flora show 2

This is a radio show discussing the response of the University of Oxford to the Oxford Action for Palestine sit-in. They also talk about the upcoming general election and the importance of student voting. The host interviews Dr. Alex Powell, a city councilor and lecturer, about his plans for the council and the Green Party's plans for the election. They also discuss coalition-building among opposition groups on the council. Dr. Powell talks about the Greens' candidates for the parliamentary seats in Oxford and emphasizes their focus on climate issues and progressive values. He also highlights the Green Party's stance on tuition fees and their support for the LGBTQ+ community. and then we can go live at least 4 o'clock. Yeah, so you'll have a bit of time to... I'll give you your instructions and have a bit of time to warm up. Right. Obviously you have to pretend we haven't already said hello and do all that kind of thing. Yes. I haven't actually asked if you've done a radio interview before. As an academic, but never political. Okay. Yeah, perfect. You know how it works, but a bit different, yeah. Okay. Hello and welcome to Facing the Fact, the radio show investigating stories in and around the University of Oxford that affected students with a focus on fact-checking and bringing disparate groups into dialogue. So last week we looked at the University's response to the Oxford Action for Palestine sit-in at Wellington Square and compared the statements from the protest groups, the University and other student societies in the aftermath. This week, the groups we're focusing on are not so obviously opposed to each other, but still surprisingly hard to bring together. I'm talking about students and politicians. With a general election now in officially less than a month's time and 85% of full-time undergraduates intending to vote, according to research published by the Higher Education Policy Institute on the 2nd of May, this is clearly an issue on a lot of students' minds. To address this, we got in touch with Oxford City Councillor and previous by-election candidate, Dr Alex Powell, who kindly agreed to be on the programme with us this week. Dr Powell, good afternoon. It's great to have you with us. Hello, Flora. Thank you so much for having me on the show and I'm looking forward to speaking to you today. That's great. I'm just going to give a short introduction. Dr Alex was elected to represent St Clements on Oxford City Council at the local elections on 2nd May. He's also the Principal Lecturer in Law at Brookes University, specialising in Gender, Sexuality and Refugee Law. We'll be covering his plans for the City Council, as well as the Greens' plans for the upcoming general election. I'll also be asking him about his views on the University's response to Oxford Action for Palestine, given the Greens' call for a ceasefire in Gaza. So Alex, you were elected to the City Council for the first time on 2nd May. I understand you've stood before, but you've never actually got onto the Council. So I just wondered how you found it so far. Are you getting things done? So it's all been a bit of a whirlwind. Obviously as a newly elected Councillor, I'm in the process of doing lots of induction activities, trying to find out the lay of the land, trying to work out how best to push through the issues that we were campaigning on during the election. But there have already been a few highlights. For example, I've been really happy to get to meet with residents and to hear about the concerns they have. For example, I was able to meet with a mother and her young child who took me to one of the local parks and showed me the state of the repair it was in. It's with lots of my help in pushing out the agenda in terms of getting it repaired. And having that sort of opportunity to work with people on the issues that matter to them feels really... it's just a really nice opportunity to have and it's been something that's been a nice way to start. Obviously other stuff is going to come in time. As an Opposition Councillor, part of what we're here to do is to hold the administration to account, to raise critical questions and basically, as a Green, always make sure there is that sort of Green voice in the room. And actually with our Green group at the moment, there are currently... well, there were, after the election, eight Green Councillors elected. So we're in that sort of position to raise those critical questions, and make sure that the administration is focusing on the issues that really matter to residents. And you're not the only Opposition group on the council, are you? So how is that working? Are you forming coalitions with other Opposition groups? How's it panning out? So the make-up of the City Council this year is quite interesting. There are seven different political groups in total. Quite a lot. Yeah, it's quite something. So obviously we have the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, who are the two biggest Opposition groups. And obviously there are crossovers there, areas where we agree, and where we agree we aim to work together. Similarly on the City Council, you've got the Oxford Community Independents and the Oxford Independents. Those are both groups who actually left the Labour Party over its start in Gaza. And again, where there are areas of crossover, we're keen to work with them. And the same also applies to other groups, including the Independent Oxford Alliance, which are their First Councillors. Where there's crossover, as Greens, we aim to work collaboratively. So basically the question is, what do we agree on? What can we usefully work together on? But we're always open to collaboration where there are those synergies in view. And particularly where it gives us opportunities to advance progressive goals. And it's worth keeping in mind that as Labour currently has only a minority on the City Council, perhaps more opportunity than there historically has been to push them on issues where we can get that agreement between Opposition groups. So collaboration is always welcome. Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of which, the Greens gaining lots of votes in the local elections. There's also looking ahead to the general election, of course the Greens are obviously also hoping to gain the Labour seat from Oxford. Ondrej, if you could tell us a bit about the candidates in Oxford and why we should vote for them. Sure, yeah. So obviously in Oxford we have two parliamentary seats. We have Oxford West and Abingdon. In Oxford West and Abingdon our candidate is Chris Goodall. He is a writer of international reputation. He writes on issues around transition to net zero. He's lived in Oxford for a very, very long time and is very embedded in the community. He's obviously standing against Leila Moran, the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. He's trying to ensure that climate issues are at the front and centre of the agenda in that election. And then obviously in Oxford East we'll be standing a candidate against Anna-Lise Dodds, the incumbent Labour, well former Labour MP who's incumbent in the area, as well as also a shadow