The trouble with Keir Mather

Every time I cross paths – or swords – with a cranky student activist, I have the same thought: ‘Oh God, these people are going to be running the country one day.’ I have tormenting visions of these blue-haired censors, these giddy blacklisters of the un-PC, in parliament, drawing up laws, wagging a collective finger at the wrong-thinking throng.

Those privileged fuming youths who once blocked my path to the Oxford Union; that offence-seeking mob that tried to prevent me from giving an after-dinner speech at Queen’s College, Oxford – they’re going to be in charge soon, I always fret, and then we’re screwed. We’ll all be under the thumb of that eccentric intolerance that has stalked so many campuses of late.

Well, bad news – it’s happening. Labour’s newest MP, Keir Mather, had a previous life as precisely one of those illiberal youths. While at Oxford – where else? – he wrung his manicured hands over the Union’s penchant for hosting ‘controversial’ speakers and appeared to think that students’ feelings should be put ahead of difficult debates.