There’s nothing in the least dodgy about life members of the Union voting. I think I am a life member, having joined as an undergraduate in 1967. However I thought it would be a bit odd for a man of my age to leap into my car and drive the 80 mile round trip to Oxford to vote. Other people have taken a different view.
This whole row is mild stuff compared with the stuff that happened in my time at Oxford. There was a ballot rigging scandal. There was also a scandal over the sacking of the Steward, the senior staff member. The thing to remember is that, rightly or wrongly, the child politicians who populate the Union almost always go on to lead perfectly successful careers. I expect the newly deposed President will have a successful future as a Green MP, where his loathsomeness and childishness will go unnoticed, or else be a positive asset.
Did you read about the old members who travelled to vote and were turned away despite having photo ID, as they couldn't confirm that they were life members?
I think that all is have is a tatty old piece of card with my 58-year-old mugshot pasted into it. If I had turned up to vote, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had turned me away. But clearly enough life members were allowed to vote to massively increase the number of people votes cast.
The ramparts have not crumbled beyond repair. One misfit does not have the capacity to bring down the Oxford Union, anymore than Prince Andrew will render the Monarchy obsolete.
Wonderful writing, as ever. The penultimate paragraph is devastatingly accurate.
Abaraonye has the swagger and dress sense of someone drowning in entitlement, but with none of the grace or intellect to justify it. Not that he's stupid; he obviously knows exactly how this game works, which is why he's reluctant to stand down.
It’s this unholy alliance above all, the institutional cowardice meeting empowered victimhood, that lies at the root of so many of our cultural pathologies. It’s why activist hobbyists and outrage merchants can glide so easily from one cause to the next; different slogans, same moral exhibitionism.
I wrote about this particular strain of activist here if anyone's interested: Send in the Keffiyeh Clowns
I had to look up "musteline" - indeed spellcheck needs to do so as well,
but skunk-like seems most appropriate for an entity who expels a disgusting smell when he is confronted... whilst rejoicing in the appearance of someone who would rather the Oxford union looked like a downbeat club for dopeheads than a respected institution that championed British values of fair play and rational debate.
Oxford University itself needs to learn from this and learn to champion good tradition instead of adopting the servile woke/DEI positioning that led to this man's appointment and many other white-guilt led behaviours.
An excellently written article as usual hitting all the salient points. I fear that Abaraonye is just the tip of an iceberg of an entire generation who have never heard the word no, have never failed at anything, have never taken personal responsibility for anything and as a result are dripping in unearned self confidence and entitlement!
yes, it's concerning that Abaraonye gained as many as 500 votes, and that it took an army of the alumni to oust him. As has been said for decades, you just can't trust teenagers. But whereas they used to just get drunk on cheap cider, now in their hyper-assertive, narcissistic off-the-charts self-regard (I blame the parents), they veer more towards being homicidal maniacs.
Sorry but you can’t point a finger at the parents necessarily. It’s the capture of the Universities that is the most worrying, particularly the most prestigious universities. I haven’t quite worked out yet why this has happened but social media and smartphones are implicated imho.
I was joking when I said "I blame the parents". Even to use the word 'blame' is not correct (outside of being humorous). There are many causes and conditions for why anything happens. But ultimately people are responsible themselves for their personal actions. I'm sure it is in Oxford's ethos somewhere (along with all belief systems that respect good ethics) that you reap what you sow. Not wanting to acknowledge that is a sign someone is afraid of growing up.
Thank you Andrew for this excellent essay. I agree that a young man who flippantly celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death is quite unsuitable to be the next President of the Oxford Union. He was seemingly pandering to some of the extreme ideologies of the left and in this instance, his attitude is unsavoury to say the least.
Excellent commentary! Oxford University, like other previously elite institutions, has created an amoral bubble and those who live within that bubble have become totally detached from normal standards of behaviour, hence their incredulity when consequences from the outside world impinge. They are so self-righteous, they think their down is up. The other student - Simon Williams - who, without a sliver of awareness of the law it seems, publicly chanted an arguably anti-semitic slogan and had a similarly painful crash into reality.
Yes indeed, time for Mr Abaraonye to say goodbye. I thought he should have considered his position when all this happened six weeks ago but he failed to do so and now the decision to stand down has been forced upon him. If anything, he doubled down on his obnoxious tweets in the way in which he tried to subvert Oxford Union’s debating society. The only way he could stay on is if they were to rename it ‘Oxford Union’s anything-but-debating society’.
Just as well all those alumni voted. With a two-thirds majority required, all those votes were needed.
Does Toby Young of the Free Speech Union still support this guy?
Reading about him it sounds like we now have the recipe that produces such vile and pathetic creatures like Sadiq Khan. Yet another 'victim' of a victimless crime.
Perhaps it’s time to introduce lessons that explain the importance of manners - as it would seem a few generations have not been taught any. In the same way that my mother said equality doesn’t mean chivalry has to die. It would seem that the death of chivalry has indeed led to the removal of manners the invisible social glue that instilled respect - empathy etc & more importantly provided a social awareness of the other & positive social conduct - Britain was often mocked & yet admired for it’s manners & social graces - like queuing & now we can see why manners are important & queuing denotes a fundamental patience that was once an aspect of the British identity which for good reason we ourselves once valued as it showed an overall discipline that signified what it meant to be British
There’s nothing in the least dodgy about life members of the Union voting. I think I am a life member, having joined as an undergraduate in 1967. However I thought it would be a bit odd for a man of my age to leap into my car and drive the 80 mile round trip to Oxford to vote. Other people have taken a different view.
