Sunday 6th July 2025
Blog Page 606

9 to 5 and Feminism

Eve Webster
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9 to 5 and Feminism

It starts with the clicking of fingers on a typewriter, a sound which defined the working world for a generation. One of the most recognizable guitar riffs in music quickly follows and the warm and sassy voice of Dolly Parton telling the audience, among other things, that “they just use your mind and you never get the credit. It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it”. 

While this is playing, we are treated to a montage of the working women of the year 1980 with some notable shoulder-pads and platinum perms. While the fashion choices of these women may seem rather distant today, the shots of them commuting to their office jobs, meanwhile dropping their children off at school, have not become quite so retro. 

Neither have the issues faced by the film’s three protagonists. Working for a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot”, Mr Hart, each of them are subjected to harassment, belittlement and injustices. Capable and experienced Violet (played by Lily Tomlin) is left frustrated as said boss blatantly steals her ideas, gives a promotion to a male colleague on the grounds that he’s, you guessed it, a man. He calls her and her colleagues “the girls”- she curtly replies that she’s a mother in her mid-forties. 

Judy (played by an icon of the era, Jane Fonda) is thrown into the workplace with no experience after her husband left her for his secretary. Dolly Parton’s character, adorable Texan Doralee Rhodes, is given perhaps the most disturbing storyline as Mr Hart repeatedly harasses her for sex and subsequently spread rumours about their non-existent affair. The extreme discomfort on Parton’s face completely wrings any audience member of pity. 

You may wonder how comedy could be made out of a largely depressing situation. The answer is: through complete absurdity, starting with the hallucinations the three gain after sharing a joint (ranging from Tomlin skipping about the office with cartoon birds helping her murder her boss in a twisted Snow White scenario, to Parton putting him on a spit roast dressed as a cowgirl having just thrown herself upon him). The main plot is driven by the three of them covering up a near accidental murder after Violet puts rat poison (rather than “Skinny ‘n’ Sweet”) into his coffee. This involves taking him hostage in his own house with a modified parachuting kit pinging him to the ceiling whenever he misbehaves, and running the office in his absence. In this time the three introduce ideas like flexible working hours, a jobsharing program and on-site daycare centre for working parents. 

A particularly satisfying moment is seeing a close-up of a hand stapling up a notice that male and female employees will now receive equal pay at the company. Watching this film, I realised how much we are still in that “same boat with a lot of our friends, waiting for the day our ship will come in”. 

With the global gender pay gap expected to take another 200 hundred years to close and the #MeToo movement bringing to light work place harassment in every corner of society, how far have we really come from the darker side of this essentially silly comedy? Far enough, perhaps, to appreciate what a forward thinking and empowering film this must have been at its release; yet far from enough to undo the injustice behind the comedy. 

Cool your beans! Iced coffee’s good for you!

Jackie Brown
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Cool your beans! Iced coffee’s good for you!

With both summer and exams around the corner, a rush of caffeine is very much needed to get through the long days of working, or, at least, attempts to work. And yet, the bright sunshine and heat doesn’t seem to invite the hot cup of coffee that once provided warmth in the cold of winter. Instead, one craves something refreshing and reinvigorating to both cool down and bring energy levels up. Luckily, there is a creative solution that doesn’t include the unhealthy sugariness of energy or soft drinks – iced coffee!

Iced coffees, and other infusions and cold brews, open up the possibility for more creativity and flavour than your standard, hot cup of coffee, making it a versatile summer drink. Caffe Nero, for instance, has created an infusion called the “Espresso & Tonic” which combines a double shot of expresso with ice and tonic, giving you the invigorating feel and energy of a G&T without the regret. What’s more, they also add a dash of ginger to give it another dimension of brightening, summery flavour. Starbucks, on the other hand, have cold brews combined with vanilla or caramel, for those craving something sweeter.

