Thursday 25th September 2025
Blog Page 248

Liz Truss promises Oxbridge admissions shakeup

Izzie Alexandrou
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Liz Truss promises Oxbridge admissions shakeup

Liz Truss, frontrunner in the race for Conservative Party leadership, has suggested she will reform the Oxbridge admissions system to give all top students a chance for a place. 

As part of a six-point education plan announced last Friday, the Oxford graduate proposed that any student with three A* grades at A level should automatically be invited to interview at Oxbridge. 

The proposal was put forward in a bid to improve social mobility. The current foreign secretary, an alumni of Merton College, believes that this reform will inspire students who are discouraged by teachers who believe that Oxbridge is “full of toffs.” 

Truss told The Sunday Times: “There’s a lot of evidence that women are less likely to ask for a promotion and actually one of the best ways of making the system fairer is to identify the people that are talented and ask them if they want that opportunity.” 

UCAS has rejected an approach of this nature in the past since it would “significantly disadvantage underrepresented and disabled students, unless secondary and/or university calendars are changed.”  The proposal also puts increased weight on exam performance rather than the other factors which are considered in the current system. The measures are said to be counter-productive since students who are private or selective school educated achieve the highest proportion of these grades.

Truss has further been accused of “micromanagement” by a major teaching union, for the curb in admissions autonomy. Should the proposal be implemented, it would involve 13,000 Oxbridge interviews in England alone, solely from the students achieving 3 A*’s, excluding those who apply on their own merit. The move would compel the universities to hold thousands of extra interviews every year, resulting in what has been described as a “procedural nightmare.” 

Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher, an organisation representing over 40 universities, said, “As well as showing no consideration that Oxbridge might not necessarily be the right choice for everyone, Ms Truss’s proposals reveal no regard for logistics or legalities.”

Furthermore, the reform would require the admissions process to be shifted (a system labelled “post-qualification admissions”) until after results day, which would abandon the current predicted grades system.  A plan to implement PQA however was abandoned just 6 months ago by the Department of Education, since support for the proposal was “not strong enough.”

Truss’s pledge has been branded “bafflingly obtuse, poorly thought through and impossible to implement,” however she remains hopeful in her bid to become the “education prime minister” that this policy will “ensure our education system gets back on track.” 

Is Labour still about labour?

Laura Koscielska
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Is Labour still about labour?

More and more people, both supporters of the Labour Party and its members, are growing frustrated with the party’s lack of solidarity with striking workers and trade unions, especially in the face of the rapidly rising cost of living. Apart from that, the stance on the re-nationalisation of key sectors such as rail, water, energy, and mail, is not clear. Both, it is argued, lie in the interest of the working class. But if Labour, a party founded by trade unions, does not stand by workers, what is really left of it? 

Some people have noticed that the Labour Party is becoming progressively detached from the needs of the working class. During the rail strike in June, there was no firm support for industrial action voiced by the leader of the party and Starmer even urged his frontbench MPs to stay away from picket lines, which suggests that he does not feel fully confident about the party’s involvement in such disputes. What followed was Sam Tarry being dismissed as shadow transport minister for doing broadcast interviews from an RMT picket line, to which unions reacted with understandable frustration. 

The decision angered many members of the Labour Party and the new policy ordering senior MPs not to join picket lines was questioned by mayors Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham and others. Khan said that he would happily join a picket line and that “the trade unions have been a core force for good to our country over the recent weeks, months and years.” According to Burnham, Labour might come over as a party that undermines workers fighting for better work conditions and the cost of living crisis if they’re not careful. 

Actively avoiding controversy stemming from supporting strikes can appear to be wise, as industrial action is often portrayed as selfish, unreasonable, and even dangerous by certain mainstream media. Distancing oneself from such heated debate minimises the potential damage that could be inflicted on the party’s image. 

However, detaching oneself from strike action as a party founded by trade unions and aiming to represent the interests of working people is, according to many, a mistake that puts Labour’s integrity and core values at risk. For tens of thousands of working-class people, it means that the party dissociates itself from their cause and neglects their needs. 

Apart from that, just recently, the stance on re-nationalisation of key sectors such as rail, water, energy, and mail, was practically thrown in the bin. The pledge of re-nationalisation made by Labour during the Corbyn era was dropped by Starmer, with the exception of the railways. The leader of the Labour Party also said they will not tackle private sector outsourcing of the NHS in case they win. 

Given the horrendous prices of train tickets and energy, it is not difficult to argue that the privatisation of these sectors did more harm than good. Especially in the face of how countries such as France, Germany, and Spain deal with these industries, there is a feeling gaining momentum that we ought to change something and bring them back into the hands of the public. The NHS, too, many argue, ought to be protected from privatisation, as private sector outsourcing means less accessibility. Aside from healthcare, private water companies continue to dump increasingly more toxic pollutants into UK’s waters and environmental groups call for their nationalisation in order to protect water supplies. Overall, the case for re-nationalisation is very strong and deserves consideration. 

It is visible that there isn’t a strong unison between Labour members and their leader as to whether actively supporting strikes and re-nationalisation is the correct way forward or not, highlighting the ideological tensions and polarisation within the party. Labour is not all about labour and the interest of the working class, which is why Starmer might face even harsher criticism and his formerly celebrated leadership could be questioned further. In the face of the threat of a general strike, Labour has to unequivocally choose its side and decide its ideological position. It may be the challenge that will determine the future of the party.