This whole row is mild stuff compared with the stuff that happened in my time at Oxford. There was a ballot rigging scandal. There was also a scandal over the sacking of the Steward, the senior staff member. The thing to remember is that, rightly or wrongly, the child politicians who populate the Union almost always go on to lead perfectly successful careers. I expect the newly deposed President will have a successful future as a Green MP, where his loathsomeness and childishness will go unnoticed, or else be a positive asset.
Did you read about the old members who travelled to vote and were turned away despite having photo ID, as they couldn't confirm that they were life members?
I think that all is have is a tatty old piece of card with my 58-year-old mugshot pasted into it. If I had turned up to vote, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had turned me away. But clearly enough life members were allowed to vote to massively increase the number of people votes cast.
The ramparts have not crumbled beyond repair. One misfit does not have the capacity to bring down the Oxford Union, anymore than Prince Andrew will render the Monarchy obsolete.
Wonderful writing, as ever. The penultimate paragraph is devastatingly accurate.
Abaraonye has the swagger and dress sense of someone drowning in entitlement, but with none of the grace or intellect to justify it. Not that he's stupid; he obviously knows exactly how this game works, which is why he's reluctant to stand down.
It’s this unholy alliance above all, the institutional cowardice meeting empowered victimhood, that lies at the root of so many of our cultural pathologies. It’s why activist hobbyists and outrage merchants can glide so easily from one cause to the next; different slogans, same moral exhibitionism.
I wrote about this particular strain of activist here if anyone's interested: Send in the Keffiyeh Clowns
https://theunlightenment.substack.com/p/send-in-the-keffiyeh-clowns
I had to look up "musteline" - indeed spellcheck needs to do so as well,
but skunk-like seems most appropriate for an entity who expels a disgusting smell when he is confronted... whilst rejoicing in the appearance of someone who would rather the Oxford union looked like a downbeat club for dopeheads than a respected institution that championed British values of fair play and rational debate.
Oxford University itself needs to learn from this and learn to champion good tradition instead of adopting the servile woke/DEI positioning that led to this man's appointment and many other white-guilt led behaviours.
I did too! My preferred interpretation is "weasel" over "skunk" though...
It's from the Latin for "weasel"!
An excellently written article as usual hitting all the salient points. I fear that Abaraonye is just the tip of an iceberg of an entire generation who have never heard the word no, have never failed at anything, have never taken personal responsibility for anything and as a result are dripping in unearned self confidence and entitlement!
yes, it's concerning that Abaraonye gained as many as 500 votes, and that it took an army of the alumni to oust him. As has been said for decades, you just can't trust teenagers. But whereas they used to just get drunk on cheap cider, now in their hyper-assertive, narcissistic off-the-charts self-regard (I blame the parents), they veer more towards being homicidal maniacs.
Yes, thank heavens they let the grown ups (the alumni) vote!
Sorry but you can’t point a finger at the parents necessarily. It’s the capture of the Universities that is the most worrying, particularly the most prestigious universities. I haven’t quite worked out yet why this has happened but social media and smartphones are implicated imho.
Niall Ferguson did a presentation on this last year. He used the data to predict (correctly) the outcome of the US election: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUJMyTJ9gyI&list=PLUQxp7yC97LVXwCn6AxkFQb1wO3oNPfKS&index=101&t=103s
I was joking when I said "I blame the parents". Even to use the word 'blame' is not correct (outside of being humorous). There are many causes and conditions for why anything happens. But ultimately people are responsible themselves for their personal actions. I'm sure it is in Oxford's ethos somewhere (along with all belief systems that respect good ethics) that you reap what you sow. Not wanting to acknowledge that is a sign someone is afraid of growing up.
Thank you Andrew for this excellent essay. I agree that a young man who flippantly celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death is quite unsuitable to be the next President of the Oxford Union. He was seemingly pandering to some of the extreme ideologies of the left and in this instance, his attitude is unsavoury to say the least.
Excellent commentary! Oxford University, like other previously elite institutions, has created an amoral bubble and those who live within that bubble have become totally detached from normal standards of behaviour, hence their incredulity when consequences from the outside world impinge. They are so self-righteous, they think their down is up. The other student - Simon Williams - who, without a sliver of awareness of the law it seems, publicly chanted an arguably anti-semitic slogan and had a similarly painful crash into reality.
We have created a society that presents almost limitless opportunities for shameless racial shakedown merchants.
Yes indeed, time for Mr Abaraonye to say goodbye. I thought he should have considered his position when all this happened six weeks ago but he failed to do so and now the decision to stand down has been forced upon him. If anything, he doubled down on his obnoxious tweets in the way in which he tried to subvert Oxford Union’s debating society. The only way he could stay on is if they were to rename it ‘Oxford Union’s anything-but-debating society’.
Just as well all those alumni voted. With a two-thirds majority required, all those votes were needed.
Does Toby Young of the Free Speech Union still support this guy?
Reading about him it sounds like we now have the recipe that produces such vile and pathetic creatures like Sadiq Khan. Yet another 'victim' of a victimless crime.
Perhaps it’s time to introduce lessons that explain the importance of manners - as it would seem a few generations have not been taught any. In the same way that my mother said equality doesn’t mean chivalry has to die. It would seem that the death of chivalry has indeed led to the removal of manners the invisible social glue that instilled respect - empathy etc & more importantly provided a social awareness of the other & positive social conduct - Britain was often mocked & yet admired for it’s manners & social graces - like queuing & now we can see why manners are important & queuing denotes a fundamental patience that was once an aspect of the British identity which for good reason we ourselves once valued as it showed an overall discipline that signified what it meant to be British
Jew Haters...... moslems being Jew Hating moslems