Flavour aside, iced coffee is also scientifically proven to be more healthy than hot coffees. Not only will it never burn your tongue when you’re forced to quickly consume it in a rush, but its pH levels have added health and taste benefits. Iced coffees are more alkaline (or less acidic) than hot coffees, since coffee beans release acidic oils when heated. And because the human body functions better in a relatively alkaline state, it makes it more difficult to digest and induces a mad dash to the bathroom. Thus, because a cold brew is more alkaline, it helps your digestive system and means your stomach remains relatively stable. On top of that, reduced levels of acid also enhance and improve the flavour of coffee. The bitterness of hot coffee is also minimised because it is these very acidic oils, absent in iced coffees, that produce the sour taste. The reduced acidity is also much more beneficial for the health of your teeth and tongue, both minimising tooth staining and decay as well as odour-causing bacteria that contributes to bad breath.

However, although it’s always nice to treat yourself to one that’s made for you, the best thing about iced coffee is that you can make it yourself! Simply brew a hot, black coffee as normal (including instant!). Make sure it’s quite strong, as you’ll be diluting it. Place the coffee into a glass jar or other container and let it cool to room temperature for around 30 minutes to 1 hour, then refrigerate for another couple of hours. Finally, serve it as you like with some ice cubes, maybe with some tonic, or milk, or cream, or whatever else you fancy, and stir!

Restaurant review: Khyber Kebab house

Rohan jain
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Restaurant review: Khyber Kebab house

When it comes to Pakistani food, we, the British restaurant-going public, are unwitting Punjab supremacists. Our experience of Pakistani cuisine begins and ends with the butter chicken, basmati rice, and seekh kebabs of Punjab, the most populous of the country’s four provinces.

This island’s culinary experiences have long been shaped by historical trends in immigration. Hundreds of thousands of Punjabis came to the UK during the 20th century, opening restaurants and spreading their cuisine. Immigration from Pakistan’s other regions, such as the predominantly Pashtun north-west, was much lighter. How can we be faulted for our ignorance of Pashtun food if we’ve never had the chance to try it? Well, now we have that chance, and we’d be fools to miss it.

Khyber Kebab is a tiny new takeaway and delivery restaurant located deep in Cowley. It serves (at extraordinarily low prices) a range of dishes from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan in Pakistan’s mountainous north-west. The region’s cuisine, and the menu, synthesises a tantalising array of cultural influences. The influence of the Indian Sub-Continent is unmistakable, but equally strong consistencies are to be found with the culinary traditions of Central Asia and, Persia.

The chapli kebab, a round, flattened chunk of spice-infused mincemeat, is a great place to start. It takes a bit of chewing, but you’ll get your just rewards. Each meeting of the molars procures delicious juices with a deep umami taste. You’ll notice some more subtle individual flavours too, courtesy of the tomatoes, onions, and various herbs chopped into the meat. Gaze over the counter into the open kitchen as the meat fries in a giant tava (a disk-shaped frying pan you couldn’t get your arms around).

The chapli kebab is best consumed engulfed in an enormous, freshly prepared naan. The combination of the kebab’s meaty flavours and the doughy texture of the warm naan is bliss; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s answer to the hamburger. Salads and sauces are not to be forgotten. My choice of a mint and chilli sauce combo was a fluke, but like the accidental invention of Coca-Cola or the discovery of penicillin, it will have its mark on history. The mint sauce provides exactly the sort of cooling contrast a meal like this needs, a bit like the sour cream in a burrito. A chapli kebab naan, which is more than enough for lunch, will set you back £2.99.

The chargha chicken, a dish of Punjabi origins, is another winner. Each morning, a flock of marinated chickens is hung up to slowly spit roast at the back of the kitchen, and, by around two o’clock, chargha chicken is on the menu. Before it is served, the chosen chicken is allowed to sizzle on a charcoal grill where it is unceremoniously, but expertly, slathered in a spicy paste. The white meat of a chicken can often be dry and bland, almost a chore to eat – but not here. The flavour percolates from the succulent, spicy skin down to each bone. The price? A fiver.

I must note that standard fast-food fare (burgers, chips, wings etc.) is on offer too. But come on, have some imagination. While you wait for your food, take a quick break from watching the meat sizzle and head to the next-door corner shop to grab a bottle of imported Shezan fruit juice. There’s nothing like sweet, smooth mango pulp to soothe your tingling taste buds. A perfect complement to this feast. The flavour and the price seems too good to be true, and it almost is. The restaurant’s distant location and lack of any seating mean that to avoid a delivery fee and to get the food fresh, a cycle ride is required. But in this balmy weather, that almost seems a treat.