minister and likely a minister of the next government. And in that seat we're standing Shushi Ladal, who is a former Oxfordshire County Councillor and former Oxford City Councillor. Actually as an Oxfordshire County Councillor she was a part of the first ever Green County Council group alongside Caroline Lucas in 1996. She's very experienced. Yeah, she's been involved in Oxford politics for a long time. In her sort of day-to-day life she also works for charitable organisations supporting refugees. So she's sort of got that basis in civil society. She's very, very keen to push on issues around treating refugees, asylum seekers and migrants with dignity. Obviously she's also keen to stand up to some of the current sort of culture war narrative and ensure there is a genuinely progressive voice available in Oxford East. And what I would say to those considering voting breaches, particularly in Oxford East, is it's important to be mindful of some of the views that have been put forward by Anna-Lise Dodds from the Labour Party, who has, for example, I guess a questionable record in terms of her support for rights of LGBTIQA plus people, including raising some very problematic statements around the treatment of transgender people, and who also is sort of, as part of the Shadow Cabinet, supporting a Labour Party whose immigration policies don't particularly differ, other than not explicitly endorsing the Rwanda Plan, from the Conservative Party. So in terms of those social issues, those cultural war issues, I do think she's offering a genuinely different choice, a genuine sort of option for hope and change, where actually I think I at least, looking at the current state of the Labour Party, feel a certain sense of despondency at five more years of virtually the same. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess you've given quite a good general overview of why previous Labour voters might be thinking about voting Green. But I wondered if you could give us a slightly more specific student pitch. So according to recent polling again by the Higher Education Institute, 46% of students are going to vote Labour, 11% Green, 7% Conservative. So obviously the Greens are doing better than one of the major parties, but what would you say to kind of really push the student vote in Oxford? Yeah, so I mean I think it's important for students firstly to look at sort of the policies that directly affect them. So thinking of an issue like tuition fees, obviously all students sort of face that, that saddling with debt that has been created initially by the Labour Party and then massively exacerbated by the Conservative Party. The Green policy is in favour of abolition of tuition fees, so we would have education, which is in my view an absolute public good, sort of free at the point of access for students, and obviously I think for students and all young people in fact, they should be mindful of the fact that we are the party that is offering to, I guess, give them the opportunity that previous generations had to not be subject to that huge gap for accessing something that serves the entirety of the public. Beyond that, I've sort of already mentioned some of the cultural issues, and I think particularly for younger people, particularly in sort of the Oxford East context, we know from the census data that Oxford East is one of the highest percentages of LGBTIQA plus people sort of in the UK, particularly in the sort of central area around the University of Oxford. And therefore it really concerns me to have, where we've had an incumbent MP who is also Shadow Minister for Women and Equality, who's sort of been talking in a manner that, to my view, in a manner that sort of inflames some of the cultural issues around the rights of transgender people, and in so doing, it might be sort of undermines the safety and security and well-being of all LGBTIQA plus people. I mean, it's not a simple matter, but it's something where actually I think, as a young person myself, I mean I'm only sort of 10 years post-graduation myself, I want to see a parliamentary representative who is willing to stand up for minority communities, and I think for students they want to keep in mind that Shashila is someone who will absolutely do that. And I think it is important in the current context to not just think about sort of what party someone's in, but actually the person as an individual, what are their values, are they going to stand up for the values I hold? And I guess, thinking particularly of what students are facing as well, I'm conscious of issues around the cost of living crisis. You know, the Green Party is pledging to bring in, or campaigning to bring in rent controls, somewhere like Oxford, that would be really, really impactful, because so many students are at the sort of hard edge of the cost of living crisis, facing exploding living costs, trying to juggle often working, and I know that in and of itself is a bit problematic for certain Oxford students, but trying to juggle maybe working and studying and balancing all the different obligations. So again, in promoting policies like rent controls, a vote for the Green Party is a vote for genuine hope and genuine change, a vote for something different to the status quo, whereas when I look at the Labour Party, what I see is a promise of not making things worse. They don't seem to have any ideas about how to make anything better, and I think if you want to sort of put that investment into the future, then a vote for the Green Party is a great way of sending a signal that the current two-party system doesn't work for young people, doesn't provide the opportunities for change, it's holding us back. Yeah, absolutely. I noticed that a lot of the points that you're bringing up now, which is very relevant to students, they're often on a kind of anti-Labour slate, on the basis of the default would be to vote Labour, so what can we offer? Historically, the Greens have always had as their main selling point the environmental issues, and that's very much been at the centre. Obviously, we have had our fair share of fairly localised environmental issues, like in Oxford. For instance, the dumping of sewage into Hinksey Lake, into the Thames. I wonder if the Greens have any specific policies in our area to tackle these kinds of environmental issues, which I'm sure are very important to young people and to students. Absolutely. I mean, the reason I'm going so much on social issues, and I wouldn't say it's so much anti-Labour, it's just a concern at the continuous movement of UK political discourse to the right. I have no problems with the Labour Party, I have a problem with the way in which they are talking, and the way they're reinforcing a particular neoliberal consensus. But, what we've always said in the Green Party is that there's no environmental justice without social justice. People are only empowered to worry about the situation in their climate, and sort of what's going on in terms of maybe dumping in rivers, when they have a home, a roof over their heads, pure employment, the ability to sort of live a livable life. Now, in terms of issues of pollution, basically