Thursday 11th September 2025
Blog Page 89

Exclusive: Lord Peter Mandelson, Imane Khelif, Humza Yousaf, and Vera Wang to speak at Oxford Union

Ila Banerji
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Exclusive: Lord Peter Mandelson, Imane Khelif, Humza Yousaf, and Vera Wang to speak at Oxford Union

Cherwell can exclusively report that chancellor candidate Lord Peter Mandelson, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, and fashion designer Vera Wang are among those to speak at the Oxford Union this term. Noteworthy debate topics include Israel-Palestine, Kashmir independence, rejoining the EU, and abortion rights.

Other speakers include Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Trump aide-turned-critic Anthony Scaramucci, streamer Hasan Piker, rapper-actor Jaden Smith, and Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin.

Lord Peter Mandelson, former Director of Communications for the Labour Party and current hopeful for the role of Oxford University Chancellor, will also be appearing at the Union this term. Mandelson is considered to have been a key player in the branding of Tony Blair’s Labour Party as ‘New Labour’, and is still reported to have an ‘influence’ on Keir Starmer and the current government.

Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer, won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics this summer amid misinformation surrounding her gender. The International Boxing Association (IBA) previously disqualified her for failing a chromosome test, while the International Olympic Committee ruled her eligible and discredited the IBA. Public figures such as JK Rowling and Elon Musk, who called her gender into question, were recently named in Khelif’s criminal complaint over “aggravated cyber harassment.” 

In addition, Humza Yousaf, the youngest and first ever British-Asian Scottish First Minister will be speaking. Yousaf won the Scottish National Party leadership election in 2023 following Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation. Whilst in power, he made headlines for his outspoken support of Palestine. In 2024, he ended a coalition agreement with the Scottish Greens, leading to a vote of no confidence in him, before which he resigned.

Vera Wang, an influential American fashion designer known for her wedding dresses, is another speaker. Wang started her career working at Vogue and Ralph Lauren before starting her own fashion line. She rose to prominence in the 1990s, going on to make wedding dresses for public figures such as Victoria Beckham. She is also known for her evening wear which has been worn by the likes of Michelle Obama and Sofia Vergara. 

One of the debate topics is “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid State responsible for genocide”, which will see speakers including political scientist Norman Finkelstein, Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, and Director of UK Lawyers for Israel Natasha Hausdorff. Israeli professor Gerald Steinberg, who was invited, publicly declined the invitation in a letter that accuses the Union of “poisonous hatred”.

On the wording of this motion, the Union stated: “More than 76 years on, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved. Critics accuse Israel of employing military tactics that target civilians and infrastructure, amounting to ethnic cleansing, while others defend these actions as legitimate self-defence against terrorism. Israeli military operations in Gaza, attacks on Lebanon, and continued settlement expansion have exacerbated tensions.

“The debate over whether Israel’s actions, in light of UN reports and International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings, amount to apartheid or genocide continues. Recently, the UK’s Labour party banned terms like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ at its conference, raising concerns about free speech and the ability to criticise Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”

Another controversial debate motion is “This House Believes in an independent state of Kashmir”, which will feature speakers including current Defence Minister of Pakistan Khawaja Asif, Labour MP Naz Shah, and former advisor to the Prime Minister of India Prem Shankar Jha. Indian film director Vikek Agnihotri, who was invited, publicly turned down the invitation, calling the topic “offensive”.

Other debates include “This House Would Rejoin the European Union” with former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine and journalist Rachel Johnson, as well as “This House Regrets the Repeal of Roe v. Wade” with Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju and lawyer Erin Hawley. The Union will be hosting a 60th Anniversary Debate of the visit of Malcom X, with chancellor candidate Margaret-Casely Hayford and Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy. 

On the social side, the Union will be hosting its termly ball – themed The Sands of Time – on 2nd November, a US Election Night Watch Party on 5th November, and President’s Welcome for freshers on 11th October. Union president Ebrahim Osman Mowafy said that access pricing will be offered at all social events.

Osman Mowafy told Cherwell: “This term, we have curated a lineup of debates and speakers that reflect our commitment to free speech and open debate. From global political leaders to renowned cultural icons, this term promises a unique blend of thought-provoking discussions and diverse perspectives.” 

Government planning rise in tuition fees to £10,500

Bryn Mollet and Ila Banerji
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Government planning rise in tuition fees to £10,500

Government officials drafted plans that would see tuition fees rise to £10,500 – or 13.5% – over the next five years, a Whitehall source told The Times, and that maintenance grants would be restored for lower income students to shield them from the impact. These plans are still under discussion, not yet approved by the chancellor. 

The advocacy group Universities UK, of which Oxford University is a member, had called for increasing home students’ tuition fees this September, citing inflation as a major cause for the need for such a rise. Home student fees have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and have not kept up with inflation. A 2024 Office for Students (OfS) report suggests that the real-term value of income for teaching students has decreased by approximately 25% since 2015-16.

Multiple students told Cherwell that it’s important to know whether the loan repayment scheme, which was altered in 2022, will change, but that is unclear as of now. The government forecasts that 65% of full-time graduates who started in 2023 will repay their student loan in full, and the average debt for students who started their course in 2022 is currently £45,600. The Institute for Fiscal Studies speculates that if tuition fees were to be raised, over 60% of loanees would not even be able to make higher repayments until their 40s. 

An Oxford University student told Cherwell: “A fee increase would be more of a deterrent to working class households.” They added that tuition fee is “essentially a graduate tax” so as long as the loan repayment scheme remains the same, “it doesn’t really matter how much the tuition fee increases, it just means less people will pay it off in full”.

Many institutions rely heavily upon international student fees to cover their operating costs. This comes amid falling numbers of international students coming to the UK for higher education which has exacerbated financial difficulties. The OfS report found 40% of UK universities ran a deficit in the past academic year.

Oxford’s tutorial system makes it one of the most expensive universities to run per student. One tutor has estimated a humanities student costs around £18,000 a year to educate, nearly double the home tuition fee. 

Oxford is less reliant on international fees despite international students making up 47% of the total student body. Only 8.1% of the University’s income was from international fees compared to the nationwide average of 24% in 2021-22. Oxford is also less reliant on tuition fees in general, receiving more from research grants, publishing services, donations, and investment income.

Immigration policy and Brexit have been cited as causes for the decline in international students. New student visa rules put in place early this year means that many international students are now unable to bring family with them to the UK. Brexit halved the amount of EU student applicants in 2021, who can no longer pay home student rates or receive funding. This reflects a broader trend where EU students have halved from 2019 to 2023. 

