How could the outcome of the US midterm elections ever affect an Oxford student? Well, the elections might affect the cost of your next Tesco or Sainsbury’s visit. This month, diesel prices surpassed £2 per litre. British grocery inflation also just ticked up to 2.5% from 2.3%. The two are not unrelated. Many attribute Britain’s inflation to the ongoing conflict between Iran and the United States in the Middle East. On top of this, the Trump administration has threatened a 100% tariff on UK goods if the country does not abandon its digital services tax.

For better or worse, US government policy can affect the world, and with President Trump’s party holding slim majorities in both legislative chambers, current US policy may be challenged or forced to change. While, strictly speaking, the midterm elections only involve voting for representatives and senators, many view them as a vote of confidence in the president. Historically, the election has generally reflected a lack of confidence in the president, at least within the House of Representatives. Since 1946, regardless of party, the incumbent president’s party has gained seats in just two midterm elections: 1998 and 2002. These elections stand out because 1998 was the year President Clinton was impeached and 2002 was the election following 9/11.

Making sense of the midterms

Let’s say you agree with the notion that the outcome of the midterms may affect your grocery spend or your travel spend between or after term time; how on Earth do you make sense of the US election? Why do some politicians appear up for election and others do not? How do you know if power has shifted and a debate will occur on issues that affect an Oxford student?

In the US, Congress consists of two elected legislative bodies: the House and the Senate. Every two years, the entire House and one-third of the Senate stand for election.

A representative serves a two-year term in the House. This means the entire House stands for election on a two-year cycle, which includes the presidential election and the midterms in between. Currently, the Republican Party holds a slim majority in the House, and the Democratic Party would need a net gain of 3 seats to take control.

A senator, on the other hand, serves a six-year term, and there are 100 Senators. Further, the Senate is divided into three classes, with about 33 Senators per class. Senate elections are staggered so that one-third of the Senate stands for election every two years. Like in the House, the Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, and the Democrats would need a net gain of 4 seats to take control.

What Congress can do

Now that we understand how the election works,  how would a change of power in Congress affect an Oxford student’s daily life?

Congress was designed as a restraint on the presidency. Congress possesses extensive power in budgeting, defence, foreign policy, trade, and other matters which can be used to counter the president. If the opposition party, the Democrats, wins control of either or both chambers, then expect attempts to foil President Trump. This matters to students from the UK and abroad. As mentioned before, US global policy might increase our food bill, but even more, as petrol prices rise, so will prices for all travel and, in particular, air travel back home for international students.

The Iran war

So, what can Congress do? Congress has a variety of options to influence the Iran war, one of which is the War Powers Resolution. Under this law, Congress could force an end to hostilities by voting to instruct the president to begin withdrawing the US military from hostilities within 60 days. However, this would require a supermajority of Congress because the president would likely veto a War Powers Resolution on the Iran war.

Alternatively, Congress can take other steps to impede the war. This includes restricting the military’s budget, rejecting or not voting on nominees, holding hearings, forcing Department of Defense officials to testify, and more. If the Senate doesn’t confirm a nominee, the president is limited in whom he may select, and the ‘acting’ official tends to hold little political power. All of this pressure would go a distance in bringing an end to a conflict that has increased petrol in the UK by 16-30% on average and increased airline jet fuel globally by 20%.

Tariffs and the power of the purse

On tariffs, Congress could pass legislation to terminate specific tariffs or rescind the president’s authority more broadly. Much of the same congressional options that applied to the Iran war also apply to tariffs. The key difference is that if both chambers of Congress switch to the Democrats, there is a good chance legislation curtailing the President’s tariffs could override a presidential veto.

The congressional power of the purse should also not be underestimated. In 2019, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi refused to allow appropriations legislation to pass over a dispute to fund a border wall on the US-Mexico border, leading to a government shutdown. This can hurt the American public, as the lack of funding ceases or slows essential operations and functions like airports, issuance of small business loans, court proceedings, and heavily used public venues like national parks. Traditionally, this stalemate places great pressure on the party that appears unwilling to compromise and in 2019, President Trump found himself in that position.  All of this puts the President’s 10% tariff on UK goods in jeopardy and diminishes the risks of new tariff threats.  

The bottom line

So, today, take note of these facts if you attend a University of Oxford watch party. The election taking place 3,000 miles away may affect you more than you imagine, as it may affect the cost of what you eat, the cost of travel around Oxford, the cost of a flight home following term time, or even more; it may affect the global economy every Oxford student wishes to work in. Don’t stay up too late, but hopefully, if you watch the election, you will appreciate its significance, and it will also provide some entertainment.

Ti-Jean Martin: Oxford’s political party societies are not fit for purpose

Entering Oxford University as a left-leaning student, word-of-mouth references and a Cherwell feature quickly gave me the impression that its party-aligned political societies did indeed constitute “a drifting elite with few ideas”. This didn’t put me off the concept entirely – I was in favour of the move to create a Green Party society, a feat that, this Michaelmas, has been accomplished alongside a Reform UK-aligned equivalent. 

