{"id":423416,"date":"2026-02-13T10:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T10:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/423416\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T10:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T10:25:07","slug":"if-you-want-to-know-what-reform-would-be-like-in-power-look-at-how-it-threatened-bangor-university-gaby-hinsliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/423416\/","title":{"rendered":"If you want to know what Reform would be like in power, look at how it threatened Bangor University | Gaby Hinsliff"},"content":{"rendered":"

It must have seemed the easiest offer in the world to refuse. Would students at Bangor University enjoy a question-and-answer session with Sarah Pochin \u2013 the Reform UK MP famous for saying<\/a> it \u201cdrives me mad\u201d to see TV adverts full of black people \u2013 and Jack Anderton<\/a>, the 25-year-old influencer who helped send Nigel Farage\u2019s TikTok account viral among teenagers? No, the university\u2019s debating society decided, it would not.<\/p>\n

And had it filed the request in the bin, you wouldn\u2019t be reading this. Until now, Anderton\u2019s A New Dawn campus tour \u2013 a homage to the \u201cdebate me bro\u201d style of the American rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, killed last year<\/a>, who was famed for inviting liberal students to take on his arguments and live-streaming the results \u2013 hadn\u2019t exactly set the heather alight. Reform is actively pushing to recruit inside universities, but in Cambridge, according to its student newspaper Varsity, only about 30 people turned up to hear Anderton argue that migrants are taking the part-time jobs students once used to do.<\/p>\n

The same was true in Exeter and York, according to their respective student papers Expos\u00e9 and York Vision. And despite noisy counter-protests, the tour wasn\u2019t juicing the kind of controversy that commands attention on YouTube, where the really big crowds are. (The Cambridge event livestream had a paltry 177 views when I checked.)<\/p>\n

So imagine how he must have felt when Bangor debating and politics society responded that \u201cin line with our values\u201d it was declining his offer, expressing \u201czero tolerance for any form of racism, transphobia or homophobia\u201d.<\/p>\n

Finally, a proper no-platforming! (Though strictly speaking, he and Pochin were never actually given a platform of which to be stripped.) That\u2019s worth more in terms of reach than trekking to Bangor on a wet February night to face a half-empty room. GB News and the Daily Telegraph weighed in. Reform\u2019s Zia Yusuf thundered on X<\/a> that Bangor got \u00a330m from taxpayers and he was \u201csure they won\u2019t mind losing every penny of (their) state funding under a Reform government\u201d. And that\u2019s where it suddenly got serious.<\/p>\n

Threatening to put universities out of business \u2013 with all that would mean for students halfway through their degrees, or towns reliant on a major employer \u2013 if they don\u2019t fawningly accommodate any regime-backed political nonentity who asks is the stuff of autocracy, not democracy. And the lesson from Donald Trump\u2019s America, where pro-free speech Republicans have proved remarkably intolerant of people speaking against them, is that the pressure rarely stops there.<\/p>\n

What would stop the financial intimidation of a BBC reliant on the licence fee? What about charities and cultural or civic institutions receiving public grants, or newspapers with owners anxious to protect their other business interests, or schools? Though a Reform spokesperson later insisted Yusuf\u2019s comments were \u201cnot party policy\u201d, his literal job title is head of policy, and Reform has previously advocated removing at least some funding from universities that don\u2019t protect free speech.<\/p>\n

Vice-chancellors have been criticised for quietly seeking meetings<\/a> with Reform. But I\u2019m not surprised they\u2019re anxious to lobby a prospective prime minister who publicly accuses them of poisoning young people\u2019s minds, and who they are told sees Trump\u2019s crusade against \u201cwoke\u201d Ivy League universities<\/a> as a model.<\/p>\n

Academia is an obvious target for the populist right because it\u2019s a classic wellspring of resistance: students are often first to the barricades and graduates are more likely to hold socially liberal views than people who left school at 18. But the financial crisis<\/a> in England\u2019s higher education system makes it unusually vulnerable to attack.<\/p>\n

Some smaller institutions have already been brought to the financial brink by government curbs on foreign students, who pay higher fees than British students and have for years helped universities balance the books. If a Reform government pursuing close to zero immigration cuts student visas, it wouldn\u2019t take much to tip some over the edge. (Ironically, among those most at risk might be smaller post-1992 institutions, some perhaps in Reform\u2019s new heartlands.) Others would be in no position financially to resist political pressure. When Trump froze millions of dollars<\/a> of research funding to universities that had rebuffed his demands over admissions and hiring policy, the teaching of conservative ideas and policing of campus protests, only the richest institutions could afford to fight back through the courts. And while UK law offers some protection for universities\u2019 autonomy in research and teaching, laws can always be repealed.<\/p>\n

That priceless academic freedom to think and explore what you like is, of course, a two-way street. Students must be willing to hear views they don\u2019t like and learn how to argue back, a skill that matters more than ever now and is more safely acquired arguing face-to-face on campus than on social media.<\/p>\n

But the current crop of students is perhaps sturdier than popular myth would have you think. Recent research at the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) found 69% of students<\/a> felt universities should never limit free speech, up from 60% in 2016. (Though admittedly Hepi also found a third favoured banning Reform speakers from campus and another 16% wanted Labour speakers banned, students showed a confusing tendency to advocate banning parties they had actually voted for. Have some just had enough of hearing from politicians?) After years of Conservative measures to promote free speech on campus, almost half of universities surveyed by the umbrella body Universities UK thought students did now understand better what that meant. What the Bangor affair underlines, however, is that the right to free speech isn\u2019t the same as the right to a free audience whenever you happen to be campaigning in the neighbourhood; and that whatever you have to say, you can\u2019t actively make people want to listen.<\/p>\n

Anderton\u2019s tour has now successfully visited five universities and is due in Edinburgh \u2013 where a previous event was cancelled by the venue \u2013 this evening. But crucially in each of these universities he was invited in, often by interested rightwing student societies. In Bangor, by contrast, he asked for a slot but got no takers.<\/p>\n

Whatever you think of his Maga ideology, Kirk undeniably turned nerdy political debate into a kind of compelling gladiatorial spectator sport that spawned viral imitators on both sides of the political aisle, perhaps even helping confound the myth that young people can\u2019t manage intellectual confrontation. What Anderton \u2013 whose value to Reform is his ability to jump on to gen-Z trends faster than cautious mainstream parties do \u2013 may be learning is that that isn\u2019t as easy as Kirk made it look.<\/p>\n

In this country, it turns out politicians still have to actually earn a hearing, not compel one. Well, that\u2019s freedom for you.<\/p>\n

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?<\/a>
On Monday 30 April, ahead of May elections, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform \u2013 and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party
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