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said in July that the Labour government had “no plans” to increase university fees, but in a more recent interview she had refused to rule it out. She said she would not “want” to do it, but that the government was “looking at all the options”, and she recognised that the current “value of the fee has eroded”.

Vice President of the National Union of Students, Alex Stanley had previously criticised a similar proposed increase in fees, saying that students should not be made to “foot the bill for the university funding crisis” and that this move would “further punish students who are investing in their future.” 

North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order review – “An excellent account”

Hassan Akram
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North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order review – “An excellent account”

Dr Edward Howell, whose columns in the Spectator and the Telegraph are among the few intelligent and readable things left in those outlets, has produced an excellent account of North Korea and its place in the global nuclear order. Here is a book which the University Press would do well to issue in an affordable edition. It throws light on the foreign policy of a horrific but little-understood regime, and does so with a blend of exposition, theory, and analysis.

At the start of the Second World War, Churchill said that the key to understanding Russia was to understand Russian national interests, and today the same statement may be applied to North Korea. Dr Howell understands this, and in order to explain the nuclear ambitions of the Kim regime in Pyongyang, he begins by outlining the history and self-perception of the Korean peninsula. Three successive dynasties ruled Korea between 57 BC and 1912 AD. It was annexed by Imperial Japan in 1910. There followed a period of enforced Japanification. Cultural artefacts were destroyed, newspapers were censored, and Korean institutions were replaced by Japanese ones.  

Korean nationalism, which was bound to be anti-Japanese for the same reason that later Algerian nationalism was anti-French, took off after the Versailles Conference but never became a serious anticolonial force. After Japanese defeat in 1945, Korea, like Germany, was partitioned between American and Soviet spheres of influence, with US troops entering Seoul in the south and Soviet ones entering Pyongyang in the north. After independence in 1948, a formerly united peninsula remained divided between two nations, each of whom viewed the other as illegitimate. 

For the North Koreans, independence led not to democracy but to a change in masters. The Workers’ Party of Korea, a Stalinist movement led by Kim Il Sung, took power. Kim consolidated his rule and his dynasty by means of an extreme personality cult underpinned by fantasies of racial purity; in doing so, he was imitating Japanese colonial tactics of deifying the royal family in order to command the loyalty of the masses.  

In June 1950, with the backing of Stalin, he invaded the South, triggering the Korean War. (Pyongyang, in typically totalitarian fashion, later rewrote history to deny its act of aggression.) The war, which became a proxy conflict between the US and China, was a stalemate. It left North Korea with a dependence on the fellow Communist states of the USSR, China, and, later, Cuba, and an “elevated threat perception from the United States, South Korea, and wider international society”. This persecution mania, this victim mentality that the whole world is bent on its destruction, continues to define Pyongyang’s view of the world. 

The three tenets of North Korean policy are therefore as follows: anticolonialism inherited from the historical struggle with Japan; ideological expansionism in line with Communist Russia and China; and a “hostile policy” of anti-Americanism as the legacy of the Korean War. 

Kim Il Sung’s ultimate goal was always to reunify Korea and to bring the entire peninsula under his own rule. This fantasy, always improbable, took an initial blow when North Korea lost its economic ascendency over the South in the 1960s. A fatal blow followed in the 1980s and 90s, when an economically liberal China and a terminally ill Soviet Union officially recognised South Korea. The result was to reaffirm Pyongyang’s view of the whole world as being in a US-sponsored plot to undermine it. 

The first nuclear crisis of the 1990s exemplified what would become North Korea’s signature use of “strategic delinquency”. In 1993 Pyongyang violated all norms by threatening to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, before, in 1994, signing a new agreement to halt its nuclear development in exchange for perceived rewards from the US. The episode showed that bad behaviour paid off, and that “strategic delinquency” was the best way for North Korea to achieve its aims. 

Kim Il Sung’s grandson, the incumbent Kim Jong Un, has done more than either of his forefathers to establish a nuclear North Korea. President Trump met Kim in 2018-19 but, despite hoping to frame himself as the American who restrained North Korea, he extracted no real concessions. Kim made vague pledges to adhere to international norms, in return for which he acquired a new diplomatic prestige and hopes of increased American aid. In further meetings, however, like the Hanoi Summit, talks stagnated. Trump failed to satisfy Kim’s demands; he did not withdraw US troops from South Korea; he did not end sanctions on North Korea; and so Rocket Man’s interest in diplomacy fizzled out. In 2020, COVID-19 hit North Korea harder than any sanctions could have done, but still no substantial diplomatic overtures were made. That is how things stand at present. 

The book is well-written in academic Oxbridge prose, although it is clear throughout that Dr Howell is very puritanical in his approach to grammar. Evidently he belongs to that sect of grammarians who hold that to deliberately split an infinitive is a contemptible practice. His views are worth quoting: “To the reader, true to my obsession with correct English grammar, this book does not contain a single split infinitive. Caveat lector, any errata therein are my own responsibility.” (I admit that when I first saw this passage, I had to frown and reread it several times in bafflement, before I remembered that “errata” is the Latin for “mistakes”, as opposed to the synonym for “pornography”.) 

North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order covers its field in great depth. It may have benefitted from more developed comparisons between North Korea and other countries – for example, by contrasting the nuclear effects of the division of Korea to those of similar partitions in India or Palestine, or by comparing the foreign policy of Pyongyang more explicitly to that of Communist China – but these are minor criticisms. In spite of his copious research and vivid understanding of international relations, Dr Howell concludes that North Korea remains a known unknown. At any rate until the Kim regime collapses, we can only see the tip of the missile silo; there must be a great deal of hidden information of which nobody is aware; and the country is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. 

North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order: When Bad Behaviour Pays by Edward Howell is available now from Oxford University Press 

A Revolution Betrayed by Peter Hitchens review – In Defence of Grammar Schools

Hassan Akram
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A Revolution Betrayed by Peter Hitchens review – In Defence of Grammar Schools

Review – A Revolution Betrayed: How Egalitarians Wrecked the British Education System by Peter Hitchens. ISBN: 9781399400077 

Most people accept that the British education system is broken, and only those with a vested interest deny that it requires drastic and long-term reform. The goal is to have a system which is meritocratic and fair, although the defining principle of the current one is wealth. In this book, Peter Hitchens argues that we once had a meritocratic education system, which for a generation between 1944 and 1965 furthered social mobility and equality of opportunity, but that the revolution was betrayed – dismantled by successive Labour and Conservative governments. 