Image: Mtaylor848, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Economics of Pride

Madi Hopper
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The Economics of Pride

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The first line from the most famous of straight stories marks the start of Fire Island, the latest Pride Month release on Disney+. The film, a loose adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, unapologetically reveals the law of desire that seems to rule throughout space and time: that ‘possession’ puts you in a better position to ‘want’. 

Andrew Ahn’s film confirms that queer relationships stand no chance of escaping Jane Austen’s seemingly universal truth. As the group of friends led by two gay Asian men embark on their annual trip to Fire Island, with great plans for parties, orgies, and vacation flings, they discover that paradise has many gates. They are scorned by white gay men who are financially more successful, who find their behaviour – from things as small as loud yelling and the flailing of arms, to the ‘stealing’ of cheese and wine at private parties – eccentric at best and despicable at worst. Rather than a bacchanal where all participants are equal, Fire Island is divided into social circles with clear boundaries, which repeatedly attempt to bar our protagonists even from parties they are invited to. 

These social strata drawn up by the difference in financial circumstances are unmissable on Fire Island as a setting. The island, just a short boat ride away from New York City, is speckled with three-storey mansions, which dwarf the small vacation house that the protagonists are about to lose – a house that supposedly cost all of their lesbian friend’s lawsuit windfall. The mansions belong to lawyers, doctors and the like, middle to upper class white men who refer to Noah and Howie – the Jane and Lizzie of the story – as ‘the Asian guys’. And just like the Bennet girls facing the Bingley siblings at Netherfield, the group of protagonists, who from very early on are introduced as never being able to afford to buy properties, seem completely out of place on an island supposedly reserved for the queer community that they also belong to. 

Surprising as it is, the well-to-do queer vacationers on Fire Island as portrayed in the film can easily find their parallels in our reality. We have seen Ellen DeGeneres call up celebrity friends in her massive living room during the pandemic on TV, read about Anderson Cooper’s decision not to pass on his $200 million net worth as his children’s inheritance, and followed the political career of Pete Buttigieg, a Harvard and Oxford graduate. Although LGBTQ+ equality in the world still has far to go, more and more queer people have managed to secure their places among the rich and successful. Their achievement is a sign of progress in itself, but at the same time it is also an indication that not all participants are financially and socially equal in the queer community’s shared fight for equality. Just as portrayed in Fire Island, where white gay men’s micro aggressions and latent racism towards their Asian peers are commonplace, ethnicity acts as an undeniable divisive factor among queer individuals. Although the claim of ‘white gay privilege’ in an article published on metro.co.uk may appear limited and premature, it is hard to ignore the size and depth of ethnic inequality reflected in the article’s statistics borrowed from FS Magazine, which sees ‘80% of Black men, 79% of Asian men and 75% of south Asian men hav[ing] faced racism on the gay scene’. Accompanying the racial discrimination in the LGBTQ+ community is the financial gap between privileged and underprivileged ethnic groups in the wider society where, according to a report by Office for National Statistics on Household wealth by ethnicity in Britain from April 2016 to March 2018, ‘households in the Black African (20%) and Arab (17%) ethnic groups have the lowest rates of home ownership, compared with 68% of White British and 74% of Indian households’. 

Admittedly, the LGBTQ+ cinema and TV releases in recent years have grown better at addressing the discrepancy between the white and non-white queer experience. Moving away from the all-white cast prevalent in the earlier wave of queer TV productions such as Queer As Folk (both the original and the first American version) and Looking, the latest queer series have done relatively well on the diversity front: from HBO’s We Are Who We Are (2020), to Hulu’s Love, Victor, to the more recent shows such as Netflix’s First Kill (2022), non-white characters are finally given the central spotlight. 

Yet alongside the progress in diversity on the screen, there seems to be an equally noticeable regression in class representation, especially in productions that feature queer young adults. It is hard not to notice the sheer number of middle and upper class families featured in First Kill’s Savannah neighbourhood, which seems to consist exclusively of mansions and Teslas. There is also the set for the fictional parties, which seem only to be able to take place in big suburban houses, from Stacey’s presidential campaign party in Disney+’s Crush (2022), to the mansion that contains actual murals on top of chandeliers in First Kill and, most ironically, the mansion fitted with a grand piano and a swimming pool that the protagonists in We Are Who We Are so desperately need for their rave and have to break into. 

And on top of the queer protagonists’ social life, the display of wealth seems to become anonymous even with the expression of their sexuality. While its outcome used to be decided by a spin of the bottle, the game ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven’ in Crush allocates partners by using the teenagers’ latest model smartphones as lots, so that the players can make out in a bathroom that looks just a tad too big and luxurious-looking for an average school trip. There is also the half-ruined Valentino dress that Juliette wears as she kisses Calliope in the dark in First Kill. The funniest example  remains the props on Paige’s bedroom shelf in Crush: among the small collection of sex toys supplied by her mom, there is a vibrator from LELO priced at £139, a limited edition ‘Unicorn Wand’ from Le Wand that costs $225, and another vibrator from Lora DiCarlo retailed for $170. The underlying message is quite clear: if you don’t live in a big house with generous parents, your lesbianism is not worth being on TV. 

