Peter Mandelson: It is wrong for students to cancel right-wing figures on campus

Peter Mandelson is the chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University
Peter Mandelson is the chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University - Heathcliff O'Malley

Walking down Turl Street in central Oxford on a Friday lunchtime, you would be forgiven for mistaking Lord Mandelson for a minor royal.

A posse of undergraduates that meet up with him whenever he comes to Oxford – which is frequently – ask for a group photo in the middle of the road. The Labour grandee obliges, discarding his tie and notepad for the picture.

Another student rushing to a lecture stops briefly to scream: “Lord Mandelson! Lord Mandelson!”, before disappearing again up the street.

“Polite of him to use the honorific,” laughs the 71-year-old peer.

It’s a rapturous reception for people who were almost certainly not born when Lord Mandelson quit as the Labour MP for Hartlepool in 2004, let alone when he stepped down as the director of communications in 1990.

Lord Mandelson is among the final five in the race to replace Lord Patten of Barnes as the chancellor of Oxford University. Although only staff and alumni will be able to vote when the last ballot opens on Nov 18, he seems hopeful that becoming an unexpected darling of Gen Z student politics might propel his chances.

Speaking before chairing a panel event for academics, the St Catherine’s College alumni says returning as chancellor would be a nice “way to complete” his career.

Other politicians have been less welcome on university campuses in recent years.

In 2020, Amber Rudd, the former Conservative home secretary, was given half an hour’s notice before her invitation to speak at an Oxford University event was pulled after students complained over her involvement in the Windrush scandal.

Last month, the fellow former home secretary Suella Braverman claimed she was forced to cancel a speech at Cambridge University amid threats of violent protests.

Many Labour politicians have dismissed claims that academic freedom is under threat and is little more than a Tory battering to stoke the culture wars. But Lord Mandelson insists he would speak out on the problem if elected as Oxford chancellor.

“I think it’s a genuine issue,” he says. “I happen not to like that Suella Braverman was unable to make her remarks in Cambridge. I understand the circumstances and the security implications and costs and everything. But, you know, this is not a great place for us to be when a leading politician is unable to make a speech in a university.”

Lord Mandelson is the main Labour offering in the race for the traditionally Conservative role of Oxford chancellor.

He will go head-to-head against Lord Hague, the former Conservative leader, Lady Angiolini, the Scottish lawyer who led the Sarah Everard inquiry, Dominic Grieve, an ex-Tory minister, and Baroness Royall, a former adviser to Neil Kinnock.

Though largely a ceremonial position, the new chancellor will face a difficult inheritance becoming the figurehead of a world-leading institution at a time of financial decay across the university sector, declining student numbers and a brewing free speech problem.

New legislation designed to prevent academics from being cancelled remains on hold after Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, announced in July she would press pause and consider repealing it.

Lord Mandelson doesn’t have the answers to the problem just yet, but thinks the heart of the issue goes beyond the walls of academia. Modern cancel culture, he says, wouldn’t be possible without social media.

“Many people here, like me, are sympathetic to the aim or values underpinning the [Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act], but don’t find it a very satisfactory piece of legislation,” he says.

“My view is that hate speech has no place. If it’s breaking the law, they should be prosecuted. But let’s be honest about what we’re talking about here. Social media has become a phenomenon in which vast numbers of people pile in against an issue or a person they disagree with or don’t like.

“There’s no objectivity to it – people just follow each other like lemmings. And the poor individual who’s at the receiving end of this may be very unjustly done to.”

Lord Mandelson is similarly concerned that the free speech issue is trickling down to students. He tells an anecdote about a group of Chinese students at Oxford University who complained about a recent carol service when they found out that a Ukrainian graduate would be doing a reading.

Suella Braverman
Suella Braverman claimed she was forced to cancel a speech at Cambridge University amid threats of violent protests - Getty /Jack Taylor

“Some Chinese students didn’t feel comfortable participating when they knew what their government’s policy was on Ukraine,” he says.

