The student leaders that could be about to enter Parliament

If anything defined the experience of staying up to watch the results of the 1997 General Election, it was probably the result in Michael Portillo’s Enfield Southgate constituency.

Earlier in the night Newnight presenter Jeremy Paxman had asked the eurosceptic cabinet minister whether he might fancy a run at the leadership of the Conservatives if the exit poll was right, and John Major’s time in Number 10 was over.

By 3.10am Portillo was stood on the stage at Enfield Town Hall defeated. But it was who had beaten him – standing beside him barely able to contain his excitement – that I was fascinated by.

Stephen Twigg was both the youngest and first openly gay president of the National Union of Students (NUS) when he was elected in 1990, standing as part of the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS).

It’s hard to explain the grip that NOLS had on NUS in the 90s and 00s. In April 1991, when delegates to NUS Conference received their manifesto documents they were surprised to see that there were no Labour Students – the nominations had arrived at NUS HQ after the deadline (because, apparently of a bomb scare at King’s Cross) and the Elections Committee refused to accept them.

Hence in Blackpool the NOLS candidates ran a campaign in favour of “Re-open Nominations” – and the option won the presidency of NUS by 381 votes, as well as National Secretary, VP Education and VP Welfare. A fresh election was staged there and then – and Twigg took it.

His successor at NUS Lorna Fitzsimons, and her successor Jim Murphy (who went on to run Scottish Labour when it was pretty much wiped out at Westminster in 2005) were also elected as MPs on the night in 1997. It was quite the run.

A new intake

The big change that seems to be coming after the General Election is that we’re much more likely to be getting a raft of MPs that represent urban areas with a university, college or at least some students in it.

That matters not just in the Department for Education (DfE) (or wherever universities end up), it matters right across government – health, transport, housing, benefits and the Home Office spring instantly to mind as areas that have tended to ignore the circa 3m students in the UK.

But as well as urban MPs in general, there’s a whole raft of MPs set to win their seats that have previously occupied students’ union positions.

Here I’ve rattled through some of the interesting ex-student leader Labour hopefuls that could be entering Parliament after the election. It’s neither a comprehensive list (I’m keeping that locked up on my laptop), nor covers the numerous incumbent MPs that have engaged in student politics (of which we can expect both Wes Streeting and Darren Jones to be on the front bench, alone with Anneliese Dodds and Pat McFadden), nor those standing from other parties.

I’ve cross-referenced to the Electoral Calculus MRP (used in DK’s piece elsewhere on the site) for a sense of their chances of winning.

Remember Rand

Let’s start up in Altrincham and Sale West (87 per cent chance of Labour winning), the seat of Graham “1922 Committee” Brady, where the old Labour candidate for the seat, local Ben Hartley, resigned in a surprise statement on social media less than two weeks before the election was called. His replacement is Connor Rand, a one-time party organiser and senior researcher for Usdaw. He was also the impressive Undergraduate Education Officer when I worked at UEA SU in 2015 – with a strong body of work on hidden course costs, nursing students and even students using food banks.

Olivia Bailey (Reading West and Reading West and Mid Berkshire, Labour 78 per cent chance of a win), is director of social policy at Public First, and was head of domestic policy for Keir Starmer having worked at Ipsos Mori and directed policy research for famous think tank the Fabian Society.

But before all of that she was a student at Oxford, and both the National Chair of Labour Students and NUS’ Women’s Officer – a platform she used to launch “Hidden Marks”, the groundbreaking study of women students’ experiences of harassment, stalking, violence and sexual assault in 2010. She’ll be alarmed to learn that 14 years on, there’s still no formal regulation in that space. At NUS, Bailey was also the inventor of the “NUS Pledge” – the butterfly that flapped its wings all the way to the Liberal Democrats’ downfall at the ballot box for much of the second half of the last decade.

Andrew Pakes – hoping to take Peterborough (92 per cent chance of a Labour win) – was both Treasurer and President of NUS from 1997 to 2000, and found himself having to defend the introduction of tuition fees as a Labour president as a result. He used that time to call for extra help for the poorest students – calling for the reinstatement of housing benefit, income support over the holidays and flexible one-off allowances when needed.

Issy Waite (Essex North West) is contesting what’s currently Kemi Badenoch’s seat of Essex North West – where Labour have a 41 per cent chance of a win. She was National Secretary of Labour Students and Chair of the University of Sussex Labour Society just a couple of years ago – and will be hoping to provide one of the “Portillo moments” of Thursday night.

As if by magic

There’s a number of former student activists hoping to restore the Labour Party’s fortunes in Scotland. Melanie Ward is a former NUS Scotland President from Stirling, hoping to take back Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (90 per cent) – in the mid 00s Ward was warning that vulnerable students who feel they have to leave were “being left with no qualifications at all and are seen as a drop-out when it may be no fault of their own”.