Compared to the latest batch of queer teenagers on TV, the protagonists of Fire Island, dressed in their thrifted outfits and crying over their non-waterproof iPhone 6S, seem like time travellers in comparison – from a time a mere decade ago, when queer characters still lived in shared apartments and worked non-standard jobs they didn’t know how to describe. It is time to realise that class representation in LGBTQ+ screen productions is as important a step towards equality as diversity and inclusion – that glamour should be affordable for all, and that love should not be bought.

Vessel : A Review

Cia Mangat
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Vessel : A Review

CW : mention of disordered eating, fat phobia, body dysmorphia

Have you ever wept in a toilet stall—maybe during a particularly rough school day, maybe during a night out that went wrong—thinking that you were completely insulated from the world outside, only to realise that there’s a giant gap in the door –  so whoever is walking past can definitely see you, all puffy-faced? Grace Olusola’s Vessel spoke directly to my teenage self and my current self alike, as I found myself in that exact situation after the show: watching the play felt like having my private, internal feelings about my body and food externalised and projected onto the stage at the Old Fire Station this Trinity. I felt seen. 

Last summer I vented my frustrations at feeling like the only fat person at Oxford on Twitter, and my notifications pinged more than normal for a little while. Initially, I worried that a play seeking to address themes of bodies and food in the Oxford community would centre the experiences of people who are afraid of looking like me. While I do not seek to invalidate the experience of people who are insecure and conventionally attractive, there’s a difference between being insecure about having rolls when you slouch and, as the Comedienne comments, “the world decid[ing] whether you’re ugly or not for you”.

Yet Olusola and her team of six other directors have taken the wide-ranging diversity of such relationships with body image into close consideration. Vessel is made up of twelve discrete episodes, each drawing inspiration from student survey responses on questions around bodies and food. The episodes differed significantly in tone, managing to tackle these issues with sensitivity and humour, and reminded me of scrolling through TikTok: we see a spoof of 2000s fatphobic TV shows, titled ‘Formerly Grotesque Fat People Bake On Blind Dates While We Watch’, and a monologue on different kinds of Reese’s peanut butter cups, among others. In ‘Not Like other Girls’ we even see a girl sniffling in the school toilets, not unlike me after the show.

The episodic structure and use of several directors is certainly a strength of the show, reflecting how our relationships with food and our bodies has as much to do with class, race, gender and sexuality as with what we see when we look in the mirror. I particularly enjoyed how the show played around with form and structure to reflect this: in ‘Femi’, Tariro Tinwaro sings of a best friend with an eating disorder “outrunning bodies like mine”, while in ‘The Comedienne’ we see Chloe Ralph hilariously enact the awkwardness of mediocre standup about her friend group and conclude “with friends this fucked up, this may be one of the few situations in life where being the fat one is actually the best status in the group.” 

Olusola cites her experience as a welfare officer at St. Catherine’s College, as well as her own body image struggles, as a catalyst for Vessel: this certainly shows throughout the production, albeit not in a way that feels patronising, didactic or reductive. At the beginning we hear a voiceover announce the show’s trigger warnings, and that if at any point an audience member needs to leave and take a break, they are welcome to do so. Likewise, at the end the crew offered pens and index cards to audience members as a chance to reflect on what they had just seen.

While I did sometimes find myself wishing for more cohesion between the writing of the episodes, I enjoyed the way that each episode was announced by the pinning of a poster or a graphic with its title to a board at the back of the stage, creating a sense of collaginess and accumulation. This imagery of food wrappers and containers was neatly alluded to in ‘Motherhood’, an episode where a woman tidying the house for a date discovers her daughter’s binge-eating stash concealed between stage blocks. During the interval, a friend remarked that the episodic nature reminded her of opening a door at a house party and accidentally walking in on a conversation between strangers that you were not meant to overhear, as alluded to perfectly in a scene where we watch the awkward reconnecting between old friends gradually tip over into a painful conservation about responsibility when one is  mentally ill. Olusola’s skilful writing shines through in lines like “I had a brain that betrayed me–you were the collateral”, and “sorry, force of habit, when you’re at death’s door [so often] you start leaving a key under the doormat.”

The presence of fat actors and explicitly working-class characters, albeit only a handful, on a student stage was particularly refreshing to see, although I did find myself wishing for more than a few of the twelve episodes in a show about bodies to centre their experiences.

Overall, Vessel’s careful balancing of sensitivity and humour in its treatment of the subject matter of body image and food made it an important and worthwhile watch; I can only hope that we see more stories and actors with these experiences on the Oxford student stage in the future. 

OURFC condemns Rugby Football Union’s ‘trans ban’

Izzie Alexandrou
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OURFC condemns Rugby Football Union’s ‘trans ban’

The Oxford University Rugby Football club has released a statement condemning the decision of the Rugby Football Union Council to imposed a on ban transgender women participating in women’s rugby. The RFU – the governing body for the sport in England – voted in favour of amending its participation policy last Friday.

The “Gender Participation Policy” means that transgender women will not be permitted to participate in female contact rugby competitions in England. The RFU claimed to be taking a “precautionary approach” to “ensure fair competition and safety” of competitors but recognized “it is not possible to equally balance fairness, safety and inclusion.” The new policy specifies that players in the female category will only be permitted if “the sex originally recorded at birth is female”.