Under the provisions of the Education Act 1944 (the Butler Act), the 11+ exam sorted primary school children on the basis of ability into grammar schools and non-grammar schools. The non-grammar schools were subdivided into technical schools and secondary moderns. These have been attacked on various grounds, but undeniably they compensated for the lack of state secondary education prior to 1944, and taught technical and practical skills that were essential for the functioning of entire professional sectors. The grammar schools were high-standard, innovative, merit-based institutions which, given time to develop, would far have outstripped the public schools. By giving every child in every locality a chance to work their way into the most suitable school for their abilities, the 1944 system allowed countless pupils to advance and achieve to an extent that would have been impossible a generation earlier. (In the appendix to this book, there is a list of prominent beneficiaries of the system). It was the closest Britain ever came to a meritocracy. “If I were a High Tory…who really believes in privilege and keeping the lower orders down,” one peer declared, “one of the first things I should do would be to get rid of grammar schools.”  

Hitchens’s championing of grammar schools must be given its full context. After all, there is little to recommend them in their twenty-first-century form. The 160 or so such schools scattered round the country today are sparse and few in number, compared to the 1,300 of them before the start of abolition in 1965; they are out of range of vast swathes of the country; and the few which do exist are largely monopolised by middle-class parents who move into the area and block local working-class mobility. The system is only effective on a national scale. 

Of course, many objections have been raised against the grammar schools. Some are specific to the exact system of 1944. These are minor quibbles, on such issues as the age at which exams are taken, and Hitchens emphasises that to support a national meritocracy on grammar-school lines is not to support the exact system established by the Butler Act. It is not even to support the return of technical schools and secondary moderns. Many of the 1944 system’s flaws – such as the occasionally poor quality of the non-grammar schools – could be thought through and fixed if only politicians and experts would apply themselves to the task instead of dismissing the system out of hand.  

An altogether separate category of objection opposes the very idea of a grammar schools. A frequent complaint in this case is that the best school system is one which encourages free mixing and egalitarianism. If this could be put into practice, it would be fantastic. In reality, the comprehensive school system, which was designed on just these grounds, has failed disastrously. The worst comprehensives, such as the one I attended, are underfunded, depressing, chaotic cesspits which provide absolutely no prospect of social or economic advancement, even to the majority of pupils who want to succeed. They are the worst obstacles to social mobility or educational enrichment.

Then there is the complaint that selection by merit is inherently wrong and leads to segregation. The obvious rebuff to this is that, if universities and workplaces select by merit, why shouldn’t schools do the same? The qualm as to segregation may, I think, be solved by a mobile system which, rather than cementing children’s futures on the basis of an 11+ exam, would provide an annual if not a termly opportunity for everyone to work their way from one school type into another. In such a system, good behaviour and enthusiasm for learning should be rewarded just as highly as plain aptitude.  

In any case, whatever one thinks of selection by merit, there is no doubt that our current system of selection by wealth is worse. Private schools are “indefensible fortresses of money privilege.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s planned VAT raid on these schools will serve only to strengthen them, by pushing the cost of private education further into the stratosphere of the ultra-rich, and removing the charitable status which incentivises scholarships. Less obviously but just as perniciously as the private schools, catchment areas segregate state schoolchildren on the basis of income. The best comprehensives will generally be found in high-income areas, whereas the worst of them will be concentrated in low-income areas; and a 2017 report in the Independent found that more than 85% of the best-performing state schools took in disproportionately low numbers of disadvantaged pupils.  

Some of the more convincing arguments against the principle of grammar schools are not so easy to counter. It is said that by entering grammar schools some working-class pupils feel that they must abandon their roots; they may feel out of place or be ostracised by their peers; or in the end they may “go native” and become staunch defenders of a hierarchical status quo. A great deal also depends on home circumstances – bookless homes, distrust of education, and money pressures are listed here among others – so that full and perfect equality of opportunity remains elusive. But the grammar school system was not designed to abolish the class system or overhaul the structure of society. Its aim, in which it succeeded better than any British education system before or since, was simply to educate children well, regardless of their background or wealth. 

Allowing for the bizarre digressions about the inadvisability of universal suffrage or the influence of communism in the Labour Party, A Revolution Betrayed is the best thing that Peter Hitchens has written. The “cranky fogeyism” which makes it impossible to take most of his work seriously has, in this case, allowed him to produce a book which few others would been able to write. If the new government wants to leave behind it a positive and multigenerational impact, it must reform the education system; and this book, crisply and stylishly written, short enough to be read in a few hours, is a necessary one for understanding our current trouble and learning from the past to resolve it. 

Max Fosh on viral pranks, comedy tours, and the art of posh self-deprecation

Billy Jeffs
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Max Fosh on viral pranks, comedy tours, and the art of posh self-deprecation

Max Fosh is a YouTuber and stand-up comedian, who first garnered acclaim for his StreetSmart series of street interviews. Fosh then expanded towards more prank and challenge-style videos, before launching his first stand-up tour Zocial Butterfly in 2021. Cherwell interviewed him ahead of his Loophole tour across the UK, Europe, America and Australia in 2024 and 2025. He is performing in Oxford’s New Theatre on the 20th September, 2024. 

BILLY: 

Take me back to your beginnings. Did you think you were funny growing up? Were you funny growing up? 

MAX: 

That’s a very good question. I remember, I was in the car once on the way to school, and I was probably about eight, and we were listening to the classical music piece – as we did on the way to my private school, listen to Classic FM, classic me, eight year old, loved it – we were listening to Carmen by the composer Bizet. I said to my mum “Who composed this?” she said “This has been composed by Bizet” and I said “Well he must have been a very Biz-ey man” and my mum laughed, I remember my mum laughing, she found it really funny,  and as an eight year old, I thought “I really enjoy his feeling of making someone off and then I tried to like keep going, and obviously wasn’t funny, I mean the first joke wasn’t funny anyway but it was for an eight year old. And I think that was like, hold on. Like, I enjoy doing this. I enjoy making people laugh. I enjoy entertaining people. So I’ve always had a bit of a bug for it growing up.  

BILLY: 

When you started getting involved in comedy, you started in radio at university. Did you 

see stand up as the end goal of your career? Did you think that’s where you’d end up? 

MAX: 

No, and I still I still don’t see it as like, you know, the North Star, the golden goose. But it is something that I think that I’ve worked on in terms of like the qualities that you need in order to do a live show. And the … I would hesitate to call it stand up comedy because it is a bit more than that. It’s more storytelling. It’s kind of using a screen, it’s telling incidents and kind of divulging different bits and bobs that happened while filming videos. But I feel like I have done the requisite stage time in order to feel comfortable on stage. And I just think it’s a way that I can enhance the relationship in the community that I already have on YouTube by doing a live show. 

