Latest news with #Sheldonian
Spectator
15-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Dominic Cummings has run out of answers
On Wednesday, The Spectator dispatched me to Dominic Cummings's Pharos lecture in Oxford. Packed into the Sheldonian theatre were an interesting crowd. I spotted several X anons, my A-Level politics teacher and Brass Eye creator Chris Morris. For many in the audience, this was a rare opportunity to see their hero; for one or two hecklers, it was a unique chance to harrumph at the villain of Brexit, lockdown, and Barnard Castle. You can read a transcript of it here. I'm a Cummings fan. Having first discovered him via our political editor's books, I began reading his blog as a teen. I worked through the reading lists, defended his eye test in my student magazine, and heralded him as the future of the right in an article only last year. Throughout my career, he has been a unique guiding light. Which is why, I'm sorry to report, Wednesday was a disappointment. With the speech being entitled 'What is to be done?' – a nod to the originator by Britain's premier Leninist – one was expecting a call to arms. We sat in the audience sat ready to be given our marching orders. But this was no declaration of revolution. Instead, for those of us habituated into shelling out £10 a month for his Substack, it was dispiritingly familiar. This was Dom's Greatest Hits – David Bowie at Glastonbury, but with more references to the European Court of Human Rights. For 'Starman', take a condemnation of deranged MPs addicted on the old media. For 'Ashes to Ashes', try Whitehall ignoring Cummings over the pandemic and Ukraine. For 'Rebel Rebel', take parallels with post-Napoleonic Europe and the idiocy of a permanent civil service. But unlike with Bowie, one was hoping to hear a few new tunes between the earlier works. There were the usual spicy turns of phrase. The Home Office was said to be waging a 'constant jihad' against talented would-be migrants; Whitehall was condemned for hushing up 'the industrialised mass rape of white English children by Pakistani and Somali gangs over decades' while importing 'people from the exact same tribal areas responsible'. Speak for England, Dom. But as eye-catching as this was – and several other attendees texted me cheering him on – it wasn't new to any habitual X user. We have always known the rape gangs were there; we have always known the state was covering it up; we are now braced for the inevitable whitewash when Keir Starmer's inquiry reports in 2037. Even his concluding recommendations – replacement of senior officials, closing the Cabinet Office and Treasury, reforming procurement, more focus on science and technology, decentralisation, and a wider reading of nineteenth-century Russian literature – were well-trodden. The talk could have been packaged as A Very Short Introduction to Dominic Cummings in the style of the handy, generalist tomes one can pick up at Blackwell's across the street. Yet my trip to Oxford was far from fruitless, and not only because I revisited a couple of my favourite student hostelries. A Q and A with Steven Edginton followed. The US Video Editor of GB News has made a name for himself by asking prominent figures on the right questions the left-leaning media never would. I particularly enjoyed his exchange with Liz Truss, exposing the ex-PM as the clueless, over-promoted and self-obsessed charlatan she is. His approach to Cummings was no different. At times in his speech, the former Number 10 adviser had almost seemed to have forgotten he had been in government: more 'here is what I would do' than 'here is what I should have done'. Edginton pinned him down on his own record, especially on the central and most spectacular failure of the last Conservative government: immigration. Cummings was quick to distance himself from the Boriswave. He was out of government by the time numbers exploded, he argued. Instead, a combination of Boris Johnson's desire to make up with the Financial Times and powerful bureaucratic forces – the Treasury's addiction to human quantitative easing in particular – meant a new immigration system designed to prioritise high-skilled workers was hijacked to take numbers three times higher than the levels that when Britain voted to Leave. Combined with the ECHR preventing the Royal Navy from stopping the 'stupid boats', this meant a total betrayal of the promises Johnson made in 2019. Edginton also asked for Cumming's views on how mass deporations and other remigration policies – citing the US and Sweden as examples – would be with voters. Having tied both Nigel Farage and Richard Tice in knots over this, it was refreshing to hear Cummings explain or why Reform UK are squeamish. Farage formed his views 'in the 1990s and 2000s', and it is 'very hard for [him] to adjust to a world where the conventional ideas of that time are broken down'. Farage and Tice are in their 60s. They are surrounded by a distinctly unimpressive coterie of hangers-on, media personalities and court eunuchs. Are they serious about confronting the institutional resistance and media uproar a sensible centrist approach to immigration would require, or will they fail just as the Tories and Labour have done? The latter, on the available evidence. Will he embrace the vibe shift, or only gesture towards it? They are yesterday's men. Yet seeing Cummings in conversation with Edginton, I couldn't help but get the sense I was watching a new right confronting the old. Edginton ended by asking his interviewee if, after the failure after failure of government after government do what they promised, whether democracy was overrated. Cummings replied by suggesting his hope was to 'find a way of reviving the regime' rather than seeing it 'replaced'. But what does that look like? Another attempted takeover of the Tories? The much-heralded but little-seen Start-Up party? Or a new mass movement, like the 'Looking for Growth' group from academic Lawrence Newport that Cummings has promoted? I've met with Newport and agree with much of his analysis. But Britain's future will not be saved by a few over-eager young men scrubbing the Bakerloo. Who are the coming generation? They have grown up absorbing the analysis of Cummings. They are conscious of living in a Britain blighted by his failure to deliver the reforms of