OURFC’s statement said: “in the community game, we feel that it is of paramount importance to foster a welcoming community that values participation”. It suggested that the application of a blanket ban lacked “sufficient nuance” and did not adequately accommodate the distinctions between different levels of rugby.  

OURFC stated that the circumstances did not command such a mandate, and “with fewer than ten transgender women playing community rugby under the current requirements, we feel that there was little justification to prioritise haste over a more representative canvassing of key stakeholders’ voices.”

Furthermore, they stated the decision felt “rushed” – OURFC were not consulted before the vote, despite being one of a very small number of clubs in the country that the decision immediately impacted, and therefore said that the consultation “failed to take into account the views of the very players this decision directly affects.” 

The decision of the RFU has sparked considerable outrage nationwide. A tweet by the York RI Ladies Rugby Union team stated that the RFU were “on the wrong side of history,” and Mermaids, a charity supporting transgender children, tweeted that it was a “dark day for rugby.” 

A very Italian scandal: the story of Draghi’s fall

Antonio Pattori
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A very Italian scandal: the story of Draghi’s fall

We live in an age of political instability. From Boris Johnson’s resignation to Emmanuel Macron losing his parliamentary majority, European governments in the past few months have been in the midst of turmoil. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Italy felt the need to reassert its primacy as the centre of political chaos: Mario Draghi, Italy’s national unity government Prime Minister has resigned after three parties refused to express parliamentary confidence in his government. Reactions in Italy have ranged from disbelief to relief, and, while this crisis has only anticipated Draghi’s resignation by six months (elections were due to be held in March 2023) it nonetheless highlights the massive challenges ahead, for both Italian and European stability.

The uniqueness of Italian politics is its surreal and absurd dimensions. Most in Italy and Europe are left baffled by the decision to pull out from Draghi’s government which had united Italian parties in a new spirit of cooperation. The unfortunate reality is that many Italians do not realise what has been lost. A vast amount of Italians is against Draghi’s support for Ukraine, and many stood against his de facto mandatory vaccination scheme, the so-called ‘green pass’. Draghi was a great resource for Italy, yet one which, I fear, we will learn to appreciate more as time moves on. Certainly, it must be said, many are feeling simply utterly confused and lost about the recent events, as party politics trumps the common good.

The crisis was ignited by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and his Five Star Movement. However, the refusal to continue in the government of the right-of-centre parties, namely Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, further ended any chances of having Mario Draghi stay in power. The reasons for this are wholly political. For the League and Forza Italia, the decision was related to machinations within the right-wing coalition: the third right wing party, Brothers of Italy, led by Italy’s Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, had refused to join the Draghi government and was draining support away from the other traditional conservative parties. For the Conte’s Five Star Movement, a party which has lost most of its support, the decision marked a return to its radical roots in order to seek electoral resuscitation. Essentially, it was the last spasm of a dying beast. In the process, Mario Draghi was sacrificed. Many have described Draghi as ‘Super Mario’, an epithet he perhaps does not fully deserve. Draghi was not a panacea to all problems, and most of Italy’s structural issues have persisted. Indeed, Draghi’s speech to parliament was confrontational and, one might argue, further escalated the crisis.  However, no one in Italy has Draghi’s international standing and ability, one reinforced by his past tenure as European Central Bank President, and by his English fluency (a rare feat in Italian politics). From leading one of Europe’s most successful vaccination programs, securing 191 billion euros for Italy through the European Recovery Plan, to leading Europe’s stance on Ukraine, Draghi has undoubtedly been a leader in a Europe where France and Germany have also seen political instability. 

The situation is not tragic and only anticipates elections by six months. It nevertheless remains absurd. Italy’s plans to spend the 191 billion euros need to be accompanied by structural reforms asked by the EU, and the absence of a stable government will risk the whole survival of the recovery plan. A missed opportunity of majestic proportions. The same applies to the national budget, which needs ratification before the September elections. In the meantime all parties have been left tainted: the right-wing coalition parties, primarily the League and Brothers of Italy, with their often anti-European stance, could scarcely manage the European Recovery Fund; the centre-left Democratic Party has been hurt by its association with the Five Star Movement; and many parties have opposed Draghi’s policies on Ukraine, often trying to block the sending of arms against Russia. The international ramifications are thus incredibly important, and, whilst fresh elections are to be welcomed, a success for the League or the Five Star Movement would signify a success for some who in the past strongly supported Putin. The leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, for example, once called Putin ‘a great European statesman’. Exactly as advocated by Alexander Dugin, one of the philosophers of Putin’s Russian expansionism, Russia could seek to break NATO through Germany and Italy. The unpopularity of Draghi’s support for Ukraine suggests that in this task Putin has made significant progress. 
It is an old adage that Italian politics follows the maxim expressed in Lampedusa’s Gattopardo (‘The Leopard’), namely that all must change for all to remain the same. Indeed, Italy remains unstable and divided, and Italian politics continue as a bizarre, comedic, tragic, and oxymoronic exercise in political incompetence. Yet, this last of many crises suggests a failure to grasp an opportunity, perhaps the last, to attempt to fix Italy’s problems. Draghi could scarcely fix a nation with such a varied coalition, yet he had set the circumstances for a new period of competence and good government. Perhaps it was only an illusion of change cut short by the electoral posturing. The only thing we know for certain is that Italy’s political future remains thoroughly uncertain.

