Lammy is a rebel with many, many causes: racism, gang crime, knife crime, gun crime; Windrush; Grenfell; and Brexit. His anger is palpable. “I will always try to be my own man”, he said last year. “People used to ask, Blair or Brown? I would say no, just black. That is who I am.” For him the personal is political and the political is personal.
And little has been more personal for the former universities minister (2007-2010) than his onslaught on Oxbridge’s admissions policies over the last 12 months based on his analysis of FoI returns.
Lammy argues their intakes are a national disgrace and that by any measure, they remain massively unrepresentative. His anger is palpable. They remain “fiefdoms of entrenched privilege”, “the last bastion of the old school tie” and guilty of “social apartheid”.
He’s been savvy – creating a media, political and public debate where there was little before; organising 100-plus MPs to demand Oxford and Cambridge make urgent reforms; and arguably, laying the groundwork for OfS to hold Oxbridge’s feet closer to the flame. Some wags argue he’s achieved more from the backbenchers then he ever did as minister.
Unlike Kehindre Andrews (No.37), however, he believes HE is capable of transforming itself, on race in particular – calling for Oxbridge to have centralised, not college-run, admissions.
Both universities argue change is underway and that Lammy’s attacks risk deterring would-be students from applying. Yet, fairly or unfairly, they have left an impression of being defensive, closed and reactive – getting sucked into arguing over Lammy’s statistical analysis, rather than leading big picture radical change.