the answer in Oxfordshire is quite similar to the answer elsewhere in the UK. The main driver of the pollution into our rivers is privatised water companies. So, the Green Party is clearly and unambiguously in favour of nationalisation of water, which again, is a natural monopoly, it is something that is there, sort of a necessity for people. The fact that it's there as a private entity which makes profits for shareholders, rather than sort of serving the needs of people, is outrageous. So, the first thing we would do that would sort of tackle the issues we've seen, would be to bring water back into public hands and to ensure that it's properly run as a public good. And what you would see through doing that is proper investment, making sure we have the infrastructure to handle issues around sewage, and therefore it's not being dumped into our rivers every time it rains. And I think in that way, again, that sort of speaks to the links actually between, say, left-wing politics, and sort of social justice and environmental justice, because it is through that sort of economic policy, in effect, of bringing water back into private hands that we can start to get a grip on the issue of contamination, which, as we've seen, is now starting to have huge public health effects as well, with people getting sick from being present in the river. Right, exactly. I think, just to move the conversation in a slightly different direction, you have been quite critical, on your Twitter account and elsewhere, of what we call tactical voting. It's something that affects students disproportionately, because we have the choice of whether to vote in our home constituency or in Oxford, so obviously there is an actual tactical voting choice we can make, rather than just thinking about which party to vote, we can actually think about which constituency to vote in. I'd be interested in why you're critical of tactical voting, or whether you would take issue with that definition. If my home constituency, for instance, is a Tory Lib Dem marginal, surely you'd want me to vote Lib Dem to kick the Tories out, or is that not really how you would think about it? So, I understand the impulse towards tactical voting. Obviously, we've all suffered under 14 years of, frankly, atrocious government that has pushed the UK ever further to the right, has undermined opportunities for an entire generation, and has caused the UK to be in a state of pretty severe stagnation. We are in urgent need of a change of government, but I think it's important, firstly, to put in place the context of where we are. If we look at polling, no matter which pollster it's from, the Tories are effectively tied. There is no metric by which they are going to conduct a government after the next election. Frankly, if Labour don't win the landslide, I will buy a hat and eat it. So, what I would say in that context is you need to ask yourself the question of what is your vote doing? The reality is that even if you were in a seat that was marginal before, the Tories have probably hemorrhaged 15% of their votes. It's no longer a marginal. And in that context, what I encourage people to instead think about is the signals that they are sending out. Because frankly, it makes no difference if you're Labour or Lib Dem and you win the majority of 1,000 or 10,000 seats. What they will take from that is that they have been endorsed by the public, and actually with the way Labour has drifted to the right, I'm quite worried about how they might see that as an endorsement of quite a regressive agenda. Indeed, an agenda that is, in my view, to the right of the agenda David Cameron was promoting in 2015. So I think the reality there is that there's maybe a difference between tactics and strategy. It might be tactical in the pure sense of not having a Tory MP, but I would beg the question of what difference it makes to not have a Tory MP if you end up returning, say, a Labour MP whose views are extremely similar to that Tory MP. What you can do instead is you can use your vote to send a message, and that basically means sending a message to the next Labour government that actually they can't take for granted the support of people who have, let's say, left-wing or progressive views, but they have to work to earn it. Because if they don't get that message, what they're going to take from this is that the place for them to win is to the centre-right. The way they can win is by basically adopting most of the policies of the Tories and then saying, vote for us because we're not the Tories. So what you do by casting a vote for, say, a party like the Green Party is you send the message that actually your vote is not for Britain. Parties who want to win your vote have to tell you what they're going to offer you, have to put forward an agenda that's genuinely going to make your life better or respond to the concerns you have. So if you like, it has that dual function of firstly signalling your support for the Green Party, which puts us in a much better position actually in terms of, even if we don't win this time, being able to say, look, Greens can win here, look what happened last time. And it also gives Labour a warning. It puts a shot across the bow of, say, the Labour Party and says, actually you can't just take the votes of left-wing people for granted. You need to work to earn those votes. I think the last thing I'd say is it's important to keep in mind, in some seats in the UK, particularly Bristol Central, Waverley Valley, East Hertfordshire, Brighton Pavilion, you can vote Green and get Green, but indeed those are just our key targets. If you look at, say, the debate last night on ITV, the atrociously poor standards of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, like squabbling children, there is now an opportunity, and there's never been a better opportunity to get Greens elected in a range of seats across the UK, and we may well see some surprises on election night if people vote with their conscience. And I think they can do that safely this time, because as I said, the Tories are toast. There is no hope of them returning a majority. I guess what I would say is people should vote with their heart. I can understand the case for tactical voting, but I don't think we're in that frame right now, and I think people should be a bit more strategic about making sure there's a proper opposition and questions to be asked of the next Labour government, who I'm concerned are going to continue the UK down its very desperate path for the moment. Yeah, you've made a number of interesting points there, but just to select one of them, claiming that Labour is to the right David Cameron slayed in 2015, what he was running on, is that quite a big claim there? I wonder if you could give me some justification for that. Sure, so I think firstly we need to look at where the debate has gone on immigration. So if we saw Keir Starmer last night when he appeared on the ITV leaders' debate, he said that he was open to processing asylum seekers offshore, which is different from the Rwanda policy, but basically saying that he, like Rishi Sunak, is happy to export our international