Image: CC2:0, Flickr via European Central Parliament

The Guardian of the Constitution: an institutional look at the jubilee

Carl Haller
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The Guardian of the Constitution: an institutional look at the jubilee

Imagine you were asked by a visitor from another country, or perhaps even another planet, to explain the unusual activity in the UK this year. What of the red, white and blue flags, the bunting, the songs and celebration? Why did Paddington Bear chugg an entire pot of tea and why did Rod Stewart sing “Sweet Caroline” outside Buckingham Palace? I suppose that last question is destined to remain unanswered forever, but to the previous ones, most people would probably reply that we are celebrating the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and thus honouring her incredible personal achievements. Her achievements are indeed impressive and deserving of high praise: she has devoted her life to the service of her people and her country, to such an extent that she has almost come to be seen as synonymous with the institution of the Crown. This close identification comes with obvious dangers, however: it risks overlooking the crucial role that the Monarch plays in the British constitution, it’s role as the Guardian of the Constitution.

To set out what I mean by this, we must take a short detour through 19th and 20th-century constitutional theory. The fundamental challenge faced by would-be constitution framers is to reconcile two contradictory needs: on the one hand, the constitution must empower the state and the elected government to act for the common good and the general welfare, by providing institutions that can adequately meet and are responsive to the needs of its citizens. This aspect of governance is by its very nature dynamic, as the state must be able to evolve to meet the changing needs of its citizens and respond to unforeseen crises, assuming new responsibilities in the process.

The other side of this balance may be found in a remark of St. Augustine: “Take away the law and what is left of the state but a gang of robbers?“ The scope of the governing authority must be constrained by “the rule of law”, by a set of norms, procedures and precedents contained in the constitutional order. Any functioning constitution must have a set of stabilising institutions, a living voice preventing any group or individual from seizing control of the institutions of the state by making such significant changes to the constitutional order that it is reframed to advance and protect the interests of the governing class or individual, excluding the rest of society from economic and political participation. Iterations of such a set of institutions are as varied as the kinds of states that have existed over the centuries; Rome had its senate, the American constitution famously features a set of institutional checks and balances and the French Bonapartist constitution of 1852 included a Sénat Conservateur, which was to annul acts of the government it deemed to be violating the constitution.

This set of constraining institutions provides us with an initial working definition of the Guardian of the Constitution, though my use of this term here will no doubt draw raised eyebrows from any lawyers reading this, as they will be familiar with it from the famous dispute between legal theorists in Weimar Germany, most notably the jurists Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt. At the centre of their dispute was the question of how far a constitutional court could be said to fulfil such a role, with Kelsen arguing this role should fall to the constitutional court (Reichsgericht), and Schmitt looking to place it with the head of state (Reichspräsident). It is not my intention to split jurisprudential hairs here. I will simply agree with both parties: not constitutional court or head of state, but both constitutional court and head of state are valuable safeguards of the constitutional order. Kelsen is right in saying that a constitutional court has an important role to play in policing the boundaries of constitutional government. But any constitutional court will be vulnerable to political influence from other branches of government, who may and in practice often do seek to influence it by appointing to it members loyal to one party’s particular vision of government; moreover, a constitutional court sometimes must make decisions that are highly politically charged, such that it cannot be said to be a truly apolitical arbiter. This makes it politically imprudent to look to a constitutional court alone to act as Guardian of the Constitution. 

How, then, can it be said that the Monarchy may be called the Guardian of the Constitution? Descriptions of the head of state usually emphasise the ceremonial aspects of the role, but there is more to this position than being a symbol of national unity and entertaining foreign ambassadors at white tie dinners. It is pointed out during the Kelsen-Schmitt debates that the constitutions of most parliamentary democracies distinguish between the head of government, who sets the policy agenda and governs and the head of state. This position, be it a president or a monarch, is usually invested with the power to sign bills passed by parliament into law, is granted immunity from prosecution, formally appoints ministers and may dissolve the elected parliament at the request of the head of government. How are we to understand the purpose of this institution?

Schmitt argues that it is best understood through the lens of the 19th-century political theorist Benjamin Constant. In Constant’s theory of the state, in addition to the classic tripartite distinction between legislative, executive and judiciary we find a pouvoir neutre, a branch of government that is to act as a neutral arbiter and mediator between the other branches in case of disputes or constitutional crises and may act to restrain the other branches if the fundamental fabric of the constitutional order is threatened. Thus, in German constitutional theory, the president is sometimes described as Oberster Bundesnotar or supreme federal notary, who may prevent a bill from becoming law if he deems it to violate the constitution. This is the role fulfilled by a head of state, of whom it may be said that il règne et ne gouverne pas – he reigns but does not govern. This is the Guardian of the Constitution. 