BILLY: 

You said enhanced the relationship – I know in your last tour, you incorporated storytelling about how you came to do your videos, and in a way reinterpreting the content you’d already made. Do you see that as all part of a Max Fosh ecosystem and persona? Is it the same audience for your stand up as it is for your YouTube videos? 

MAX: 

Yeah, absolutely. The biggest feedback I had from the last tour was people saying “Oh, it was like a video but live”; and that is something that we tried really hard, when I was writing the show, to make sure that was the case and also, I want the live show to be as accessible to anybody like the videos are. If you find a concept funny on YouTube, and you see the title and you click on it you’re hoping to enjoy the 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever that I’ve got in store for you. And that’s the same with the live show. A lot of people come with their friends, their family, their partners who’ve never seen a single one of my videos and we are very very conscious of trying to make sure that the show is as accessible to them as it is to the big fans so there’s no there’s no in jokes. There’s no things that are a wink wink nudge nudge that you’ll only get if you watch the vids but rather something that everyone can enjoy. 

BILLY: 

In terms of where stand up fits in your whole ecosystem – obviously, you’ve kind of had a progression of going slightly more long-form. You started with StreetSmart, and then your prank style videos and now stand up. I know you’ve spoken about trying to be authentic, do you feel you can flesh out your persona more as you get into the longer form things? 

MAX: 

I think I’ve just tried to make sure that I’m as as well rounded as a kind of entertainer as I can be. I understand how to entertain someone on YouTube over a 10-15 minute period. I understand how I can cut that down to 60 seconds for TikTok, but there is a lot of people who are always talking about “Is it sustainable, what’s going to happen in the future and how long are you really going to be able to make videos for”, and I agree that that’s a legitimate question and a legitimate concern. And so I have tried to make myself as malleable as possible, to provide as many skills as I can so I can walk into any room in 5 or 10 years down the line and kind of like a buffet say “Hey, I can offer you 4 million subscribers – no? Okay, I can offer you a live show at the Palladium or a tour or the Edinburgh Fringe.” So I’m just trying to make myself as employable as possible in the future. 

BILLY: 

And is that a thing that you feel like you have to do to be taken as a kind of serious comedian? Does stand up have to form part of that in 2024? 

MAX: 

Being regarded as a serious comedian – I think that is always going to be something out of one’s control. Especially with the new wave of the way that comedians are breaking through; previously it was like you go to Edinburgh Fringe, you then did Mock The Week and the panel shows, the producer gave you a slot on a on a bigger show and you’re able to sell a tour. Whereas now, you’ve got comedians, like legitimate comedians, let’s say Andrew Schultz or Luke Kidgell, they’re utilizing social media to do to grow their audiences. And then you’ve got creators who are developing what they’ve already got and making live shows about it. I would probably say I’m more in the latter camp than the former camp. But ultimately, the most important thing is once you’ve got the people in front of you, if you can get bums on seats, you’ve got to be able to provide an entertaining show. And that’s all that matters. And so that’s my responsibility, if you will kind of want to say “Oh, he’s not a serious comedian or he’s not a serious performer”, then that is absolutely fine. As long as I feel like I’ve provided a good show, then that’s all I care about really. 

BILLY:  

Speaking about authenticity, I think you obviously self-deprecate with being posh and that forms part of your rapport. When you talk about being authentic, is there a danger that authenticity can just become acknowledging that and not recognizing that you can be more than just that persona? 

MAX: 

Yeah, that’s a really good question. And it’s something that I recently have moved away from. In the last show there was a bit of bit of stuff about poshness and where I grew up and I agree that often you hear entertainers banging on about something that’s the same thing every single time and it gets quite boring. And I’ve made a concerted effort over the last few years to make the content less focused on posh, and less talking about my background or upbringing. And the same goes with the show; there’s nothing to do with poshness in the show whatsoever. Because ultimately, I think people look past that. Yeah, you can make a few gags about it and there’s fun self-deprecation opportunities there. But ultimately, it can be quite taxing and tiring from an audience to just constantly be fed that narrative. But also my upbringing, my background is not something that I want to hide or I can hide. And I think that that’s more disingenuous, because the audience wants you to be the most authentic self you can. But ultimately, there’s also there’s also an odd situation at play in the media and entertainment in general: the affable, lovable, posh person, there’s always one. There’s always one in the entertainment ecosystem. I mean, Jack Whitehall did it in the comedy world, Jamie Lang has very much been able to do that in the reality TV world and then gone into podcasting. So there is obviously a fascination from the wider populace about this version of poshness that people find interesting, I’m not a sociologist to be able to delve into that deeper but it’s something that I recognize. 

BILLY:  

I remember when I first came to your videos, it was in the StreetSmart phase and I know that at that time, you were younger and your content engaged a lot with university culture and people at university. Do you still think that informs your comedy now you’re more distanced from that part of your life? If you’re talking about making the show accessible to families, is that something that’s less important? 

MAX: 

Yeah, I’ve always tried to make the videos as things that I want to watch, like that is one of the biggest mantras that I have. And when I was at uni, like when I started in 2017, I was 22. I thought “Yeah, I’d love to see more of these” because you know, every university has that format going on, but they post them once every six months. I’d always think “These videos are so long, there’s much fluff and we can cut all of this out”. So I made my own because I wanted to watch that. And then ultimately I did that for two or three years, I left university, I grew up. You leave the ecosystem where it is your life when you’re there, as it should be. And then as I got older, I thought, well hold on, what do I want to see? And so that’s when I started doing a few sneak in videos and being a bit cheeky because I enjoyed watching that kind of format. And then subsequently from there, it’s moved and changed and shifted, and I’m 29, I’m nearly in my 30s. I’m sure that my content is gonna be different in three or four years time. What that’s going to be I don’t know, but I think it is important to shift with your audience as you get older. 

BILLY: 

So do you think you’ve retained that audience all along and added somebody else? Is that something that you think about? I know, obviously the creative mindset is making something for yourself, but how do you in your creative process understand what it might be to be a family show, rather than just your kind of experience? 