Khyber Kebab is just six weeks old and sure to grow in popularity in the coming months. With the specialised talents of the chefs, the restaurant will quickly garner a following of loyal devotees. Get there before the prices and crowds increase.

Reclaiming the Moment

Jenny Scoones
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Reclaiming the Moment

Lavinia Greenlaw’s latest collection of poetry is scattered with moments built from the ruin of memory. Writing in response to, and so to some extent against, her father’s decline into dementia, the poems seem born out of a need to reclaim moments of pure sight from the vastness of her days. The collection thus becomes a salvage from the wastes of time, a writing against decay, and a demonstration of the necessity of poetry.

The two halves of the collection, one focused solely on her father’s memory-loss, the other more generally on life and love, make for a poised and nuanced whole. Whether reflecting on the loss of a father, in the personal if not the physical sense, the collection offers a generous redress to the trauma of knowing and loving when all love is doomed to end in death, and all knowing in forgetting.

One poem in particular, ‘The Break’, offers a gentle rumination on pain and its inevitability, drawing out moments of tension in the speaker’s relationships with those she loves, against a backdrop of emotional and mental instability. The act of reaching out is complicated by the fact that our days become unsynchronised, even with those we are closest to:

People nodded and moved on. What else could they do?Hold me? Through each and every day? They had their own days.

Such observations come as a revelation amidst Greenlaw’s deftly handled imagery. Her use of imagistic precision coupled with moments of unbridled confession makes for a poetry of tensions sprung and unsprung, coiled and blooming, like carnation Catherine-wheels. In Greenlaw’s hands one gains the impression of a poet self-consciously reducing her words and her images, holding back from total effusion; it would be unnecessary, as she has the ability to invest power into three lines, dropped like an ink-spot on the page.

Each half of the collection complements the other, and a subtle dialogue can be observed between the two. The first, ‘The Sea is an Edge and an Ending’, ends on a note of uncertainty; ‘Will you stop leaving now?’. The question could just as well refer to the poet’s imagery as to her father, as questions of loved ones and moments lost become blurred with questions of the nature of poetry itself. This sense of childhood abandonment and language’s implication in it suggests that poetry, as well as the father-figure, is vulnerable to memory’s decay. The second part of the collection, meanwhile, ends with a direct rejoinder to this very uncertainty. These are the concluding lines to a playful exposition on the nature of the poet’s medium, words:

ABANDONMENT

And yet

Thus, Greenlaw’s collection, through a succession of precise images, and careful explorations of our personal relationships, presents poetry as an uneasy, but ultimately worthwhile monument, built with the triumph over time in mind. Her father may slip from her into illness and forgetting, but her poems remain forever in her grasp, her words the final frontier against oblivion.

The Funny/Not Funny Exercise

Anna Dobson
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The Funny/Not Funny Exercise

But it was just a joke, I say to myself in the dark room. A horrible, horrible joke.’

What makes David Sedaris such a master of his craft is his ability to make, not horrible jokes, but brilliant jokes about horrible, horrible things. This latest collection of essays, out now in paperback, doesn’t so much take aim at as spool out the horrors of family, loss, Trump’s America, and the inevitable decline into old age. Sedaris writes with such natural wit that one wonders whether he actually sets out to be funny, or whether his inner monologue coalesces into poised, perfectly level and almost painfully self-aware observations entirely of its own accord. Especially for Calypso unlike his earlier, less internally focused works – this question is a legitimate one. Comedy here is not the object but the lens; one which frequently leaves Sedaris the man, his actions and his relationships, at the very least singed by its glare.