Given the fact that elected presidencies exist in many European countries, what then makes Her Majesty better suited to this role than, say, President Tony Blair or Lord Protector David Cameron? It is certainly true that a president may, and often does, play this role. However, as I shall attempt to set out, it is a role that is arguably better filled by a constitutional monarch, especially in a polity in which it is established precedent. Consider the demands that this role makes of the person who occupies it: a neutral, apolitical arbiter requires a neutral, politically unambitious personality who is concerned not with realising a political agenda but solely with the preservation of the constitutional order. The German constitution, for example, requires the president to resign his party membership upon being elected. Such neutrality in a career politician is illusory of course if we are not to suppose that he will also resign his political convictions and personal party connections. This fact is not lost on those party to the process of selecting a president – an elected head of state is inherently politicised because he is elevated to his position through a political process. Thus, the recent Italian presidential election was preceded by a squabble between the major political parties over whose candidate to elevate to the office. In the end, no candidate could secure cross-party approval, meaning that 80-year-old incumbent Sergio Mattarella was pressured into accepting another 7-year term despite wishing to retire.

This event demonstrates another undesirable feature of an elected presidency compared to a constitutional monarchy – its inherent instability. Apart from the long and potentially inconclusive balancing act of selecting a new president, an elected presidency is vulnerable to being neutralised as a constitutional safeguard if it ends up being contested at an unfortunate moment, either because the term of an incumbent president is ending or because the occupant of the office dies at an inopportune moment. Consider here the Weimar Republic’s 1932 presidential election: 1932 was a time of economic crisis and massive political instability, with the country already on the brink of dictatorship and the political arena being dominated by two radical forces, Hitler’s National Socialists and Thälmann’s Communists, both of whom made no secret of their disdain for democracy and their wish sweep aside the constitutional order. Thus, when a stabilising force was needed most the two most destabilising elements, Hitler and Thälmann, were able to make a bid for the presidency. Though this bid was ultimately unsuccessful, it shows how an elected presidency may be vulnerable to a populist seeking to upend the constitutional order. Far from being an advantage, the fact that it is more democratic is a supreme disadvantage in an institution meant to safeguard the constitutional order against the elected government.

From an a priori theoretical perspective, it seems that constitutional monarchy has the edge. It is, however, worth bearing in mind that the question here is not one of abstract theory, but a choice between continuity and rupture. Tinkering with the fundamentals of the constitutional order always comes with a massive risk – it is nothing less than open-heart surgery at the ventricles of democracy and is thus only to be undertaken if warranted by an overwhelming threat to public safety. This is because all constitutions, but especially the unwritten British constitution, are built on precedent. Again, I must emphasise that the distinction between a Rechtsstaat (legal state, a state adhering to the rule of law) and a state of arbitrary despotism is that in the former case government and officers of the state are bound by a set of transparent norms, through which a citizen may know how the state and its officers will act in given situations. The citizen knows that any new law the executive government wishes to enforce must first be approved by parliament and that he is entitled to a trial by jury if he is charged with a crime on the basis of such a law.

These norms are as much social as they are legal, they are “not set down in any written statute or ordinance, but depend merely upon immemorial usage, that is, upon common law, for their support,” as Blackstone writes in his commentaries. Setting a precedent for the complete overhaul of the constitutional order is thus highly dangerous. If, with one sweeping act, centuries of constitutional precedent may simply be set aside, why not Habeas Corpus? Why not the 1689 Bill of Rights or Magna Charta? Such a radical break with constitutional precedent would also place any future elected president in a highly precarious position since it would create a precedent for removing a head of state should he become an obstacle to an ambitious populist seeking to overturn the constitutional order. Thus, at least for the foreseeable future, the ability of any elected president to act as Guardian of the Constitution and reign in a government seeking to override its constitutional bounds would be severely limited.

Is such a dangerous venture warranted when the British constitution has for centuries provided its commonwealth with democratically accountable governments which have largely respected the rights and liberties of their citizens, maintained the constitutional order and peacefully ceded power upon losing their public mandate? Given this enormous risk, is it justified to call into question the legitimacy of the monarchy when this institution, far from being a threat to the rights and liberties of the citizen guarantees their continued existence? Does anyone really think that a future Charles III might take after his namesake and, say, reconstitute the Court of the Star Chamber?

Or is the prudent thing to do here to pop open the champagne bottles and celebrate? To celebrate the phenomenal achievements of a particular monarch as well as the continuing existence of an institution that acts as the final and ultimate guarantor of the democratic constitutional order? All things, including the champagne, considered, I think the answer is clear. 

Image credit: Jonny Gios

Lionesses with a loud roar

Zoe Abereoje
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Lionesses with a loud roar

With the Lionesses heading to the final, it is expected that on Sunday many more will turn on the TV and support the team as they make a bid to win the Women’s Euro. The team as a whole is impressive, they’ve shown lots of potential and given the spectators hope. Here are my top four picks for the best players so far:

Millie Bright

Millie Bright is one of the stars of a formidable Chelsea Women side and her form is just as impressive for the England side. While it may be easy to overlook her key role in the team when the defensive side of England isn’t under pressure, as was the case in the group stages, her assertive role in the quarter final against Spain explicitly highlighted her defensive capabilities and importance. While the semis didn’t force Bright to play in the way she did against Spain, her ability to thwart Sweden’s hopes to stay in the competition did not go unnoticed. 

Leah Williamson

The captain of the Lionesses. Perhaps you recognise the name from Jordan Henderson wearing her shirt to team practice a couple of weeks ago. Guiding her team to win all three group stage matches and being an important member of the defence during the Spain game, this Arsenal defender is worth remembering in her own right. With the control and leadership demonstrated by her in the semis, one would not know that she had only recently been named captain with not much tournament experience. But now with rumours flying that she is set to be honoured by the queen, it is an undeniable fact that she has become the face of the Lionesses. 