MAX: 

I try not to give that much agency to what the audience wants or thinks about, because I’ve seen it being quite a slippery slope when it comes to making content. Like you see creators who start to really look at data, and start to get analysis paralysis, and almost pander to a demographic that they see as watching the videos. And that is changing all the time. That’s very fluid as to who is watching the video. And now the way that the algorithm works, where it’s getting very, very good at being able to identify what you want to watch specifically. So the old subscription model of YouTube where ‘this is a channel that’s for these types of people’ has slightly moved away now. It’s more these are videos; who wants to watch this video? So I think that it means that YouTube has become more accessible for creators to create things for almost anyone. And ultimately though the most important part of my video of creation is title. You’ve got to be asking a question in that title that has some form of information gap that people want to watch the video to find out. And that is basically pretty universal. I think if you take my most recent videos for example, like ‘hot dog eating competition between a grizzly bear and a competitive eater’, you want to know who’s going to win that regardless of age demographic, wherever you come from. And so that’s kind of what we’re trying to do with this.  

BILLY: 

Beyond the title, in terms of the structure of the video, do you feel there’s space to be creative with trying to understand the algorithm? Once a viewer has clicked onto the video, is retention then predicated on having a certain structure, or is that the place where you can get creative? 

MAX: 

No, absolutely, it’s structure, structure, structure, and it’s about within the first 30 seconds, earning their click. They’ve clicked on something because they’re interested, so then you’ve got to deliver in that first 30 seconds and you’ve got to set up a reason why you’re doing this. And then from there, it can be slightly more fluid in terms of how it plays out. But that first 30 seconds is incredibly important and I look at a lot of storytelling structures that are used in TV and films to inform how the videos get made. Because ultimately, you sit down with a bunch of footage, and how do you try to form this into a coherent story? And that’s  where the editing is. It’s kind of the most important because it’s a lot of just working out how you’re going to tell the story in the most interesting way. 

BILLY: 

Just to go back to the idea of poshness. Do you think in terms of punching up and punching down in your comedy? That poshness is easily accessible for comedy because you’re never going to be punching down when somebody’s posh, especially now when those issues are more sensitive about punching up and punching down. Do you think things will trend more towards that way? 

MAX: 

Yeah, and that’s why I think that’s why initially in the in the StreetSmart days and the interview days, the posh videos did so well, because there was this feeling of it was a victim-less crime if you will, because people like to see posh people have the mick taken out of them. And also weirdly posh people also love this, in a weird Stockholm syndrome where, you know, the people themselves are like, “Oh, please take the mick out of me!”. It’s out of me. So that was that was quite interesting to see. And with the videos again, the video that is kind of my best performing video was the Welcome to Luton prank; I think it did well because again it was a victimless crime. It was just, you know, a sign in a field. And it was like a lot of the the media coverage that was used about it was talking all about “oh this is funny because nobody’s getting hurt”. And we have seen the 2014-ification of pranks and videos; it’s no longer the case where it used to be “Yeah, I’m happy to watch a member of the public have their day ruined because it’s cause it’s funny”, whereas now I don’t think consumers quite have the same appetite for that anymore and I’m glad they don’t because I don’t think it’s a particularly nice way of creating content. 

BILLY: 

Do you think that appetite changes because YouTube has drifted closer towards traditional 

media with production values and big creators? 

MAX: 

I don’t know whether it’s it’s a result of YouTube. I think it’s just a result of it becoming a tired format of being a nuisance to the general public. That expires after a while but I’m sure that will come back in 20-30 years time because these things are all cyclical and they do often repeat themselves. 

BILLY: 

Three quickfire questions before we go: biggest comedic influences? 

MAX: 

The Comedy Store Players which are an improvised group in the Comedy Store in central London, so people like Richard Vranch, Josie Lawrence. Cariad Lloyd, Paul Merton. Bill Bailey, Jack Dee and Bo Burnham. 

BILLY: 

I know you once said your volcanic video was your favourite that you’ve ever made, so what about your favourite since then? 

MAX: 

Let’s have a look. *Opens YouTube* I mean, you’re right – the volcano video purely because it just took so long to come together and was something that I was working on for genuinely years. A video that I’m really proud of … probably making a full Hollywood trailer to get my friend a date. We hired a Hollywood director, an explosions department, a stunt team, everything, the works to get my friend the best Hinge video that the dating app has ever seen. I think I think it worked. I think he got a few dates off the back of it, which is nice. That’s good. 

BILLY: 

Final question – your dad and granddad both went to Cambridge. If you had to choose would it be Oxford or the other place? Remember that you’re speaking to an Oxford student newspaper. 

MAX: 

The good news is that both of them rejected me. So luckily, I don’t have to make that decision. 

Veranilda by George Gissing review – The best historical novel never written

Hassan Akram
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Veranilda by George Gissing review – The best historical novel never written

George Gissing remains the most underrated novelist in the English language. He wrote twenty-three novels, although the average bookshop today only contains four of them. Two of these – New Grub Street, a harrowing story of London literary life, and The Odd Women, the most powerful feminist novel of its century – are acknowledged masterpieces; less so The Nether World and The Whirlpool. A few others are available to order from quality independent presses: these include my favourite, Demos, which concerns the gradual corruption of a working-class socialist who inherits a fortune, and the autobiographical debut Workers in the Dawn. The scope of his talent is exceptional. He is a Balzac, a Turgenev, and a Zola; he is also a Dickens, a Lawrence, and an Orwell. 

In recent years Grayswood Press has done more than any other publisher in bringing closer the far-off day when complete sets of him will be as widely available as sets of Dickens. This excellent new edition of Veranilda: A Story of Roman and Goth, the historical novel left unfinished at Gissing’s death, is edited and introduced by Markus Neacey, an independent scholar and editor of the quarterly Gissing Journal. Neacey is the best Gissing scholar since Pierre Coustillas. He not only provides a lucid and comprehensive discussion of Veranilda’s genesis, historical context, critical appraisal, and much else but, astonishingly, has copied out the entire text of the novel from the original manuscript as it was on Gissing’s death in 1903. Oxford World’s Classics would benefit from this level of dedication.  

Outwardly, Veranilda seems to be an atypical book for a man who made his name chronicling the London slums and the shabby-genteel middle classes. Under the surface, however, the entire package of Gissing’s motifs is here – inherited fortunes, literary men, noblewomen, love across social divides, the pressure of convention – the only difference being that it is wrapped up in a blazing historical epic instead of a piece of Victorian realism. Gissing, a classical scholar and devotee of Gibbon, succeeds in placing his story against the backdrop of sixth-century Italy, when the Romans were caught between Greek occupation and barbarian invasion. Anyone interested in the historical context can do no better than to read the illuminating introduction in this edition. To the non-historian the period detail remains remarkable for its immersiveness, its enduring picturesqueness and grandeur. As Neacey puts it: “In its elegiacal evocation of a decadent and decaying historical empire, it is a novel which is as relevant today as when it was first written.”  