The central drama of Calypso is the suicide of Sedaris’ younger sister, Tiffany. The essays don’t all explicitly address her death. The first of the collection sees him extolling the middle-aged pleasures of owning a guest-room – but of course, the essay also operates on another level, to explore Sedaris’ fear and unease with his ageing family and self. His construction of multiple semantic fields in which to play around is so seamless it’s almost undetectable as he shifts from layer to layer, seemingly without breaking a sweat: ‘Yes, the washer on my penis has worn out, leaving me to dribble urine long after I’ve zipped my trousers back up. But I have two guest rooms.’ However, Sedaris occasionally and masterfully delivers a gut punch of emotional intensity unforeseen and undetectable until it suddenly arrives, leaving the reader reeling. Tiffany’s death is one such instance, and even more so is Sedaris’ description of the last time he saw her, in the antepenultimate essay ‘The Spirit World’. These moments are, crucially, humourless. Sedaris delivers these blows without any fancy footwork, straight and abrupt.

It’s a comedic formula we see cropping up more and more: the Funny/ Not Funny exercise. Phoebe Waller-Bridge explains the challenge as ‘How do you make an audience laugh in one moment, then feel something completely and profoundly different in the next?’. With Fleabag, Waller- Bridge used this as a founding philosophy, building a TV show which defies easy-labelling, and, like Calypso, is centred around a deep and un-funny trauma. The laugh/cry formula (to put it crudely) can easily become a cheap trick, fulfilling neither its comedic nor its dramatic potential. Its success is a testament to the talent of those who successfully employ it, as Tig Notaro did in her landmark set Live in 2012, introducing herself on stage ‘Good evening, hello, how are you, I have cancer’, and as Hannah Gadsby so triumphantly did in Nanette. In Calypso Sedaris displays an unwillingness to cleave to the constraints of comedy writing as a genre, but what marks these essays out from the stylings of Notaro and Gadsby is his quasi-weaponization of humour as a vehicle to eviscerate his own flaws. Calypso is both funny and heart-breaking, but at its core it is deeply, uncomfortably personal; one wonders how on earth Sedaris will follow it.

Review: The Reunion(?) – ‘a subversive new take on the classic murder mystery’

Marley Robinson
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Review: The Reunion(?) – ‘a subversive new take on the classic murder mystery’

The opening night of the absurd comedy The Reunion(?) had your reviewer and the rest of the audience in fits of laughter for a good ten minutes—the last ten minutes. If the play were a joke, these last ten minutes of comedic gold would be the punchline to a good 40 minutes of setup. Of course, the play was littered with little knock-knock jokes, dirty ditties, intentionally awful puns throughout—sometimes to the extent that I suspected there was a quota to be met. But the real comedic force was the plotline which builds up slowly with thorough character development, culminating in a series of genius Chekhov-inspired twists and turns which catch the audience by surprise. This is when the play really comes alive.

This subversive new take on the classic murder mystery genre revolves both in terms of plot and mise-en-scène around the cadaver of billionaire Sebastian Coxcomb (though I heard Cockskin), played by Tommy Hurst, which has recently been admitted to the aptly named funeral home Cloak and Hearse. Although you probably won’t guess whodunnit, events unfold in a predictable yet intriguing fashion, becoming increasingly ridiculous—just like the disparate cast of characters who are introduced one by one with extraordinary back-stories and captivating asides.

Energetic acting from each member of the Oxford Revue produces a devilish contrast to the darkness of the story line and serves to imbue each character with its own distinct brand of quirk. I must commend Kathryn Cussons, who plays Coxcomb’s wife Jennifer, and above all Bernard Visser, who plays George, for their rare mastery of their characters’ accents. Good rehearsing and a refreshing lack of first-night mishaps allows the discord amongst these bereaved souls to confuse your attempts to identify the killer.

Inevitably, a few of the many jokes peppered through the play tonight met with a reception that was painfully flat, especially before the audience had had a chance to warm up. But the troupe would soldier on seamlessly like professionals. Although not quite reaching Gary Oldman’s level, special mention must go to Tom Saer and Angus Moore who play the eponymous funeral directors. A hilarious dynamic emerges between Tom playing Cloak, an enthusiastic Frankenstein-wannabe, and the desperate attempts of Angus’ character, Hearse, to control his co-worker and keep a lid on the chaos that ensues.

The sound and lighting of the stage is flawlessly executed. Before the play, the claustrophobic Burton Taylor Studio’s stage eerily lit with organ music resonating – but these are remakes of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and other pop songs, cleverly hinting at the morbid quirkiness of what’s to come. The sparse decoration that befits a struggling funeral home helps to create a spooky atmosphere as does the single spotlight focused on the corpse. Will Hayman, director of sound and lighting design, is clearly adept at his job and he makes cautious use of his skills by deferring some sound effects to the actors on stage for added comic effect.

