It’s Mandelson vs Hague in the battle of the Oxford old boys

Two of politics’ leading men want the university’s ‘ultimate grandee role’, but their routes to contendership are surprisingly different

The race for the top job has begun. In February this year, Lord Chris Patten announced his intention to retire as Chancellor of Oxford University, often described as the most venerable role in British public life. Patten, 80, will retire at the end of the academic year. 
A search for his successor has begun. Formal lobbying for the position is considered unseemly, but two names in particular have cropped up as contenders: Lord Peter Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister for whom the term “spin doctor” was invented; and Lord William Hague, former leader of the Conservative party. Both have expressed an interest after being approached by senior figures at the university.
It is a prestigious role with stringent criteria to match. Applicants must be able to prove “outstanding achievements in their field and the ability to command respect beyond it,” according to the university’s website. In this election, for the first time in history, over 250,000 Oxford graduates and former staff members will be able to vote online, a move that will increase voter turnout significantly. 
As titular head of the university, the next Chancellor will preside over key ceremonies and undertake advocacy and fundraising work for a term of 10 years. While it is unpaid, it is a highly-regarded and influential position that has been called “the ultimate grandee role”. Since 1224, it has been held by a series of male public figures, largely politicians, including Harold Macmillan and Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax. 
There is no requirement for the elected Chancellor to have been a student at Oxford, but it is no coincidence that both Mandelson and Hague are alumni themselves and have maintained close ties with the university since their student days. 
“Given I studied at Oxford it’s an important place to me,” Mandelson has said. In a similar vein, Hague said: “I’ve always cared deeply about Oxford since I arrived there from a comprehensive school in 1979.” He still occasionally returns to teach seminars on politics and history. 
Both Hague and Mandelson read politics, philosophy and economics; Mandelson at St Catherine’s College between 1973-1976 and Hague at Magdalen College between 1979-1982. But that is where the similarities end. Hague came to Oxford from his local comprehensive in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where his parents ran a soft drink business, and immediately threw himself into student politics. He applied to Magdalen because his school, Wath-upon-Dearne comprehensive, had had previous success sending students there.
Hague’s reputation preceded him. As a plucky 16-year-old, he had given a speech about the dangers of socialism at the Conservative Conference in 1977 and had arrived at Oxford as a Tory boy wonder – a prime target for teasing by Left-wing students. The tutor who had interviewed him for Magdalen told colleagues he had just offered a place to “the boy who made ‘that speech’”. He was just spared the annual ‘Pushy Fresher’ award dished out by writer and broadcaster Michael Crick, then Union president.
However, soon after he arrived, he turned this to his advantage. He proved himself to be a gifted speaker and naturally talented student, as well as a down-to-earth Yorkshireman who could reportedly drink 14 pints in one sitting and campaigned to widen the range of real ales available in the Union bar. He achieved the rare trifecta of joint presidency of the Oxford Union and the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) and a First-class degree in PPE.
Brooks Newmark, a friend of Hague’s who studied at Worcester College, recalls a debating trip the pair took to America just weeks before his finals. “They were in four weeks, and he still managed to get a first,” he says. 
He remembers Hague as a charismatic, self-deprecating student with a natural aptitude for politics. “He was a class act. There was nobody who could touch him debating-wise, even though he has this broad Yorkshire accent,” he said. He was prone to muttering ‘Oh, bloody ‘ell’. 
“In Oxford, which has a lot of ambitious go-getters, he stood out,” Newmark adds. “He was the opposite of pushy. He didn’t need to be – he’d almost make fun of himself.” 
Another university contemporary agrees he was “the most gifted speaker anybody has heard… the most witty, brilliant virtuoso in the Union. The Left hated him because he’d given that speech at the Tory conference, but when they met him, they tended to like him. He was elected virtually unopposed as president of the Union, which is unheard of.” 
Mandelson, who will step down as chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University at the end of the year, took a different path. He eschewed the route of other aspirant politicians at Oxford almost entirely, despite coming from strong Labour stock as a grandson of Herbert Morrison, the former Labour cabinet minister, and the son of George Norman Mandelson, known as ‘Tony,’ who worked at the Jewish Chronicle. (His son followed in his footsteps – there were several Peters in his year, so at Oxford, Mandelson went by ‘Benj’.) During his teenage years he joined the Young Communist League before returning to the Labour party. 
Mandelson: The Biography is revealing of his time at university. Mandelson has admitted he did not expect to get into St Catherine’s College, having applied for St Edmund’s by mistake. When he arrived for his interview while at sixth form at Hendon County Grammar School he found that “it wasn’t a modern college, it was a sort of thirteenth-century rowing, rugby college”. He also interviewed at Hertford College, which he later said was “ghastly, it stank of cabbage and was really gloomy and depressing”. 
He won a place in sixth form but took a year out, which he spent travelling in Tanzania. His degree at St Catherine’s did not get off to an auspicious start. He recently wrote in the Spectator that his academic studies were “partially derailed by the bilharzia infection I had contracted in Tanzania when chased into Lake Victoria by a truculent elephant who thought I was invading her bathing space”. 
He was unimpressed with his classmates, and has said, “Oxford to me was a little bit alien, a little bit difficult, and I could not shake off my interest in Africa”. Donald MacIntyre, Mandelson’s authorised biographer, wrote that “his first impression [of his fellow freshmen] was that they were dull, more interested in table football than serious discussion; the conversation had been more stimulating in the sixth form at Hendon County”. 
Things soon picked up. Unlike other ambitious political hopefuls, he dismissed the Union out of hand. According to MacIntyre, he found it ‘hurrayish’ and ‘off putting.’ Instead, he set his sights on Cherwell, the student newspaper, and within a few months was responsible for a half-page section. 
In MacIntyre’s biography, a friend describes him as “incredibly fun-loving” – someone who people gravitated towards because he seemed to “be somebody”. As a student, Mandelson “hated” an organised ball at Brasenose College but loved dancing to rock and roll. He graduated with a “perfectly respectable” second-class degree. He, too, has maintained close links with the university since he graduated. 
Other potentials previously put forward for Lord Patten’s replacement, including Rory Stewart and former Prime Ministers Theresa May, Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, have all ruled themselves out of the race. There is one other high-profile challenger – former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has announced his intention to run for the role from his prison cell. 
Lady Elish Angiolini KC, principal of St Hugh’s College, has also been floated as a likely contender – if she were to win, it would mean Oxford would have a female chancellor for the first time in is 800-year history. Mandelson and Hague will have to wait to hear if they are headed back to their old student digs, as the next Chancellor won’t be chosen until the autumn.