The plot sweeps pacily through love scenes, duels, monasteries, royal courts, and medieval landscapes, and watching it unfold is like watching a Technicolor epic such as Ben-Hur or Cleopatra. As with all Gissing’s novels, there is not a wasted scene or filler chapter anywhere. There are several vividly drawn characters – including the brooding Maximas, the bold Heliodora, and the scheming Marcian – although the key players are Basil, a Roman noble, and Veranilda, a Gothic princess. Theirs is a case of love at first sight and, throughout the novel, various things contrive to keep them apart.  

First there is the stigma attached to their difference of religion – he is a Catholic and she a Goth – and Gissing is acute as ever here in describing the pressure of social convention on character. Then Veranilda is kidnapped – by whom, Basil gallops away to find out – and the process of suspicion, discovery, and elimination sustains the pace for a large chunk of the story. In the final instance they are separated by the character of Marcian; he is something of an Iago figure, jealous, lustful, and subtly sadistic, who initially helps in the search for Veranilda, but then, falling for her, turns her against Basil, only then to be confronted by him in a bloody chapter of enormous dramatic power. It is a credit to Gissing that he executes it without becoming melodramatic. Following the violence, Veranilda and Basil, distrustful of one another, exchange bitter words. A few chapters later they are reconciled. Some of the love scenes are not, admittedly, samples of Gissing’s most mature or realistic writing: 

‘My fairest! Let me but touch your hand. Lay it for a moment in mine—a pledge for ever!’ 

‘You do not fear to love me, O lord of my life?’ 

The whisper made him faint with joy. 

‘What has fear to do with love, O thou with heaven in thine eyes! what room is there for fear in the heart where thy beauty dwells?’ etc., etc. 

Fortunately, this Romeo and Juliet stuff is kept to a minimum. A more significant flaw than the occasional archaism is the fact that the novel was never completed; three weeks after writing Chapter 30 the author fell into an illness and died. Even this is not a huge problem. Gissing was a careful constructor of plots and his workmanlike style required very little finetuning, with the result that in spite of the slightly jarring ending the novel as a whole remains richly readable. Some of the descriptive work, especially of the Italian landscapes, reaches heights of beauty which he rarely achieved: 

Soon after sunrise, he was carried forth to his place of observation, a portico in semicircle, the marble honey-toned by time… Below him lay the little town, built on the cliffs above its landing-place; the hillsides on either hand were clad with vineyards, splendid in the purple of autumn, with olives. Sky and sea shone to each other in perfect calm; the softly breathing air mingled its morning freshness with a scent of fallen flower and leaf. A rosy vapour from Vesuvius floated gently inland…  

For all this, Veranilda is not the place to start for anyone looking to become familiar with Gissing. The book is not representative of his body of work and, if he had been solely a historical novelist, he is unlikely to have produced anything of the calibre of New Grub Street or Born in Exile. Fans of fantasy, epic, or historical fiction will find more to suit them here, and will appreciate it for what it is: a fantastic effort of the imagination, by turns thrilling and serene, with a watertight plot and powerfully observed characters.  

Veranilda is available now from Grayswood Press. ISBN: 978-1-7396203-1-8. 

Plush to host new student night, ‘Quackers Wednesdays’

Emily Henson
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Plush to host new student night, ‘Quackers Wednesdays’

Cherwell can exclusively report that Plush will begin a new Wednesday student night, Quackers. This comes after ATIK Oxford closed at the end of Trinity Term and coincides with the move of Park End, previously held at ATIK on Wednesdays, to Bridge.

The club aims to “refresh the scene”, with lower entry and drink prices compared to its competitors, in response to the rising cost of Oxford nightlife. This is set to include £1 shots and £5.50 doubles, alongside other drink deals, a Blues Events spokesperson told Cherwell.

Quackers will be exclusive to students, with a focus on those from Oxford University. It will feature a duck mascot and hopes to attract sports teams, including facilitating pre-drinks in various bars around the city. Plans are currently being made to enable sports socials between different teams. 

Plush plans to introduce various themes throughout the term because the team hopes to counter “stale” nightlife with events that are “more than just clubbing”. 

Bridge is set to host Park End, previously held at ATIK, also on Wednesdays. Before the closure of ATIK, Plush and Bridge were typically attended by students on Tuesdays and Thursdays respectively. 

Despite students telling Cherwell they find Oxford clubbing “astronomically expensive” compared to other cities, citing entry fees of over £10, venues have struggled to stay afloat.

The city has seen a number of clubs close over recent years, including Fever and Cirkus, largely due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. The Blues Events spokesperson told Cherwell that while they do not think new clubs will open, they hope to create contrast between Plush’s nights that counters the absence of other venues. 

The closure of ATIK at the end of Trinity Term, as the result of the landlord’s decision, has left Plush and Bridge as the only clubs in the city centre. Nationally, as many as five clubs a week have closed, with various factors being cited, including lowering levels of drinking among young people and the rising cost of living.  

A first look at Oxford’s next Chancellor

Cherwell News
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A first look at Oxford’s next Chancellor

Six candidates running to be Oxford University’s next Chancellor spoke exclusively to Cherwell on free speech, balancing tradition with modernity, and supporting Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor. 

Lord William Hague was the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1997 to 2001. He also held the position of Foreign Secretary as MP for Richmond from 2010 to 2014 during the coalition government. 

Lady Elish Angiolini, who has held the position of Principal at St Hugh’s College since 2012, is Solicitor General and Lord Advocate of Scotland. If elected, she would be Oxford’s first female Chancellor in its 900-year history.

Lord Peter Mandelson, who announced his candidacy exclusively to Cherwell last week, held positions including Director of Communications for the Labour Party, Secretary of State for Trade, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and European Commissioner.

Imran Khan was the prime minister of Pakistan and an international cricket star who previously captained the Oxford Blues team. He is campaigning – and answering Cherwell‘s questions – from prison on remand, where he is under “arbitrary detention” according to a UN human rights working group. Some of his charges – including leaking state secrets and un-Islamic marriage – have been overturned, while a corruption case remains in trial.

Who can know better than me right now how important all forms of freedom are?