For a play with such ridiculous plot twists, The Reunion(?) has rather stern origins. Writer Tommy Hurst adapted one of his more serious works on toxic masculinity and the influence of greed with the help of fellow co-writer Bernard Visser and comic inspiration drawn, worryingly, from a real-life funeral parlour. The duo let the play remain a parable of sorts, but the main draw is the humour. All in all, The Reunion(?) is a compelling antidote to Trinity stress with fast-paced, laugh-a-minute banter – but beneath all the jokes offer a sliver of the original moral tale of greed, especially religious and corporate greed, which is still annoyingly relevant to today’s society.

May’s gone, who’s next?

Oscar Robins
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May’s gone, who’s next?

When Theresa May sashayed onto the stage at the Tory party conference like a wilting scarecrow, we all knew her days were numbered. She has indeed resigned her premiership and the speech which closed with choked tears provoked guilt from those who loved her, indignation from those who loathed her and chaos from those around her.

The question now turns to who should succeed her as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Indicating a preference for the Tory leadership race is like being asked to pick your favourite muscle wasting disease. Rees-Mogg gives off the air of a butler in a porno and the general public hate him nearly as much as he presumably hates himself. The more ‘moderate’ candidates are unlikely to be successful as the truth is, Tory members won’t want a Remainer in charge, so Rudd’s out the running.

Rory Stewart’s probably slightly too short but has the advantage of being politically under-exposed and so no one has had the chance to hate him yet. He is also an Old Etonian (yes, another one).

Sajid Javid reportedly left his more than comfortable £3 million-a-year banking job to pursue a political career and so we can safely assume he’s moronic. That leaves us with more than a few other candidates to choose from.

Dominic Raab is in camp ‘free market economics’ and has recently been interviewed and photographed by The Times with open cook books and pastel haze kitchen walls. His tidy haircut and uncontroversial views might be exactly what the party is looking for, so he is definitely a candidate to keep an eye on.

Michael Gove at first glance seems like a strong candidate; suitable Brexit credentials, plenty of ministerial experience, and the ability to speak in public. However if your second glance falls upon his face its easy to lose faith in his ability to run the country.

Nobody seems to quite understand how we found ourselves here, in this pitiful condition, where our leaders admit failure and only in their final moments allow the veneer to slip, baring behind it the exhausted and tortured face of a woman whose tenacity has crumbled like Vince Cable’s withered, decrepid joints.

Remember when we all thought that Jeremy Corbyn was an unelectable half-regurgitated vegan Ché Guevara? Oh, how times have changed.

The Tories must feel like Jeremy Corbyn was that kid they bullied at school who has shocked everyone by turning up to the reunion with an attractive spouse and a Maserati (in reality he has a bicycle and his only long-lasting companion is his pet cat, but the point remains he is probably sat smirking as only a man of his nauseating sanctimony can).

Perhaps we may have to admit to ourselves that Boris may rise to power. Boris has essentially become the crazed caricature of himself, blustering and bombastic, the Bullingdon Old Boy really does have a chance and would enter EU renegotiations with no-deal on the table.

Ultimately, I look at politicians as people who genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. Demonising MPs as people who want to strip the NHS, divert money away from schools and punish those on welfare serves only to agitate a political environment predicated on division rather than cooperation. I should imagine that the last few weeks of May’s tenure were like being on Deal or No Deal but in every box there was a high definition photograph of a dog turd.

Whether it’s Boris, Moggy, Raab, Javid or whoever the Tories choose, it is safe to say we’re f**ked.

Why we must pay college staff a decent wage

Zahra Farzanekhoo
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Why we must pay college staff a decent wage

Last week, a friend and I proposed a motion to the Lady Margaret Hall JCR to tell our college to pay all of its employees the Oxford Living Wage. After half an hour of questions, amendments and procedural motions, the motion passed effective this upcoming Michaelmas.