which he has spoken for so long. They live in the Britain of Scuzz Nation, of Yookay Aesthetics, of Nick 30 Ans. Their hope is exhausted. They have enormous respect for Cummings and Vote Leave. But they will not compromise with a regime that they despise. Cummings may still struggle to use the language of mass deportations; to tomorrow's right, they are but a necessary first step. Cummings is still a prophet. Most Brits say the country is in decline, feel poor, hate politicians, and have little hope for the future. For those of us familiar with Cummings, this is all unsurprising. We are a country falling ever further into stagnation and inter-ethnic violence, labouring under a performatively useless political class. A crisis point is being reached. Welcome to Weimar Britain, where politics doesn't work, everyone is getting poorer, and the streets are filled with violence. Can the country be turned around by reviving the existing regime? Or is a different form of government required? And if Cummings was – and is – the man to turn Britain around, why did he allow himself to be outwitted by a patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation? Why did he topple Johnson without a clear plan to replace him? Will he embrace the vibe shift, or only gesture towards it? He is a Lee Kuan Yew afficionado. Does he still have that iron in him? He has spoken about stepping back. That would be a waste. Robert Jenrick is only a phone call away. Commentators as disparate as friend-of-The–Spectator Curtis Yarvin, Tory MP Neil O'Brien, and my former colleague Henry Hill have all spoken of the need for an Anglo Meiji Restoration – a hard reset of our governing institutions, political class, and economic geography. It is a project requiring the sort of dedicated revolutionary vanguard that I hoped Cummings would call for on Wednesday. His talk was a missed opportunity. The burning questions of our movement remain to be answered.
BBC News
30-04-2025
- General
- BBC News
University of Oxford posthumous award to first indigenous student
A university has awarded a posthumous degree to its first indigenous student more than 100 years after she began her in New Zealand in 1873, Mākereti Papakura is believed to be the first indigenous woman to enrol at the University of Oxford. The university said she had explored the customs of her people of the Māori Te Arawa iwi tribe from a female perspective through her "groundbreaking" research. But she died in 1930, just weeks before she was due to present her thesis. Prof Irene Tracey, Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, will award the degree of MPhil in Anthropology at a ceremony in the Sheldonian theatre later in the year. Ms Papakura was born Margaret Pattison Thom at Matatā in the Bay of Plenty to an English father, William Thom, and a Māori mother, Pia Ngarotū Te enrolled in 1922 to read anthropology at Pitt Rivers Museum, where much of the teaching was conducted at the time, and at the Society of Home Students, now St Anne's university said her scholarship, combined with her indigenous worldview, "earned her the respect of many Oxford academics at the time".It added that it had gone on "to be celebrated by members of Māori communities and researchers worldwide".After her sudden death, her family agreed that her good friend Thomas Kenneth Penniman, a Rhodes Scholar and fellow Oxford anthropologist, published her book titled The Old-Time Māori became the first study of Māori life published by a Māori author and is recognised as such by the New Zealand Royal Society. 'An inspiring figure' The posthumous award was requested by the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, which applied to the university's education application was supported by St Anne's College and the Pitt Rivers Museum, to which Ms Papakura and her family donated numerous artefacts and papers both during her lifetime and after her death. Prof Clare Harris, head of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, called Ms Papakura "an inspiring figure, not only to many in Aotearoa [which has been used when referring to New Zealand in Māori] but to students and scholars around the world".Members of her family and representatives of the Māori community are expected to attend the award Northcroft Grant, on behalf of Ms Papakura's family and Tūhourangi – Ngāti Wāhiao tribe, said her story was "a testament to the lasting power of education, culture, and the determination of one woman to ensure that Māori stories would not be forgotten."This recognition belongs to Mākereti, to our ancestors, and to the Māori community worldwide". You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lord Hague inaugurated as university chancellor
William Hague will be formally inaugurated as Oxford University chancellor today. Lord Hague will become the 160th recorded chancellor in the University's history and will succeed Lord Patten of Barnes, who announced his retirement from the post in February 2024. The ceremony will take place in the Sheldonian theatre in Oxford. Lord Hague previously said he regarded his election for the position "as the greatest honour of my life". Profile: William Hague The 10-year role dates back at least 800 years. Duties include advisory and fundraising work and acting as an ambassador for the University at local, national and international events. Lord Hague graduated from Magdalen College in 1982, where he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He was president of the Oxford Union, the university's esteemed debating society, during his time as a student. He became leader of the Conservative in 1997 at the age of just 36, and later became foreign secretary from 2010 to 2014. Lord Hague spent 26 years as the MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire. He won the final run-off of voting that took place throughout November against Lady Elish Angiolini by a margin of 1600 votes. He said he would "dedicate myself in the coming years to serving the university I love". "What happens at Oxford in the next decade is critical to the success of the UK," Lord Hague added. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram. William Hague elected Oxford University chancellor Imran Khan uni chancellor bid rejected, says adviser Oxford University could have its first female Chancellor University of Oxford