responsibilities to other countries. Similarly, I think we can look at the stance of the Labour Party on trans rights, where Spreaking has repeatedly talked about implementing the recommendations of the Cass Review, about making single-sex basis for biologically defined only, whereas actually in 2015 we saw David Cameron's Conservative Party broadly in favour of trans rights. So if you like, it's not on these cultural issues, but it feels like Labour has ceded so much ground to the right, that actually if you were to map their policies out against the Conservative Party in 2015, my view is that this Labour Party is slightly to the right of them. The other thing I would say there is obviously if we look at Labour's commitment on the economy, they've scrapped their £28 billion climate fund, they have set down a list of fiscal rules that basically set the UK apart for permanent austerity. So again, actually the commonalities between David Cameron's 2015 offering on the economy and Labour's current offering are very similar. Now obviously there are issues where they will make them better, I don't want to overly generalise, but I don't think that we shouldn't be under the illusion that the Labour Party is currently a progressive or left-wing party, in my view it is a centre-right party. This might be a good time to mention that you actually were a member of the Labour Party, and you left them in 2015. I just wanted to read out a tweet from your recent campaign, on partly to do with the general election. If you're progressive, if you value diversity, if you support migrants and LGBTQIA+, or if you think disabled people and parents should receive support, not sanctions, then you cannot vote Labour. This Labour Party is a party of populist rights. It's that simple, vote Green. I wondered if you could expand on this a little bit. What made you disillusioned? Do you think this is a wider issue? Do you have other people that you know that have gone through this similar journey? What was that like for you? Absolutely. So I left the Labour Party in 2015 over a mug. It's become quite famous now in social media corners. It's the mug from the Labour Party that just says, Controls on Immigration. And basically the reason that caused me to leave is firstly the sort of facile nature of it. The fact that they felt that just a slogan about controls on immigration is scarce for a sense of getting a policy. Controls on immigration was something that would appeal to voters. The idea that rather than setting out policies, they would just say, okay, we support controls on immigration, not saying out what they are, not saying out how they operate, but rather just sort of this fair-faced statement of controls on immigration. And for me it set out a direction of travel, a direction of travel that basically saw on social issues the Labour Party cede themselves to the conservative framing of the issue. So rather than making the positive case for immigration, they see it only as something to control. Rather than sort of arguing for putting themselves on sort of over the parapet in defence of LGBTIQA plus rights, they equivocate and sort of have meetings with organisations like the LGB Alliance who certain other countries, including the Republic of Ireland, have sort of earmarked as potentially a hate group. And for me, this sort of trajectory shows a party that cares more about power than it does about principle. And I think that is sort of a cardinal sin because if you don't know what someone believes, you should never ever trust them with power. And this is the reason why I use populist basically, because they are so concerned with sort of appealing to the views that people already have, they don't consider the role of political parties in trying to shape the agenda, in trying to sort of come and meet people halfway, offer a policy offering that brings people together. They just want to sort of appeal to their predefined conception of what the electorate wants. And obviously that is a conception that is itself shaped by 14 years of Conservative government and by a media ecosystem that, say thinking particularly of the newspapers, often has leanings towards the Conservative Party. So I guess my issue when I left the Labour Party was the sense that they had stopped trying to, if you like, stop trying to lead, stop trying to advance principles for people to support and instead started parroting what they thought people wanted to hear. And I find that to be very dangerous. And I know other people have had this trajectory as well. I mean, there are so many Green Party members, Green Party activists, Green Party councillors who have had a history in the Labour Party. Obviously, for many of us, we see the traditional values of the Labour Party, values of mutuality, solidarity, support, treating people with dignity and respect as cornerstones of our own politics. My problem is that the Labour Party has gravitated away from that. And if I think in the context of the tweet, I mentioned sort of a lack of compassion for parents, disabled people. So just think of what Labour have pledged recently, for example, pledging to keep in place the two-child benefit cap, something which hugely sort of harms families struggling on the breadline, something which Labour even sort of in 2017, 2019 have pledged to sort of repeal. But there you can see again, not a willingness to sort of challenge the status quo, rather a series of pledges to manage it maybe in a way that's a bit less overtly hostile. But what Labour are currently offering and what I saw from sort of 2015 onwards, to be honest, is a rightward trajectory that doesn't value, well, doesn't value the things that the Labour Party was always meant to stand for. And I think the reason I'm agreeing actually is because in the Green Party, what I see throughout our policies is a value for human dignity, a value for sort of a sense of mutual respect, a value for collaboration and a sense of solidarity. And I could think of a policy to pluck out of the air here. Greens have been one of the most long-term promoters of universal basic income. And people often ask, you know, what does that do? Well, basically what universal basic income means is you give everyone a payment that meets their basic needs just on a universal basis, on the basis that they are a resident or citizen of the country. And that, in many senses, is a way of sort of treating people with dignity because it means that you no longer get into the sort of very punitive processes you see with universal credit. You no longer get people, for example, being sanctioned because they didn't turn up to a meeting. People are able to know that their basic needs are met and on that basis can begin to plan their lives. And it doesn't mean, you know, the criticism that often comes with this is that it goes to millionaires too. I mean, that is true, but what you then have is a taxation system that picks that up. And basically, by cutting that out, you're able to treat people as dignified, autonomous beings rather than as a sort of mass in the way the Labour Party often seems to see them. And again, I should say, the other