Last
updated: 08/04/08
Wes
for President
Wes
Streeting was elected as the new president of NUS in an election that
was widely seen as a foregone conclusion - but by a smaller majority
than some expected.
Streeting, who is the leader of the Labour Students faction in NUS,
beat his closest rival, ‘genuine independent’ Ciaran Norris,
by 496 votes to 376.
The other two candidates polled lower than expected in the early rounds,
with Student Broad Left’s Ruqayyah Collector eliminated on 136
votes and Education Not for Sale’s Daniel Randall on 119.
Many of their votes transferred to Norris, but not enough to push him
past Streeting.
NUS president Gemma Tumelty had been criticised for being too close
to Labour, but Wes Streeting’s manifesto openly admits that he
is part of the party, making him the first confessed Labour president
since Mandy Telford in 2002-4.
Streeting’s policies call for “fairer funding” but
not a return to free education, which he calls “unrealistic”.
He believes that students will be able to defeat plans to lift the cap
on top-up fees by working with the government, lobbying their MPs and
making evidence-based arguments.
He vowed to continue pushing for NUS reform.
There were also few surprises in the vice-president elections, with
the established favourites all winning: Dave Lewis is treasurer, Richard
‘Bubble’ Budden is national secretary, Aaron Porter is vicepresident
higher education, Beth Walker is vice-president further education and
Ama Uzowuru is vice-president welfare.
But in the part-time ‘block of 12’ officer elections, Save
NUS Democracy campaign leaders Hind Hassan and Rob Owen both won positions,
with Hind receiving an unprecedentedly high vote.
The other part-time officers elected were Ben Whittaker, Sam Rozati,
Ed Marsh, Yemi Makinde, Joel Braunold, Susan Nash, Tom Stubbs, Elizabeth
Somerville, Hollie Williams and Nasir Tarmann. Early favourites like
Bryony Shanks and Becci Heard narrowly missed out on a place.
The final tally shows three parttime officers for Labour, two for Student
Respect, one Tory, one Lib Dem and one from Islamic societies group
FOSIS.
by
Tom Walker - Conference correspondent
