Victory for the Left in UCLU Elections

Chants of “Solidarity Forever” sounded in the George Farha Cafe following the announcement of the UCLU Spring election results, with a comprehensive victory for left-wing candidates.

A record turnout of 4,261 students, some 16.3% of the total electorate, came out to vote. Many of the contests were closely fought, most notably Doris Chen’s 1400 votes to Omar Khan’s 1346 for Activities and Events Officer. Doris told The Tab: “I’m speechless, I would like to thank everyone who supported me, everyone who campaigned for me.” Dumbledore’s involvement in student politics, in this instance, clearly proved decisive.

After five stages of voting, Keir Gallagher secured Education and Campaign’s Officer with 749 votes. Keir told us: “It was a really, really difficult campaign, I was out there every day. It was fantastic speaking to so many people and thank you to to all the people who took the time to listen to what I had to say and went out and voted.”

Bethany Sutton finally emerged victorious after a tumultuous campaign for Women’s Officer, with Kirk Sneade not present at proceedings having dropped his controversial campaign on Thursday.

Hannah Webb secured External Affairs and Campaign’s Officer with 691 votes out of 1152 cast. Eleanor Tresize narrowly secured the Activities Part-Time position and told us afterwards she felt as if her hard work had paid off.

In other election news, Michael Chessum and Daniel Cooper became ULU President and Vice-President, with the latter taking the position by a margin of a meagre 29 in a close race (1141 against 1112) against Will Hall. We spoke to Will Hall and Ben McCabe who said this of the Left-dominated results:

Tab: So obviously it was very close, how are you feeling about the results?

Will Hall: I think we entirely defied expectations and I think we went far and above what we all thought the average student could achieve within so closed a Union hacky environment and I’m proud we did so well and that actually the average students have come out and demonstrated they’re not happy with Union cliques which are trying to push their own political views on the entire population of students.

Having said that, 30 votes is an incredibly slim win. I don’t think Dan Cooper has a mandate to do anything except to try and big up clubs and societies so in a way my manifesto will come into fruition in an indirect manner.  My last point, I’m fairly certain that if anyone thinks a majority of 30 means you have the right to, for instance, not lay a poppy wreath I think Daniel Cooper and Michael Chessum need to think again.”

Tab: So although the margin was close in the ULU elections, a number of the right-wing/centre candidates were eliminated after the first round in the UCLU vote. Why do you think that happened?

Ben McCabe: Well, I certainly think it was always going to be difficult for Matt in EEO. His message was something that any student I talked to actually agreed with. The problem was just for him, I reckon anyway, was being President of the Tory Society.”