of Labour supporters would abolish it. Labour students in favour of abolition said: “There is no need for the people to support the socially useless feudal elite.” Another said “While not something I would push for at the expense of more practical concerns, the monarchy is obsolete and contributes to the UK’s archaic political culture.” One Lib Dem called it a “functionless institution.”
Some conservatives in the 2023 Politics Poll had a mixed opinion on the monarchy: “I don’t want to abolish it but I can understand it being gradually phased away over the next couple of generations of the family”. Many students also had weaker opinions on abolishing the power of the royal family, one writing “We should…but like eh. They’re kinda fun.”