Beth Mead

Having scored in every appearance in the group stages, Beth Mead is not only a valuable asset to the Lionesses, but also a current strong contender to win the coveted Golden Boot. As a popular Arsenal player alongside Williamson, she thrives in presenting a defensive challenge for the opposing team and is likely to score again, so you may as well get to know her now. With another goal in the semis, Beth Mead is in a great place to win the Golden Boot, however as fate would have it German forward, Alexandra Popp is level with her on goals after scoring twice in her semis. It looks like the Sunday match is not only England v Germany but also Mead v Popp, and I reckon Mead fancies her chances. 

Sarina Weigman

Not a player, but perhaps the most lauded after the quarter finals for her game management. When England went a goal down, Wiegman instantaneously responded with a change in the game plan, forwards and formation, which facilitated an equaliser and an eventual second goal to send England through. For many, Weigman’s flexibility and adaptiveness to changing game conditions is impressive. It remains to be seen what she strategies for in the finals, but expect bold moves should England concede. The history between Wiegman and the Lionesses is also quite ironic. Having coached the Netherlands to win the 2017 Women’s Euros via knocking England out in the semis, it seems a fun twist of fate that she now guides the English team to a final. 

Now, while these women are key to the English side, so many others like Bronze, Russo and Stanway have influenced the tournament. As Weigman has expressed, a tournament isn’t won through just eleven players but instead through the whole squad. Despite the fact that the starting line-up has remained unchanged for any of the games, Wiegman has shown anything is open to change, and therefore the stage remains open for all players. 

Image Credit: Liondartois/CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Conundrums of an ungenerous oversharer

Maddy Bellucci
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Conundrums of an ungenerous oversharer

I was the child who would look at you as though you’d just stabbed my mum in the eye when I was asked to donate a crisp from my 80%-air packet of ‘Natural’ Lays. I would then proceed to carefully handpick the most minute slither of demure potato known to man and begrudgingly contribute my tax to the compulsory Sharing is Caring bank. And, if I’m being honest, I still very much am this child, just with longer legs and more of a keenness to have friends. So why do I now – of my own volition – decide to share my pizza virtually with 1800 people three times a week? Why does snot-eating Arnold from primary school need to witness my orgasmic burrata? (Why does snot-eating Arnold still follow me on social media…) I think I have fallen into the oversharing addiction trap, facilitated by one-click-away Instagram. Did I feel neglected by my friends and just generally men yesterday? Click. There. Now you have to see me. And my pizza. I am having a good time.

But I don’t think it’s always so black and white, because most of the time I am having a good time. This is not a question of façades, or a discussion about fakery or deception. I think this actually runs a little deeper – almost like an unspoken tradition. But I am a firm believer that all traditions must be revisited every so often. (I am glad that when I go to visit my family in Holland, I no longer see blonde little white children running around with brown-painted faces). This one’s a tradition that I just can’t seem to shake.

Adults tend to have very strong opinions on the ‘social media’ phenomenon. They come at it from various angles and all seem to feel an urgent need to express their often passionate opinions. You have the expression of, “oh you youngsters on your phones, you forget to see the actual world and look around. Look! There! You just missed the most stunning windmill I’ve ever seen”, which eventually becomes background noise. Then you have the more aggressive take that “you’re all slaves to a metal box”, and here you’re momentarily intrigued, but then swiftly look back down at the three dogs in your metal box humping each other and proceed to share them to the VIP instagramoids: the private story members (the select few that have the privilege of experiencing even more of you and your carefully crafted oh-so-witty inner monologue.) Equally, there are the Opposing Adults. They vehemently defend us and our metal boxes. “Oh, give it a rest Mike, they have every right to do what they want with their phones. If they want to post a selfie on Facebook there’s no harm in that. Selfies are cool! It’s like a self-portrait! I take them too!”

Forget Highlight reels. I have even taken to sharing the kiddie plaster on my disgusting toe. However, I did not abandon the ‘sipping pink G&Ts on a boat by the Seine’ highlight in doing so. It’s not one or the other. The Shrek plaster and the boat are not mutually exclusive to me. It’s highlights and lowlights alike. In turn, the content is doubled. Basically, it has kind of just become a Chanel Fashion week show wherein behind Gigi Hadid and in front of Cara Delevingne there’s a balding hairy-backed man strutting forth, cherub hips shaking like there’s no tomorrow. Anything and anyone can strut down my Insta runway. In a way, it’s inclusive. A completely unfiltered reflection of life in all shapes, sizes, and hairiness.

But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more I want to express with ‘ironic’ undertones my awareness of the oversharing tendency, the more I overshare in doing just that. And it’s getting a little out of hand… Would I not be a more intriguing and mysterious specimen if I left more to the imagination? But no! I must show you all that I am currently sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower eating cake with friends.

It’s telling that we call them ‘stories’. The word ‘story’ says it all. Because it’s true, it is a story. No one really knows why you’re telling it, and neither do you, but you tell it anyway. Like when you hear yourself telling an overtold anecdote you know half the group already knows and don’t quite know why your mouth is yet again emitting the recycled tale.  “Let me put that on my story” – it’s like pinning an experience to the wall or adding a magnet to the fridge. And every new person you meet is a new character – subject to your flash. Essentially, it’s a way to perpetually exist somewhere in everyone’s world.

