Their student days are the closest most radical lefties will come to actual power without selling out. Students have a tolerance for radicalism and are generally well to the left of the population as a whole. Moderate lefties can, of course, attain power in later life but for them it is an opportunity to get started in building their reputation and skills as a campaigner for the various designated victim groups which are the suffering unfortunates required by the modern, post-working class, left.
As such, it is a bigger problem than it might seem, for this small but important group, when things go as wrong as they have this year for the LSE left. The right at LSE is currently at rather a low ebb and an alliance of the socialists and the Islamic society (the LSE is a very international university) have swept most of the elected positions. They should be celebrating their victory, such as it is. However, instead those with any comprehension of the wider picture will be lamenting that all those officers will be able to achieve little even by the low standards of student politicians.
The campus left managed to pressure the LSE into holding a poll of students on the subject of whether Howard Davies, the school's Director, should be reappointed. The result of this poll came back quite clear: 932 in favour of his remaining, 311 against and 360 spoilt ballots or no votes. What this tells us, and the school will notice, is that Howard Davies is rather popular among LSE students. When all these new socialist officers try to tell Davies that he is trampling over the wishes of students he can tell them, with good justification, that the students trust his judgement. All of their election success has only won them the right to frustrating failure trying to convince the school of anything.
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4 comments:
That is remarkably stupid of them- reminds me of a time when I was at Oxford when two student political activists campaigning against fees managed to persuade the entire college to vote for fees by being presumptuous, arrogant and self righteous. If they hadn't campaigned the students would have voted against fees- but after their campaign people voted for them
The issue here is more complicated than how you present it. The committee that chose Howard didn't, I believe, have a student representative on it. An undertaking was made that all future director appointment panels would have a student representative, normally the General Secretary. As Howard is to be reappointed, it doesn't need a new selection, which is costly, time-consuming and (as we now know) unnecessary, but holding the referendum satisfies (at least so far as I'm concerned) the undertaking that was made and is the only gauge outside the Court of Governors (look at its composition to see that, while learned, it is not necessarily knowledgable about the School's day-to-day life) as to Howard's record. It does also shut people up, so I'd have thought you'd have been happy.
xD.
I am happy. It will shut people up. :)
hmm i think it was clearly trying to express dislike of Sundurlund-and backfired spectacularly in doing so!
not necessairoy a bad idea thogh, on the merits el dave has a point arguably there should be a refendum on every appointment so the student voice can be heard...
On the Student points I don't think it actually is as much what you're talking about that makes student politics so leftist-after all the demographics of univeris in many ways are reflected in Fulham. What I think is key is lefties are so much more likely to get ingvoed and the linked ponit- the infrastructure is so much more lefty designed-that is there's an LGB office and a women's officer but not say a men's officer, a Christian officer ect . in the Uk I think the existance of the NUS also helps keep unions leftwing...
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