Imran Khan to Cherwell

Dr Margaret Casely-Hayford is a lawyer and businesswoman who previously served as Chancellor of Coventry University. She is a Board member of the Co-op Group and was Chair of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Dominic Grieve served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2010 to 2014. Grieve was commissioned to review the governance structure of Christ Church College.

Q: What is your view on freedom of speech at universities?

Hague: “Freedom of speech, understanding differing viewpoints, hearing uncomfortable truths and being open to the power of reason are all vital parts of learning at universities.” 

Angiolini: “Freedom of speech is a fundamental and precious element of any modern democratic society and must be supported in Universities. Speech can however be abused to cause real harm, for example, re Nazi propaganda and threats of physical assault. It is therefore a freedom that must be exercised responsibly.”

Mandelson: “I believe in freedom of expression and in tolerance and respect for others’ views and I particularly want to hear and listen to students’ views and opinions during this election. But none of us likes to hear hateful or unkind speech and we are entitled to say so.”

Khan: “An institution which denies people the ability to speak freely cannot call itself a university. Universities are founded on the concept of freedom – the freedom to think, speak, question, debate and create. As Chancellor I would fervently defend those freedoms… Who can know better than me right now how important all forms of freedom are?”

Casely-Hayford: “A University environment should encourage listening, debating and learning from each other.  As has been famously stated elsewhere: ‘I disapprove of what you said, but I will defend unto death your right to say it’, and for me, an important codicil is that within a civilised society this isn’t an absolute right.”

Grieve: “The right to freedom of expression under law and with civility is essential to a place of learning and underpins academic freedom. It is essential that it should be supported and I would do so.”

With pro-Palestine protests and encampments in Oxford and other universities, freedom of speech has been a pertinent topic of discussion.

Days before the Conservative government’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 came into force, the current Labour government halted its implementation. The act required universities and student unions to protect freedom of speech, but opponents raised concerns that it may protect hate speech.

Presidents of four Ivy League universities in the US – Harvard University, Cornell University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania – have resigned over criticism of their handling of campus conflict around the war in Gaza.

Q: What do you think is a right balance of modernity and tradition at Oxford?

Hague: “It is not so much a question of balance as of ensuring that tradition and modernity serve and strengthen each other, which will be vital in the unprecedented period of change now beginning. 

Angiolini: “The status quo.”

Mandelson: “Widening access to the university for students from different social backgrounds and parts of the country should be the main modernising effort. Otherwise, the university’s traditions are valuable and should be protected, including its traditional college tutorial system. New technologies should be utilised when there is demand from students, in ways that will benefit them.”

Khan: “There are two traditions which are more profound and which underpin all others: academic freedom and intellectual rigour. To continue to thrive, however, Oxford must embrace the modern world. It must open its ancient doors to the leaders of the future – the brightest minds from across the UK and the world, regardless of their income or background.”

Casely-Hayford: “Of course there are traditions that are the essence of this 800 year old institution that should be cherished but we should also recognise the need to modernise culturally and operationally and should not to be wary of embracing change as we move forward, in order to make the University continually relevant, pertinent and appropriately agile.”

Grieve: “Oxford’s great strength is the combination of its rich history, its traditions that support its shared life and its academic excellence as well as its modernity and being at the cutting edge of research and thinking. The correct balance between them cannot be fixed as it evolves all the time.”

Q: In his farewell interview with Cherwell, Lord Patten advised the next chancellor to support the Vice-Chancellor. How do you plan to support Irene Tracey and potential Vice-Chancellors?

Hague: “The Chancellor can support the Vice-Chancellor with private counsel when needed, public steadiness in a crisis, contagious enthusiasm for plans and achievements, and a global network of contacts and friendships.”

Angiolini: “Irene Tracy is an outstanding individual. She may not need a great deal of advice but more often the ability to debate an issue before she has come to a decision. Being a sage and good listener is one of the strengths of our current Chancellor.”

Mandelson: “The role of the Chancellor is not to be the same as the VC but to bring different personal experience, skills and a strong reach into the world of politics and business outside Oxford. With a new government in office, if elected I will use my longstanding political links to advocate both for Oxford and the university sector as a whole.”

Khan: “Oxford is a global university, and I would be a global Chancellor, drawing on my extensive networks and experience in fundraising to help Oxford raise the money needed for transformative research. Team work has also been a integral ingredient as a cricket captain and building one of the largest political parties in Asia.”

Casely-Hayford: “Support for the Vice-Chancellor should encompass being a wise old head, proffering good judgement and sound advice when it’s sought, and recognising that there are local and domestic roles as well as an essential function of global brand ambassador and fundraising figurehead.”

Grieve: “The role of Chancellor, apart from its ceremonial and Visitor functions for some colleges, is to support them in their work and to be an advocate for the University to government and generally and an adviser to it when required.”

Election updates

Although current undergraduate students cannot vote in the upcoming elections, scheduled for October, some have taken action through online campaigns.

Oxford University Conservative Association has officially endorsed Hague, while members of the Oxford University Labour Club are campaigning for Mendelson.

Historically, elections took place in the Sheldonian Theatre where the Convocation – made up of former students and members of the Congregation, Oxford’s supreme governing body – cast votes in academic dress. 

This election will be the first held online, a change made by the University earlier this year. An earlier version of the rules included a committee that will decide on the eligibility of candidates with “due regard to the principles of equality and diversity”. Following allegations that the committee might prevent the election of another white male candidate, the University dropped the “equality and diversity” plan.

Instead, the Chancellor Election Committee, which “plays no substantive role”, puts forth candidates with due regard to a narrow set of exclusion criteria only: A candidate must not be a current student or employee of the University or a serving member of an elected legislature. They must also not be disqualified from being a charity trustee and must qualify as a “fit and proper person”. No other requirements are asked of candidates.

Several fringe candidates have announced their interest, including Reverend Matthew Firth and Reverend Nigel Biggar, and Maxim Parr-Reid, who represented Trinity College in University Challenge in 2017. Firth has conveyed his interest in representing an “anti-woke” ticket, writing on X: “Please vote for me to be the next Chancellor of the University of Oxford. I’m the only candidate who will be publicly anti-woke, and that’s what academia needs.”

Underconsumption-core: Are students the perfect subculture to reclaim underconsumption?

Madelina Gordon
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Underconsumption-core: Are students the perfect subculture to reclaim underconsumption?

