Tory leadership contenders take aim at universities

Universities have come under fire from the leading candidates in the race to succeed Rishi Sunak as Leader of the Conservative Party. 

Both Kemi Badenoch, the Shadow Business Secretary, and Robert Jenrick, the former Immigration Minister, have criticised British universities during the contest, which ends on 2 November. 

Ms Badenoch, 44, claimed in a speech at the party’s annual conference in October that she had been told by young party members that they were afraid to share their political beliefs with other students for fear of being “attacked”. 

She further claimed that young Conservatives were being marked down by universities because of their political beliefs. 

Mr Jenrick, 42, her rival in the contest, made a similar swipe at higher education in his own speech to conference attendees, suggesting that universities were not working as they should be. 

That universities would become the subject of criticism during the leadership race was widely anticipated by analysts

A third candidate, Tom Tugendhat, joined in the attacks by rounding on the government’s decision to pause a free speech bill in universities. 

Mr Tugendhat previously described the institutions as “woke” in an interview with the Daily Express, when he also urged young people to choose apprenticeships over “three years of indoctrination on left wing views”. He has subsequently been eliminated from the contest. 

That universities would become the subject of criticism during the leadership race was widely anticipated by analysts, with suggestions of a bias against right-wing beliefs dating back to a previous leadership contest in 2005.  

A paper published by the Policy Exchange thinktank in 2020, which suggested freedom of speech was being undermined by students and academics ‘self-censoring’, led to suggestions from right-wing commentators that academics felt a pressure to conform to a ‘woke’ left-wing culture at universities.  

A Times Higher Education survey earlier this year found that almost two in three UK academics were expecting to vote Labour in the general election, while only 4% were expected to vote Conservative. 

This apparent lack of Conservative-voting academics has been suggested to stem from rhetoric used by the party and its supporters, which has increasingly seen universities caught up in culture war debates.