thing that's dismayed me about the Labour Party is that they've been talking again and again about how they will make sure that anyone who is fit to work is in work in a very, very conservative vein that sort of reiterates the narrative of the 2010s around sort of strivers and shirkers and, in my view, is incredibly discriminatory against disabled people. So I think, going back to it, that sort of value of... If you value autonomy, if you value dignity and if you want to see people treated with respect, I don't think you can support the Labour Party in this election. I think Greens are the party that have sort of an agenda that offers this. I think, coming back to those kind of essential values you're talking about, dignity, diversity, migrants, general kind of common humanity, one thing that has been very divisive is the Labour Party's stance over Gaza, you know, refusing to call for a ceasefire or to even vote for one when it was party parliament. The Greens have been the only major party to actually support calls for a ceasefire since October. Now, the Greens are projected in kind of the most positive of polling at the moment to get maybe two seats in the general election. I wondered, you know, what's kind of the plan? What's the Green vision for how they would get parliament to move forward with the calls for a ceasefire in Gaza? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, firstly, it's important to be clear. We absolutely condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th. But we... Often the other parties haven't really moved past that to look at the situation now, where there is increasingly clear evidence of atrocities being committed against the people of Gaza. And so, sort of based on that, we've wanted to be clear from day one that we stand for an end to the violence as well as an immediate end to arms sales to Israel from the UK. Now, the reason we've sort of made that call is, again, because we have a set of consistent principles and we aren't willing to sort of deviate from them just because it's difficult. So we've wanted to stand on that principle. Now, you're right that, in all likelihood, we will be a reasonably small party in the next parliament. I would hope we'd have more than two seats. I'd hope for four or five. But, in any case, we won't be the ones in government who are able to sort of set government policy. But what we can guarantee is that every single parliamentary representative we have will be clearly and unambiguously continuing to call for a ceasefire, to ask parliamentary questions of ministers about sort of the UK's action and how the UK is trying to stop the humanitarian crisis that's been unfolding in Gaza before all of our eyes. And also, they will obviously be sort of taking every opportunity to hold those ministers to account for sort of the UK's role in failing to call attention to it internationally as well. But, obviously, the other part to play is outside of parliament. I mean, the other thing that Greens have been doing is obviously supporting people taking protest action, standing in solidarity with those who are making their voices heard. And this goes back again to a sort of longstanding Greens tradition. Before we had representation in parliament, Greens were a part of the protest against the Iraq war. And I think, you know, parliament is obviously a really, really important place and it's important to have those Green voices in parliament. But in every community, there is a local Green party and that's made up of activists and people who give up their time and those people will also be actively involved in their communities. So, it's about that sort of mixture of the parliamentary and the social. Yeah, absolutely. And to bring this to a very local and very current situation that we have at the moment in Oxford, obviously, we do have a huge amount of students, but also community protests, you know, Oxfords Action Palestine, while a student group is supported by lots of members of the community. Now, with recent events with the university's response to student protests, the Oxford Community Independence Group, who are a group of Oxford City councillors, have expressed their support for the camp and also condemned the appalling response, in their words, in the strongest possible terms, from the university publicly on X. I wondered if you'd like to offer a response to that. To my knowledge, the Green councillors haven't yet offered a response, either in support of the university or in support of the protesters. Now, you've been talking about how, you know, the local Green party has a role to play in supporting protesters. Do you have a response to what's going on? I mean, so it's important, firstly, to say that many of the local Green group have been down to visit some of the encampments. I've been myself to go and visit once. And I think, you know, the thing to say here is that universities are supposed to be spaces that foster critical thinking. They're supposed to be spaces that don't teach students what to think, but how to think, how to interrogate authority, how to hold up truth to power. So I think, actually, in sort of forming the encampments, in making a very visible and vocal statement of sort of concern about the situation in Gaza and the role of universities in terms of their sort of entanglements with the apparatus that's enacting that catastrophe, students should be applauded, yes, absolutely, for sort of their willingness to speak up. And I think it is important that we recognize the student movement has, for a long time, to go back sort of not just in the UK, but looking at the US, for example, against the Vietnam War. In the UK, students were a very, very active part of, they say, again, Iraq War protests. So there is a long history of students standing in solidarity with oppressed peoples. And it's very, very good to see that students in Oxford have also been able to take that action. And we absolutely do send our solidarity to them in terms of sort of standing up and making a clear articulated demand for a ceasefire and also for the university to do their part in securing that. And you're a university lecturer yourself, not Oxford University, but at Brookes. I know you've been very critical of the Tories' plans to reform higher education. I wondered if you had your own plans, where you'd be putting government, what do you think should be done with universities, because they are in a crisis? Yeah, I mean, so I have to use this opportunity to sort of say, actually, that the level of crisis in universities is, I think, still not appreciated by a large swathe of the public. The reality is that tinkering around the edges is not going to be adequate. We are looking at possibly within the next year or two, unless serious government action is taken, a university or several universities facing imminent financial collapse. I mean, that is significantly less likely to be, say, the University of Oxford or Cambridge are more likely to be maybe a newer university. But the point still stands that there is a very, very urgent need for reform of higher education. Now, there are a range of factors that build into