When it comes to consumer culture in 2024, most would agree that TikTok is among its most infamous drivers. TikTok itself claims that its users are 1.7 times more likely to engage in e-commerce behaviour than the users of any other social media or video platform. TikTok’s model is explicitly designed to incentivise consumption. On the user side, the platform’s proprietary algorithm provides users with personally appetitive content on their video feeds and rapidly circulates popular videos so that they can go ‘viral’ in a matter of hours. On the seller side, ‘TikTok for Business’ conjoins the addictive user model to an advertising function – its website entices businesses to begin their TikTok advertising journey by citing that 1 in 2 Gen Z users are likely to purchase something from the app.

Accordingly, there is no doubt that TikTok has been both a beneficiary and subsequent bolsterer of capitalist overconsumption. Consumption isn’t a side effect, it’s front and centre of the user experience. Users are exposed every few scrolls to massive haul videos; boxes of products gifted to influencers by advertisers; and product recommendations from regular users. Overconsumption is an embedded feature of capitalism, but on TikTok, the problem is incessant. 

So it comes as a surprise that TikTok, the very platform which so readily supports consumption, has played host to the ‘underconsumption-core’ trend that emerged this summer. The trend entails people showing the parts of their lives that reflect an ethos of underconsumption, or as many videos cite in brackets, ‘normal consumption’. Think: reusable coffee cups, revamped second-hand furniture, three-product skin care routines and keeping scraps of veggies for soup stock. To the untrained eye, these might just be seen as routine habits anyone might adopt to save money. Yet culturally, this trend represents a grander, paradigmatic shift.

Reducing consumption is not something new. It’s been performed by millions of families for centuries, as it is today. Moreover, this isn’t the first time saving money has been trendy (Depression-era feed-sack dresses weren’t just cost-efficient; they were fashionable). But the glamorisation of these lifestyles, that by their nature lend themselves to recycling, reusing and reducing consumption of excess products, on social media, has the potential for exploiting the ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ effect of TikTok trends to encourage sustainable consumption on a level so far unachieved through public information campaigns.

The question I ask, though, is to what extent is this trend really taking off, and does it, albeit still in its nascent stages, have any potential as a countering force to the massive engine of overconsumption? A TikTok trend will not unravel the entire capitalist system that exists today. However, ‘underconsumption-core’ marks the beginning of a process of cultural reclamation – one that students might be the perfect subculture to catalyse.

University students are almost all on budgets, seeking to save money in a host of creative ways. Students don’t have large disposable incomes to spend on luxuries, let alone additional items above and beyond essentials. In efforts to reduce expenses, students naturally limit themselves in what they consume, and many look to how they can reuse and revitalise things they (or others) already own. Some sell and buy clothes and furniture on Vinted and Facebook Marketplace; many own only single sets of dishware and only one or two sets of sheets. Living at university – with lives bundled completely and entirely into 4-by-4-metre rooms – requires prioritising the necessary. In doing so, students learn vital skills, which retain relevance even in their futures when they might indeed have more money or more space.

So many people say that their university years are the best in their lives. Is it a coincidence that these years are the ones where they consume the least? Where the emphasis is on connections, people, and ideas rather than the things that are owned? The ability to live perfectly happily, without constant gratification from an excessive abundance of things in a one-bedroom accom room, creates the space for introspection and relationships that ordinarily compete with material distractions.

A TikTok trend will not dismantle capitalism. But the student experience – and the simple joys of our university years – offer us a glimpse into what life could be if we rejected our capitalist-rooted impulses to constantly consume.

Lord Peter Mandelson officially announces candidacy for Oxford chancellorship

Éilis Mathur
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Lord Peter Mandelson officially announces candidacy for Oxford chancellorship

Lord Peter Mandelson has confirmed that he will be running for Chancellor of Oxford University, Cherwell can report. 

This comes after Lord Christopher Patten announced his retirement from the role in February of this year. Mandelson now joins a small pool of frontrunners seeking to become the next Chancellor.

A former Labour Party politician and life peer in the House of Lords, Mandelson has held several Cabinet positions during his career, including Secretary of State for Trade and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In the latter role, he oversaw the establishment of the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly. His tenure as Director of Communications for the Labour Party gained him the nickname ‘the Prince of Darkness’ for his handlings with the media. 

Mandelson has also been European Commissioner and is honorary president of the Great Britain-China Centre. More recently, he reportedly advised Prime Minister Keir Starmer and has been described as having “significant influence inside Starmer’s office.” 

Mandelson studied Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at St Catherine’s College, matriculating in 1973. He told Cherwell: “I have a great attachment to Oxford but also feel passionately about the University sector as a whole.” In a previous interview with Cherwell, Mandelson mentioned his indifference to the Oxford Union during his student days, describing how “the greasy pole didn’t attract [him].”

If elected, Lord Mandelson would be the first Labour Party member to hold the position. Historically, the role has been occupied by Conservative Party politicians. Out of the nine Oxford chancellors in the last century, seven, including Lord Patten, were Conservative politicians. 

Mandelson told Cherwell: “The last Conservative government gave universities and students a really hard time financially. Universities were denigrated by ministers and I am glad that has ended with the election of a new government.”

He also said he would “use [his] political links with the new government to advocate for Oxford and the university sector” and his “extensive network with the rest of the world, especially America and Asia.” 

Mandelson will face, among others, Lord William Hague, former Leader of the Conservative Party, and Lady Elish Angiolini, former Lord Advocate of Scotland and Solicitor General. While these three are considered the front runners of the election, other reported candidates include former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan and lawyer and businesswoman Dr Margaret Casely-Hayford. 

The election, which is scheduled for the third week of the upcoming Michaelmas Term, will be the first in Oxford’s history to be carried out online, opening the process to 250,000 eligible voters. The Convocation, which consists of former Oxford students and the Congregation, which includes academic staff and members of University governing bodies, will elect the new Chancellor. Mandleson said he hoped current Oxford students would have a say in the election despite not being eligible to vote. 

Even prior to the announcement of his candidacy, Labour students at Oxford University began an online campaign in Mandelson’s support. A member of Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) told Cherwell: “As current Oxford students, we want a Chancellor who will stand up for our interests and advocate for desperately needed reforms to higher education funding.” Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) have publicly endorsed Lord Hague on their social media platforms. 

Chancellor of the University of Oxford, historically an eminent public figure, is a highly coveted role which involves serving as the titular head of the University and presiding over all major ceremonies. Mandelson acknowledged that it is “largely ceremonial” but also said: “I hope it will be enjoyable, participative, and energising for the University.”

Mandelson described how “Oxford never stands still. It’s always going forward” and referenced the upcoming election as “a chance to think about our future and where it is going.” He told Cherwell: “I hope the Chancellor election will be a spur in this conversation about the future.”

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