“This sort of attitude has no place at British universities – certainly not Oxford… In my view, this is a free university – free to think, free to speak, free to study what you want. And nothing should interfere with that.”

While he is unsure of how the free speech debate will be resolved in the short-term, Lord Mandelson is more certain of how he would solve financial problems facing the sector.

It was no coincidence, he hints, that Sir Keir Starmer decided this week to raise tuition fees in line with inflation – something the former Labour Cabinet minister has long called for.

“I’ve done so publicly, but more importantly, privately. I argued for the inflation-proofing of tuition fees,” he says. “What I didn’t expect was that there would be a dramatic increase in employers’ National Insurance charges, which for some universities does wipe it out.”

The architect of New Labour has made it clear that he has the ear of the new Prime Minister. In his candidate statement to become Oxford chancellor, Lord Mandelson promised to use his “long standing political links to advocate” for reform of the student loan system.

Speaking to The Telegraph, he says this should include reinstating maintenance grants as soon as the economy allows. The means-tested support, which was scrapped in 2016 under David Cameron, was a glaring omission in this week’s tuition fees announcement despite hopes it might return.

Modelling previously studied by Labour suggested reinstating the grants at an increased £4,009 could cost up to £2.3 billion a year. Instead, the Government announced on Monday it would raise maintenance loans in line with inflation, despite concerns this will add to the debt pile for less advantaged students.

“We can’t just keep shifting university financing onto individual shoulders. I mean, it’s not viable, it’s not fair, it’s not right,” says Lord Mandelson, who currently serves as the chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University.

“The Government should, when they’re able financially to do so, move back to maintenance grants from loans. You’re loading up poorer students who can least afford them with even bigger loans to enable them to get through their university time. I would like us to revert to the grants.”

But those reforms alone won’t stave off the “massive, almost existential funding challenge facing all universities” in the coming years, he warns.

In an ideal world, the Government would open the coffers and flood the university system with money to keep the sector afloat, fund research, and ultimately drive national growth. But Lord Mandelson is a pragmatist, and knows a quick way to raise a buck until that happens.

For some reason or other, UK alumni don’t donate to their alma maters like Americans do. Lord Mandelson wants to change that. The former trade secretary, trade commissioner for the European Union, business secretary and election strategist hopes to draw on his extensive contacts book to bring US-style philanthropy to Britain.

“The reason why American universities have 10 times the size of endowments that we have is because they have a history and practice of fundraising, of philanthropy, of looking through the alumni base to give back to their universities,” he says.

“Now, we just have not got into that groove in Britain, and we’re going to have to. Because we are not going to suddenly become even more globally competitive than we are at the moment.”

Lord Mandelson has promised to serve Oxford University first and foremost if elected as chancellor next month. But globetrotting to raise funds as part of the unpaid, part-time role could leave room for other jobs along the way.

Donald Trump
Donald Trump speaks at a rally during the US election and before the votes were in - Anadolu

His name has been linked with the US ambassador job – one that will become more crucial following Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Asked if it’s on the cards after the election, he grimaces, but doesn’t rule it out.

“I’m afraid I’m not going to respond to that because nobody’s asked me. All I know is that if I were lucky enough to be elected chancellor, I would never let the university down,” he says.

“I would always put the university first – whatever else I was doing in the rest of the world. But just bear in mind that this university is a global university, and it needs to be in the rest of the world.”

The one-time Prince of Darkness is unfussed about Labour Cabinet ministers’ previous criticisms of Mr Trump, noting that his own vice-president referred to him as “America’s Hitler” only eight years ago.

“Given the number of people much closer to President Trump who have said even worse things about him, I think it’s water off a presidential duck’s back. It all disappears in the wash, as far as he’s concerned,” he says.

A new Trump administration presents fresh problems for the UK, Lord Mandelson adds, but none of them insurmountable.

“It’s a dramatic outcome. It will have seismic consequences for America, and may have one or two existential implications for the rest of us. But that’s the democratic will that has been exercised by the American voters, and we have to live with it, influence it, get the most out of it, and ward off the dangers associated with it.”