this, but the conversion of higher education to a marketplace, and particularly a marketplace that is premised on fees that have remained static for, I think, now seven years, they were last uprooted in 2017, has meant that basically universities have been seeing a real-terms cut to their possible income every single year, unless they're able to recruit more and more students. Either way you slice it, whether it means that your income goes down every year or you have more and more students, that really, really undermines the ability of institutions to provide positively for the student experience because it puts more and more pressure on less and less resource in either case. So what Green Party would advocate for, and what we are calling for very clearly, is the abolition of tuition fees and the reinstatement of effectively, well, a state-funded system where basically the state pays, the university pays, not the student. And the reality is that that payment needs to be significantly higher than it currently is as well because universities have been suffering massively from a sort of, well, we've all seen the rates of inflation. They've affected all of us. They've also affected institutions. And that means that what we need to see is not the pressure put onto students, but a higher rate of income per student being paid by the state, not by the individual. And that is a very, very urgent reform. As well as that, unfortunately, the government's atrocious rhetoric on migration has also hugely undermined the ability of the UK to attract international students. Obviously, this has included concrete actions such as the dramatic restrictions on the ability of international students to bring dependents into the UK, that is sort of partners, children. But moreover, the hostility in which the UK has spoken has definitely undermined the ability of universities to attract international students. Because frankly, why would you want to come here if the UK government cannot stop saying how much it doesn't want you here? And what that means, of course, is that universities which already have capped home fees have also faced a loss of income from international fees. Now, it is, in my view, absolutely immoral the amount we charge international students. But the basic premise here is that the conflation of different factors from the way the government has been misrunning higher education has created an absolute crisis. And what we now need is a fundamental reform, a return to the sort of model that existed prior to the introduction of tuition fees where the space is directly funded by the state, a dramatic softening of the language around immigration and a statement, clearly and unambiguously, that international students are welcome and valued members of our communities who should be treated with respect and dignity and charged a fair amount to come here, which again will help universities. And I think the last thing that we really, really do need to see is an end now to the failed experiment of marketisation, a return to sort of an education system that's premised on free-at-the-point-of-use access where everyone sort of can pick a university that fits with what they want to do, but where we don't see universities fighting for ever greater numbers, which eventually burns everyone. I want to bring us on to what we've been talking about in terms of the government's anti-immigration rhetoric in just a moment. But just before that, I have to ask, if you want the government to be funding people's university places and you also don't want to be charging quite so high international fees, where's the money going to come from to fund these places at university? So, I mean, there are several options. As we know, some other states would have a model such as a graduate tax. What we have in the UK is not particularly dissimilar at the moment to a graduate tax, but the problem with it is that it saddles people with that sort of hugely traumatising figure at the end of it, and also that because of the way we've done it on the basis of capped fees, that has continued to be a real-terms cut for universities every single year. So a graduate tax would sort of avoid that. That's one model. I mean, the other model we should really be looking at is a general acceptance of the fact that education is a public good. And if we are accepting the premise that education is a public good, then actually my view is that we should at least partially fund university spaces through general taxation. Obviously, the Green Party, unlike other political parties, have been clear as well that we can't unilaterally rule out each and every single type of tax rise. The reality is that if we want good standards of public services, those who earn the most need to be paying in more. Now, I'm not going to sort of make a direct statement on which, because at the moment we're not in that position of being in government. What we would do is we would look to sort of take in expert advice about how this can best feasibly be done. And I think that's another important sort of green principle to draw out. We don't think that we have all the answers. Our view has always been that we need to work collaboratively, we need to show appreciation for expertise. I mean, I know it's terribly en vogue lately for politicians to bash the experts and say they don't know what they're talking about, but there should be a genuine value put on expertise. And actually, when it comes to issues like how would we fund something, there are people who are very, very qualified to guide us on that. So what I would say is we would want to look towards models of graduate tax and general taxation, possibly a mix of the two, but I wouldn't want to lay it out more specifically than that, for the simple reason that we're talking currently probably about something that might happen in the far-off future. But I think to tie it back to principle, there are two principles that we need to have. Number one is students should not be charged exorbitant tuition fees that hang over them for the rest of their life. And number two, universities are one of the UK's strongest industries that we should be incredibly proud of, and the government should be doing an incredible amount more to support them. Thank you very much for sharing your insight as a lecturer as well. The final question that I have for you, before we have a couple of quick questions in the audience, if you still have time for that. The Campsfield immigration site just north of Oxford closed in 2018 after relentless campaigning of both local residents, Ox City councillors, county councillors, and indeed our MP Leila Moran. The government in 2022 announced that they wanted to reopen a detention centre on the Campsfield site in order to process about 400 immigrants or hold them there while they were temporarily processed. Now, just on Friday, the government very quietly signed a deal with Gallupry Try Holdings PLC to actually develop the land into what could be another detention centre. I just wondered if you could respond quickly to this kind of new development with regards to Campsfield and how the council feel about