The Oxford Living Wage is currently £10.02. This is the figure that the Oxford City Council believes is necessary to afford to live in Oxford, a town that is consistently ranked amongst the most expensive in the UK to live in. Paying our scouts, catering staff, and maintenance staff this wage should not be optional. It is what they require to be able to afford to live and being paid this wage is tantamount to a human right. Paying this figure is not giving our scouts a bonus, or extra money for a holiday; it is ensuring they can afford food, housing, and clothing for themselves and their dependents. It’s making sure they can afford to heat their homes and pay for their children’s school trips. Colleges also benefit as it has been shown that by paying this wage, staff turnover is much lower.

Deciding to pay this wage should not hinge on anything else. Colleges owe an obligation, as do all employers, to pay their workers what they require for their basic needs. Just because they can pay them less, doesn’t mean they should. Currently, the National Living Wage is only available to those 25 years and older. Therefore, it tends to exclude catering staff who are often younger than this. Further, colleges pay those aged 18-20, £6.15, and those aged 21-24, £7.70, simply because they can. However, they ought to criticised, because whilst it is legal, it does not account for the reality of the situation.

The reality of the situation is this: by not paying the Oxford Living Wage, colleges are, by definition, paying their workers a poverty wage. It’s really that simple.

But the question is why should we support motions such as the ones proposed to LMH and St Hugh’s JCRs thus far. After all, a JCR exists to represent the student body of a college, not its employees. Plainly, the answer is because where there is a marginalised group who lack support or a voice, we must step in and fill in that void. There were concerns in the St Hugh’s JCR that this is patronising to the people it is intended to support. However, this can be easily avoided if the group are consulted with ahead of any JCR action resulting from the declaration of JCR support. JCRs are set up for students but where we witness inequality in our own colleges, we have a duty to act. Further, many colleges hire students on a casual or part time basis, and supporting such motions can also help ensure colleges are also paying students fairly.

I first got involved with the campaign after witnessing a protest by Oxford students outside the Clarendon Building. For months they have been trying to pressure the University to roll out the wage to all of its staff. It’s a difficult issue to advocate for, especially as many colleges outsource their catering or housekeeping, and therefore do not have the direct authority they require to increase the wages of their staff. However, even in such situations, colleges can absolutely still pressure the subcontractors to pay the living wage, or they could simply introduce it as a clause within their future contracts with them.

Being paid the living wage should be a right for any worker and anything that us students can do is helpful in ensuring that, at least, at our university, that the people who make Oxford what it is, are being paid enough to ensure they can afford basics. Oxford would not function without our scouts, porters, or catering staff.

One of the arguments against the motion at the LMH JCR meeting was that the extra cost of implementing the living wage would be passed down to the students via increases in college rent. This argument assumes the two are mutually exclusive and as if it is a zero-sum game. Oxford colleges can afford to pay their workers a fair wage and provide affordable accommodation, it’s just a matter of if they want to. In practical terms, many colleges would be hesitant about significantly increasing rent – due to student backlash.

However, say if it is indeed a zero sum game and if colleges were to find that increasing rent is the only way to be able to afford to pay the Oxford Living Wage, then regardless, paying workers a fair wage is something that holds absolute priority and should never be something we are willing to compromise on. If consequently, students find it difficult to afford these, most probably marginal, increases in rent, they have access to both college level and University level hardship funds as well as a multitude of bursaries and scholarships, all of which can help with these costs; and incidentally, all things that underpaid college staff do not have access to.

Of course, many people are sceptical that college administration will even listen to students on such issues, this is always a possibility when JCRs take a stand against college staff on anything that relates to administrative matters. The reality is that we cannot know for sure if they will hear our concerns or if they will take any action. However, by continuing to propose such motions to our JCRs, we ensure that, at least, there is a chance that something positive will happen and this chance and optimism is better than doing nothing at all.

I hope that we begin to see more such motions advocating for the Oxford Living Wage being proposed across Oxford. The City Council currently pays all of its employees this wage and some colleges pay the wage for a proportion of their employees already. However, there is a lot of work to be done and I think that anything students can do to aid this process is helpful and valuable. As a generation, we often criticise large corporations for underpaying their workers, but sometimes we forget that it is happening on our very own doorstep.