So, will I stop imposing upon you all four of my cheeses? No. Will you suddenly stop seeing my laughing friend, who soon after was sobbing near the toilets about her emotionally unavailable boyfriend? Absolutely not. You will continue seeing her little face with her arm held up high, dancing to ABBA. So, have I really resolved anything here or come to any conclusion? Probably not. Perhaps merely that I am aware of this addiction and that maybe, as I meander through my 20s, I’ll wake up one day and suddenly no longer feel the need to bombard the world with an excessive amount of Me. I would be lying if I were to say this will be any time soon. One last thing I will add, as I do not want this to get confused. I may well offer to share with you my truffle pasta, but this does not give you the right to stick out your greasy little paw and take any. It is but a figure of speech. A purely humorous, rhetorical conceit. A polite “no thank you” ought to be your answer. And I’ll spare you your mum’s left eye.

Image Credit: Marco Vech/ CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

A crisis on our doorstep: threats to abortion rights are closer than you think

Izzie Alexandrou
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A crisis on our doorstep: threats to abortion rights are closer than you think

It was without a doubt that the overturning of Roe v Wade by the US supreme court would have adverse consequences. The landmark US abortion case, which allowed women* the constitutional right to abortion, had been abandoned, justifiably sparking global outrage. The ruling has implications for everyone, but for minorities, the effects are the most alarming, and the worst is yet to come. Economic inequities will soon become apparent where economically vulnerable women may not have the means to travel out of state and, ironically, will be left to raise a child, at a much greater expense.

When the news broke, I found many of the articles and social media posts too harrowing to read. I am ordinarily quite numb to media sensationalism, but this story was far from a sensationalised one, and the reports were just agonizing. I couldn’t imagine living in a country where I am not seen as an autonomous human being, capable of making choices over my own body. A country where I may be prosecuted for exercising rights over my own body.

Except, this ‘distant’ despair is much closer than we fear. We are far too complacent about the state of the archaic abortion laws in the United Kingdom and we are ignorant of the ways in which they put women’s health and lives at risk.

Last Friday, a woman was tried in Oxford Crown Court for the charge of administering poison with intent to procure a miscarriage. She is one of two women who are currently being prosecuted in the UK for the termination of their pregnancies and as a result face life imprisonment.

Abortion in the UK is, remarkably, still a criminal offence – whilst the 1967 Abortion Act legalised abortion in specific circumstances, outside of these circumstances, termination of a pregnancy is outlawed. A Sunday Times investigation has revealed that over the past seven years, 52 women have been reported to the police for a potential breach of our abortion laws, and this number is reportedly on the rise.

For those thinking – ‘just go through the appropriate channels and there won’t be a risk of prosecution’ – there are a multitude of reasons why women may not have access to abortion as specified by the 1967 Abortion Act. Whether it be someone unable to escape from an abusive partner and therefore needs the abortion care at home, or a migrant woman who is not eligible for NHS-funded treatment, our laws expose vulnerable women to danger. Prosecutions for pregnancy terminations can set in place detrimental precedents – Clare Murphy, the chief executive of BPAS, has stressed that “these prosecutions may well deter women experiencing miscarriages and incomplete abortions from seeking treatment when needed.” The severity of the situation in the UK has even provoked senior doctors to write to the country’s chief prosecutor in an attempt to stop him from taking women to court for ending their pregnancies.

What I once thought was a far-flung nightmare is much closer to reality than we think. The Times investigation further revealed that there are multiple instances where women have come under police suspicion after natural miscarriages or stillbirths, as they had considered termination at one point. The digital age means that even a simple google search for abortion providers can provide damning evidence which can land a woman with a life sentence. In the process of researching this article, I may have incriminated myself, should I ever go through the grief of a miscarriage past 24 weeks.

The reality is, that these ‘criminal’ investigations are horrifying and humiliating. Jonathon Lord, medical director of a company which provides abortion support, tells how following a natural stillbirth, a 15-year-old girl had her phone confiscated. This left her without the support of family and friends and spending half a year waiting to know whether she would face criminal charges. Another woman was held for 36 hours in police custody after being discharged from hospital following emergency surgery the night before.

Medical bodies, charities and abortion providers alike are in support of the decriminalisation of abortion. It should be stressed that this by no means suggests that decriminalisation should come with deregulation – abortions are medical practices and should be regulated the same way that all medical practices are. What is certain is that no one benefits from targeting women and painting them as criminals for choices they make over their own bodies.

Whether you label yourself as pro-choice or anti-choice, one thing is clear – these archaic laws are not only dangerous but life-threatening. Criminalising reproductive rights can lead to women delaying seeking medical help for fear of prosecution. Likewise, abortion does not go away with criminalisation; safe abortion does. We need to see abortion decriminalised and regulated in a safe way to protect the lives and well-being of women in this country.

*We recognise that women are not the only people affected by abortion – the effects of abortion rights impact everyone, including trans men and intersex, nonbinary or gender expansive people

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/abortion-rights-nhs-uk-roe-wade- b2110503.html

Image: CC2:0 via Humanists International

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