that. Yeah, sure. So, firstly, important, again, this is with the principle, immigration detention is completely barbaric and utterly unjustified. It is effectively a form of no-fault detention. Many people who are placed into immigration detention are in the UK seeking sanctuary from persecution and it is morally outrageous that they are placed into such detention. So, I'll start out by saying I oppose all immigration detention. But we already have a position established by a motion passed by city council in 2022. That motion was seconded by Green councillor Rosie Rawl and basically the motion is a motion where Oxford City Council opposes the reopening of Campsfield's immigration centre, immigration removal centre. Obviously, the land on which Campsfield's immigration removal centre is based is outside of the Oxford City area. But, nonetheless, we have been very, very clear and following that motion, the council should be clear that we oppose its reopening. I think it is also important to state here that many residents and community groups came together to fight for the closure of Campsfield's. It was an achievement fought through a public campaign and it is, to my mind, utterly outrageous that there would now be consideration of reopening it. And I also need to be very clear that immigration detention is not an answer. It doesn't solve a problem. There is no reasonable prospect of the dramatic majority of people placed into that detention system ever being removed from the UK. What it basically becomes is a form of arbitrary detention where people are deprived of basic amenities such as access to a smartphone. And, really, we as a society should be doing so much better to support those who come to the UK, particularly when they come to the UK seeking refuge. But, in any case, we should be trying to do so much better to support all people who are in need of state support and should not be placed into detention as a result of that. Thank you so much for clarifying your position. And thank you so much for answering so many of my questions. Now, if you wouldn't mind, we have a couple of questions from the audience, from other students here at Oxford University. The first one is from Tamsy, a theology student. As a young person, I'm really concerned about the climate crisis and the lack of government action on it. What action would the Greens take to tackle it if they got more MPs into Parliament? Thank you for the question. I've already laid out one of the things we would be looking to do, and that is to return public services such as water into public ownership so that we are able to ensure that the proper infrastructure is in place and that the proper accountable people are in place so that things like sewage expulsion into rivers is not happening. Obviously, the other things we need to be doing are around sort of investment in the green economy, so investment in green energy solutions like solar and wind. As Greens, we are frequently calling for sort of more funding to be put into those. There are also things we can do for individual people, though, and these things that, for individual people, have both an individual benefit for the citizen but also a benefit for the state, that is things like retrofitting homes. So when you retrofit homes, not only do you sort of reduce the amount of energy that's required to heat those homes, you also, therefore, lower the energy bill of the people concerned. What you get with a green government is much more investment in sort of transitioning the UK towards a green economy, ensuring that there are sustainable, renewable energy options in place for the future, ensuring that people's houses are free of mould, are in a good standard, are fitted with sort of the requisite technologies to make sure that they have a good standard of energy efficiency in a way that benefits, as I said, the individual as well as the state. So it's really around sort of funding that green transition. Other things, of course, we'd be looking to do is to dramatically upscale the levels of public transport in the UK. I'm sure anyone who's got a train recently has suffered the sort of indignities of the pricing structure on privatised rail only to stand in an overcrowded train. That obviously is something which affects the ability of people to rely on public transport, and if we are going, we are asking people to sort of transition to more ethical transport choices as well, and that involves ensuring that they have the means to do so. So ensuring that there is, again, publicly owned rail that is an affordable price, decent bus services that link, say, rural areas to urban areas that are, again, at an affordable price. These are all things that really require central government investment. Of course, things like buses might well be under the... or are under the control, in Oxfordshire's case, of the county council, but the reality is you do need to have that sort of government investment, because actually even the things that happen at the local level are in a state of financial crisis after 14 years of mismanagement. So what we really do... what we would really focus on is putting in the money, putting in that investment, which will pay us back in future. One example, you know, Labour had their, for a short time, £28 billion pledge to sort of gear up the UK for a transition towards a green economy. They've now reneged on that, but those are actually the sort of things that political parties should be doing, and if they had stuck to that, I would be praising them for it. Those are the sorts of things we need to see more of. OK, thank you so much for that. And just really quickly, I've got one more question. This is to do with a Green Party policy that's been circulating in recent days. To do with a policy which states that the Green Party will work to reduce the number of interventions in childbirth. Now, there have been numerous hospital reviews and reports recently showing that a lack of intervention in childbirth harms both babies and mothers. I wondered if you could just respond to this policy. Yes, so, I mean, firstly, I think it's important to clarify something about the Green Party policy-making process. So, in the Green Party, we're very different from other political parties, basically on the basis that our policies are all passed by our membership on the basis of one member, one vote. So, any member can propose a motion to conference. It sometimes takes some time for it to get heard, but once it gets heard, there's a debate on it, and then all of the membership can vote. Now, this is obviously extremely good. It results in democratic policy-making. It means that any member can have a say in the same way, say, a leader could have a say. And I think that is a model that we really should see more of. And it puts us in sharp contrast to other political parties. I think, for example, of the Labour Party, whose membership voted for the adoption of proportional representation, only to see then the leadership commit to the retention of first-past-the-post in terms of voting systems. But, obviously, that also means that, at times, wording is drafted by members, and it may