Do the EU elections matter?

Dominic Brind and Luke Dunne
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Do the EU elections matter?

YES – Dominic Brind

Much of the coverage in the run up to the EU elections seemed, for the second biggest exercise in democracy the world has ever seen, muted. As the entire continent turned out to vote for the people deciding many of policies that govern all of our lives, we here in Britain seemed almost disinterested. Perhaps that’s simply the fatigue that comes with the total political chaos we’ve experienced over the last few months, as the government loses vote after vote and we seem no closer to leaving the EU.

But despite that, these elections do matter. They matter firstly because they represent, in the minds of many at least, an opportunity to test the waters over Brexit. How else can we explain the disintegration of both the Labour and Conservative vote share.

Many people are approaching this vote as a referendum on Brexit, and that means whatever the result we know that there is significant desire to change our current strategy. With the success of the Brexit Party and the Remain-backing Lib Dems, it is obvious that the current policy of trying to force dodgy deals through Parliament is no longer sustainable. A historically high turn out only reinforces the idea that the political establishment have lost control over Brexit.

This populist surge isn’t an exclusively British phenomenon, even if it is being worked out most prominently in the UK. The EU elections provide an opportunity to test the water everywhere. The success of the RN in France, for example, should encourage us to look beyond the Brexit Party as a local development. Across the continent, people are dissatisfied with the political status quo and are increasingly willing to vote in radical alternatives. The European elections are the public giving their verdict on the balance of power in Europe, and it is essential that politicians listen.

But beyond the broader, long term political implications, these European elections do have concrete consequences. In the run up to the referendum, it was shocking to me how few people seemed to understand or really care about the workings of the EU.

Yes, it’s a large bureaucracy which can seem Byzantine at times but so are all governments, and this election seriously affects how the entire structure is run. These elections are crucial, for example, in determining who will be our next Commission President.

The two main candidates, Frans Timmermans and Manfred Weber, whilst moderate in tone do have significant disagreements about how the EU should be run.

Timmermans, a left winger from the Netherlands, leans towards working with the populist left led by Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza, whereas Weber doesn’t. Timmermans is also far more likely to pursue countries legally when they break EU law. Weber has not excluded working with the populist right, whereas Timmermans has said he will not govern with their help. Ultimately, this is a battle between moderates, but one which have wide ranging consequences for the future of the EU and its approach to the populist threat it faces. So these elections matter, not only for this parliament but for the future of European politics in general.

NO – Luke Dunne

We live in an era of political crisis after crisis. Whereas often you have to wait years for something genuinely important to happen in politics, crucial votes seem to crop up almost weekly. I want to suggest that, in that context, these elections don’t really matter.

They do obviously matter insofar as the subtly shifting balance of power in the European Parliament may or may not precipitate regulatory changes blah blah blah. But this is both boring to talk about and not really the point of this article.

I want to talk about whether these elections say something important about British politics, and whether we should take them as indicative of any new information about what the public things.

Much of the analysis around the rise of the Brexit Party and success of the Lib Dems has rested on the idea that this ‘really shows how dissatisfied the public are with the current handling of Brexit’. Now, without wanting to seem glib, I really don’t think we needed an election to tell us that. The fact that we have had to extend Article 50, had the government’s main (read: only) policy voted down three times and had a Prime Minister resign over Brexit is probably enough to tell us things aren’t going swimmingly. And any further conclusion we might want to draw about how we should progress is almost certain to be unsubstantiated.

Even though the turn out for this election was higher than previous Europeans, it’s still considerably lower than a general or than the referendum. And what does it mean to vote for the Brexit Party or Lib Dems in any case. Do all Brexit Party voters favour a no deal? Do all Lib Dem voters favour remaining no matter what?

Plenty of Brexit Party supporters seem to support a different deal, as do many Lib Dems. Just what that deal looks like is up for question, but the point remains that this election is not in any sense a rerunning of the EU referendum. But because, perversely, the focus of the election was so firmly based around Brexit, it’s not clear that we have really learnt anything about any other policy area either.

Hands up who knows what the Brexit Party’s stance is on workers rights? No, me neither.

