41 per cent of Reform-voting undergraduates don’t think Reform should be allowed to speak on campus

Some 41 per cent of Reform voting undergraduates feel that the UK political party Reform should not be allowed to speak at on campus events.

I’ll admit, that is based on a tiny (51) sample of undergraduates from within the latest HEPI polling, but it is nonetheless a striking finding.

And it illustrates quite a widespread phenomenon. Thirty percent of (56) Conservative voting undergraduates think that the Conservatives should be banned from campus. For the (275) Labour voters, 23 per cent would be unhappy to see the Labour party speak at a university event.

Obviously there’s endless fun to be had with what are, in the main, findings stretching the limits of significance. But as an illustration illuminating the confused ventriloquism of the student voice on culture wars issues by people who really should know better, it is difficult to match.

Students in general (around 90 per cent based on this sample) feel free to express themselves and their politics openly and without restriction. Again with tiny numbers, Reform voters are less likely than others – but even there we are talking about 9 students that feel unable (just one “absolutely” unable – of just seven students overall who felt absolutely unable to express their views).

It goes on. Some 25 per cent of the tiny Reform voting sample feel like they do not have satisfactory protection from “discrimination or emotional harm” – and mathematically this must include some of the 80 per cent of Reform voters who feel universities should “never limit free speech”.

I get the sense from reading through HEPI’s data tables that students more generally are happier to pronounce on abstract absolutes regarding free speech and freedom from harm, while findings that require reflection on personal experiences are a lot more nuanced. Despite increasingly polarised political messaging, I’d argue that ideological and philosophical leanings are a lot more nuanced and a lot less tribal than is generally painted.

Whenever I get the chance to chat to professional polling analysts (and those who do the more up-to-date stuff that involves chatting to people in pubs) I’m always struck by stories of political inconsistency. People, it turns out, are weird – and are entirely capable of holding multiple incompatible views simultaneously. It’s only the way these views are reported that encourages us to construct the personas and stereotypes that somehow drive policymaking.

I’m not saying that those stereotypes don’t exist – clearly they do – but they do not describe large swathes of the population who think, act, and vote in similar ways. Undergraduate students – likely to be engaged in some fairly fundamental personal growth and self-definition – perhaps even more so than the general population. And that is the nuance that poll findings about free speech tend to miss.

Indeed, on the revelation that – given the choice – some students would prefer not to listen to Reform party communications on campus, none less than Deputy Leader Richard Tice said:

These findings are appalling. British universities abandoned being centres of genuine learning, rigorous debate and intellectual challenge long ago, instead opting to become echo chambers of far-left indoctrination run by activist academics. University leaders bear responsibility for allowing this culture to fester in our institutions. The government must pull grant funding unless this is changed urgently.

It’s a big position to take on the expressed preferences of 350 undergraduate students from a not particularly representative sample (selected for gender, provider type, and year of study – but not weighted, so we see odd artifacts like 42 per cent of a sample of undergraduates being over 22 years old). But nuance and lived experience don’t get clicks.