not be, you know, in the way you or I would word it. Now, I have seen the policy. The thrust of it, in terms of not framing something as inherently medicalised, I don't think is particularly problematic, but obviously some of the wording is very, very difficult. And what we absolutely want to be clear on is that it is for doctors to make that decision. It's not trying to tell doctors how to do their job. It's more just sort of stating an idea that giving birth is a normal process. And I use normal there in a sort of... just to sort of mean that it's something that shouldn't be regarded as a sort of... I guess it shouldn't be regarded as inherently medicalised, but rather as a part of human life. Obviously, where someone needs medical treatment, they should absolutely receive it, and we do not oppose that in any way. So I think what this sort of speaks to is how sometimes policies can be worded in ways that are not ideal, things can get misconstrued, but also the reason this has come up is because of another thing the Green Party does that I think sets us apart from other parties. We have, on the internet, a platform called Policies for a Sustainable Society that is the entire policy platform of the Green Party as passed by members. It is available constantly. No other political party offers this. So where this has come from is someone finding that in Policies for a Sustainable Society. Now, what I should say there is that that doesn't mean it's going to be part of our manifesto. These are the policies of the party as passed by members, and our sense is that actually having them up there is very good because we want to be open to scrutiny, and it's right that people can scrutinise us. We should. All political parties should do this, and if other political parties do this, I think we'd find some very concerning things in all of them. But it also does open us up to these sorts of things coming up, and I think I can see why people are concerned about it. I think it may be wise for us at another conference to revisit the wording because even whilst I think the thrust of it is really not trying to make the statement people have construed it as making, obviously we acknowledge that sometimes we need to rethink things. But again, that's part of scrutiny. It's right that people challenge it, and it's right that we then respond. I actually think that if more political parties acted like that we might have a more responsive political system. So to be clear, this is Policies for a Sustainable Community, is it? Policies for a Sustainable Future website? Oh, Policies for a Sustainable Society. Policies for a Sustainable Society, forgive me. This website, who then decides which policies are going to make it onto your manifesto? What's been the process of what's actually going to make it onto the campaign trail? So our executive body, like all parties, we have a party executive. They will obviously collaborate with elected members and a group to bring together which policies make it into the manifesto. Now the manifesto is the things we want to highlight, if you like. So that is due, I can't remember exactly when it's due to come out, but that's due to come out very, very soon. And that will be the sort of key issues we are campaigning on. Because obviously Policies for a Sustainable Society, you have hundreds of policies. It's more than a whole parliament's worth of things to raise. What we in the Green Party have a principle of is basically that elected members should be led by our policies. They should state our policies. But every elected member is actually able to, as long as they distinguish that they're not speaking for the party when they do so, state their own views. So if you like, Policies for a Sustainable Society is the guidebook we all work off of. So in terms of the manifesto, that will be brought together by the executive, and they will be able to check with relevant people whether it's got all the things we want to be campaigning on, and that will go out to the public as these are the key issues to us. It doesn't override Policies for a Sustainable Society in any way, but it just sets out our key offering. In that sense, it's more of a presentation of these are what we're really pushing on this time. You might have seen for the local elections, for example, our push was on housing. We wanted to secure more affordable housing and make sure that issues like rent controls were brought onto the agenda. So the campaign manifesto will be a smaller selection of these policies, if you like. Exactly, yes. Well, I think that's a great place to bring our discussion to a close. It's been absolutely fantastic having you on the show, Alex. We're so grateful to you for giving the students of Oxford a bit of an insight into the Greens and what they'll be doing. So thank you so much for coming on. Thank you very much for having me. Just to play you out, I've got another sketch from us from the Oxford Review. This is a slightly interesting take on a popular radio show you guys might have heard before. This is for BBC. Taking the piss out of the arches since 1951. Next up on Radio 4, from 1942, the unaired pilot of Desert Island Disc. Hello, and welcome to Desert Island Disc. I'm Alex, and I'm going to be your host for this week. I'm going to be your host for this week. I'm going to be your host for this week. I'm going to be your host for this week. Hello, and welcome to Desert Island Disc. I am Roya Plumley. This week our cast away is esteemed author, playwright, mathematician, amateur astronomer, and chemist, Edith Piven, known for her contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary and government policy. Welcome. Thank you for having me, Roy. Now, can you tell us about your first track? Track? Yes. Ah, I think I may have misread the instructions for the show. How come? I didn't choose any music tracks. An audiobook would be fine too. I'm sure they would. I didn't pick any of those either. Lectures are fine. Even John Cage's 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence could be an option. Yes, they all sound great. The thing is, I read an extra F in the title. Stupid telegrams. So you're telling me we have cast you away to a Desert Island Discs and you have chosen to accompany you eight different puddings. I read it as dessert to Island Discs. So I chose a Steaky Toffee Pudding, a Bakewell Tart, three eclairs, two scoops of ice cream, and a tangerine. Yes, the Discs bit was a bit unusual, but let's face it, it is Radio 4. Didn't you think it was odd that we also asked for a book and a luxury? Not really. I chose Nigella Lawson's Domestic Goddess and a fan oven. Not a fan of a microwave oven. F you. We interrupt this programme to bring you some breaking news. An island full of celebrities, previously assumed dead, has been discovered off the coast of the island of Jersey. The celebrities had on their persons eight music tracks each, a copy of the Bible, a group work of Shakespeare, and assorted books and luxuries. The BBC have been approached for comment. And now back to your scheduled programme. This is a Believer! This is the BBC, speaking with Posh RP until...