If the European elections can tell us anything, it’s the sorry state of British politics. Our biggest institutions – our schools, our welfare systems, the NHS – lie crippled by austerity and neglect. And the democracy which exists to fix them has been poisoned by the runaway train of demagoguery that is Brexit. As an electorate, we have forgotten to focus on anything else. These elections don’t really matter, but of course that’s really our own fault. We now know that people want us to get on with Brexit, but we’ve known that for the last three years. Ultimately, these elections were an immense democratic undertaking that are yet to really tell us what people want – as futile an exercise as any

A new era for English football

Greg Pankhurst
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A new era for English football

Later this week (as I write this) Europe’s two largest finals, the Champions League final and the Europa League final, will be contested by four English sides for the first time in history. Liverpool’s match-up with Tottenham Hotspur will be the first all-English encounter in the Champions League final since 2008. Gone are the days of Barcelona’s possession-based, tiki-taka style football, which led the Catalan side to three Champions League titles in six seasons between 2005 and 2011, in addition to the Spanish national team’s success in two successive European Championships, and the 2010 World Cup. We witnessed how the more physical German football overtook the likes of Barcelona, through the 2012-13 season’s all-German affair in the Champions League final, which was followed up with a world cup success just one year later. In the five years that followed, there was complete Spanish dominance, resulting in four champions league trophies for Real Madrid, and one for Barcelona, including two all-Spanish finals.

This, however, brings me onto Madrid. Given Liverpool’s near-miss in the final last year and their reappearance in this epic, it suggests that English football, and particularly Klopp’s football, has driven the English to the top of the pile in European football for arguably the first time in 11 years. We must not ignore Tottenham, an English side who had never before qualified for the Champions League on the last occasion that there was an all-English Champions League final. Along with Arsenal’s success against Italian powerhouses Napoli in the Europa League, and Chelsea overcoming similar opposition, this indicates that a new era for English football has begun.

While we can identify many factors in the recent growth and success of English football, including the increased expenditure by both Manchester City and Liverpool, we need not look much further than last summer’s World Cup, which saw the English national team reach the semi-finals for the first time since 1990, an unexpected success for the country. They followed this by reaching the semi-finals of the UEFA Nations League, due to be played in the next fortnight, which would see them win their first International trophy since the World Cup in 1966. Whilst this is far from certain, their progress thus far indicates that Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal’s success in Europe this year has not been fortuitous – the competitiveness of English football has increased both with investment and the emergence of English players, such as Dele Alli and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who have played a pivotal role in both their sides’ appearances in the Champions League final. It is also important to consider that the UEFA Super Cup has never been competed by two English sides, until this year, where it is a certainty. It will be interesting to see whether the English clubs can continue this superiority in the following years, or whether their legacy will fade rather quickly, as did Bayern’s European dominance following the 2012-2013 season.

England’s unexpected run to the World Cup semi-final has contributed immensely to the momentum of English clubs this year in Europe’s two main competitions. Last summer saw the emergence of midfielder Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who put in a series of promising performances on the International stage, and has this season been an important presence in the Chelsea first-team especially towards the latter part of the season in which they secured a top-four finish and reached the Europa League final. In the same vein, Callum Hudson-Odoi, despite not being included in last summer’s world cup squad, has featured frequently throughout Chelsea’s Europa League campaign, spurred on by an encouraging international debut in a 5-1 England win against Montenegro. Hudson-Odoi has tallied four goals and two assists in just 416 minutes in the Europa League this season, showing his importance to Chelsea’s play, which will be of great importance in the final this week. The experience for capped England players, such as Dele Alli and Harry Kane, will be of utmost importance going into the Champions League final this weekend. Having played on the world stage and just fallen short, these English players have the opportunity to go one better and win the greatest prize club football has to offer.

One of Tottenham or Liverpool, and one of Arsenal or Chelsea, will win the Champions League and the Europa League respectively, in what will prove to be a year of English conquests that very few could have foreseen. It appears as though English football is creating a sphere of influence – with Liverpool eliminating Spanish giants Barcelona and Tottenham eliminating German league table leaders (at the time of the fixture) Borussia Dortmund, the English sides have proven they can beat anyone in Europe. A new English dynasty has begun, but one question still remains: who will take the crown?

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