Kirsty McNeill was President at Oxford University SU in 2001, and is hoping to unseat the SNP in Midlothian. McNeill – Save the Children’s executive director of policy, advocacy and campaigns and a former Downing Street adviser to Gordon Brown – famously led a successful protest to stop the visit of Holocaust denier David Irving to the Oxford Union debating society at the time. She may have views on whether the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 makes it harder to ban that kind of activity today.

Blair McDougall was chair of the Labour Club at Glasgow, where he acted as Eastenders’ Ross Kemp’s campaign manager during the 1999 Rectorial election. He went on to serve as chair of Scottish Labour Students from 2001 to 2003 before becoming a special adviser to Ian McCartney, Minister for Trade, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and James Purnell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – as well as being “head strategist” to the Better Together campaign during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. He’s hoping to take back East Renfrewshire (92 per cent).

Quality assured

Mid Bedfordshire (Labour chance of win: 81 per cent) could be fun – it’s Nadine Dorries’ seat, and she’s a key player in the Channel 4 coverage. That’s being contested by the formidable Maahwish Mirza, who was Education Officer and Deputy President at Warwick SU back in 2014/15 – elected on a platform of improving feedback and assessment, driving up quality and quantity of contact hours, and supporting students in their career ambitions. None of those problems have gone away.

Josh MacAlister (OBE) will be known to many as the Chief Executive of Frontline, the social work charity which he left to lead the government’s English Care Review in 2022. A former president at Edinburgh University Students’ Association, he narrowly lost out as NUS Scotland President in 2008 – he’s hoping to take Whitehaven and Workington, on a 99 per cent chance according to Electoral Calculus. He used to have quite a bit to say about teaching quality in the Russell Group – and was a pioneer of student-led teaching awards back in 2008.

Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East, 83 per cent chance) was Vice President Academic Representation at Edge Hill Students Union just five years ago – he went on to be Policy and Public Affairs Officer at the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and was almost VP Higher Education at NUS. He’ll be baffled by OfS’ hostile takeover of quality in England.

Remember when Andrea Jenkyns was higher education minister for about 5 minutes flat, using her time in Liz Truss’ government to vow to crack down on “Harry Potter degrees”? Vying to replace her in Leeds South West and Morley (98 per cent chance) is Mark Sewards, who was keen on addressing PG funding when he stood for the NUS NEC twelve or so years ago, having been Communications & Internal Affairs Officer at Leeds University Union.

Michael Payne (Gedling, 98 per cent) stood on a ticket of addressing Lancaster University’s “achilles’ heel – graduate employability” when he became its SU’s President in 2009. Jacob Collier (61 per cent, Burton and Uttoxeter) had a run at regulating landlords during his time as Community Officer at the University of Nottingham Students’ Union.

Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley, 100 per cent) was a big name on Guild Council at Liverpool, Antonia Bance (Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley, 98 per cent) was a big wheel in the NUS Women’s Campaign, and Gareth Snell (Stoke on Trent Central, 95 per cent) left Parliament in the 2019 election but is hoping to stage a comeback – he founded Keele Labour Students in 2004 and was general secretary of the SU.

There’s more. Mark Ferguson (Cambridge SU President in 06-07) is Labour’s candidate for Gateshead Central (98 per cent), Michael Payne’s predecessor as Lancaster SU President, Tim Roca (2007-08) is Labour’s candidate in Macclesfield (95 per cent) and James Asser (NUS VP Welfare 1998-2000) and previously UCE (ie Birmingham City) Students’ Union, is Labour’s candidate for West Ham and Beckton (100 per cent) – and an early campaigner on lad’s mags:

Of course, having former student activists in Parliament guarantees favours neither for students nor universities – and many candidates tend to be quite coy about their involvement in student politics, not least because the term has come to be associated with a brand of “childish radicalism” that many accused the Corbyn-era party of indulging in to defeat.

That said, having a glut of MPs that, in their youth, were elected to represent students, have been on the inside of a university governing body or have handled debates about fees and funding could also help in all sorts of ways – both in ministerial roles and in the numerous All-Party Parliamentary Groups and other activities that will need to be created to stop ambitious MPs from getting bored on the backbenches.

Although depending on your role in a university, it could also be a hindrance.

Oh – and spare a thought for David Goss (Loughborough SU President 2008-09), who is the Conservative candidate for Wellingborough (Peter Bone’s old seat) which in the 2019 election had a Tory majority of 19,000.  Electoral Calculus give him a 3 per cent chance of winning…