Yet whilst these moves will diversify a stagnant atmosphere in terms of party allegiance, it seems unlikely that they will break the mold of the political society. Neither will they move the Oxford political scene any closer to the relevance it sorely lacks. 

One needn’t look as far back as 1968 to see the potential of campus politics to catalyse change. At Oxford, however, the idea that political action can actually change things seems to have been forgotten, or perhaps never thought of. Members of the Labour Club (OLC), Liberal Association (OSLA), and Conservative Association (OUCA) – or all three, as many political BNOCs seem to be – themselves would probably acknowledge that the ‘big three’ do more drinking and Union connection-making than political action. 

If they are breeding future prime ministers, as the reputation goes, they’re doing it the old way, serving as old boys’ networks-to-be between their many shared members. This is demoralising in a place with the potential to create future leaders, a place with the power to turn a generation’s disillusionment into meaningful, different politics. It doesn’t do anything to help Oxford’s reputation as an elite bubble, cut off from political issues that actually matter, either. 

It would have been nice to think that creating two new societies could remedy these issues, yet change can cut both ways. Concerns have already been raised about the implications of the Reform Society’s affiliation with Reform UK, a party that has been accused of Islamophobia, for the safety of Muslim students at Oxford. The society has also recently invited the controversial self-described “race realist” Nathan Cofnas to speak at Oriel College in November, spawning the announcement of a protest by the campaign group Stand Up to Racism. It remains to be seen who will constitute the Oxon Universities Reform Society’s membership, but it is quite possible that many of them will carry OLC, OSLA, or OUCA cards – the same may well be true for the Oxford Student Greens. 

This cannot be the price we pay for an ostensibly more diverse partisan landscape. But where does Oxford’s politically-inclined student body go, then? To the ‘big three’, which the aforementioned feature labelled the “stand-up comedy clubs” of a faded elite? To the new societies on left and right, whose potential for both harm and good remains to be seen? And should we abandon partisanship altogether? Something like the October Club, which in theory constitutes a left-wing space without party alignment, could be replicated across the political spectrum, but this model has its own problems – the Oxford Social Democrats’ (formerly Left Society) attempt to create such an environment appears to have fizzled out. 

Within the current system, there seems to be no answer to these questions. Unless the party-aligned political societies start actually doing politics, they will remain unfit for purpose.

Elizabeth Millett: Oxford’s political party societies are fit for purpose

Oxford’s political party societies have a dual reputation. On one side of the coin, many boast long-standing histories and influential alumni, from Clement Attlee to David Cameron. Flip to the tail end, and you find a termly reality of boisterous drinking socials and inconclusive debates that are, in the words of Cherwell’s Stanley Smith, “more fixated with personality than party”. But does this reputation really disrupt the confines of what these political party societies are made for?

The recent establishment of Reform and Green Party societies has prompted a return to analysing the state of Oxford’s student political groups. A predictable flurry of apprehension has followed this broadening of a scene that currently appears both contradictory and relatively subpar. Though understandable, I feel these criticisms have lost touch with the actual purpose of political party societies.

The self-proclaimed objective of the Oxford University Conservatives Association (OUCA), penned by the current President Harriet Dolby, is to “provide a forum for students to discuss politics and policy” and encourage the “fostering [of] open and rigorous debate with those of all political persuasions”. Other groups’ intentions are similar. The Oxford Labour Club (OLC) expresses a commitment to a “conviction that ideas matter, that argument is worth having, and that a fairer society is worth working for”, while the months-old Oxon Universities Reform Society sets out in the opening statements of their website a strive towards “providing a space for free speech”.

We appear to have deluded ourselves into viewing these political societies, like all student societies for that matter, as more than what they are designed to be: a place for amateurs to channel and discuss their interests. At what point were student societies discouraged for being merely recreational? University environments are defined by members undergoing a process of growth and learning; they are not a final product. An unjust amount of pressure is placed on these student groups to provide term cards and socials of the calibre that might produce our next generation of leaders. This expectation is purely based on the careers of a few outstanding predecessors that are, bluntly put, anomalies. While politics should certainly not be considered a mere pastime (I have no intention of being satisfied with low-quality debate in these forums), these societies are certainly in an adequate position to carry out their self-proclaimed purpose of having passionate and engaged discussions.

Whether they do this well is a different matter. There is no denial that the list of zero-tolerance “Terms & Conditions” set out by the Reform society for their fourth-ever speaker event (chosen to be with controversial academic Nathan Cofnas) makes one wince. Similarly, the Green’s “lemonade and leftism” sessions are destined to lose any sliver of prospective zest when debates on nuclear energy and climate change are bound to become an echo chamber when held amongst students of the same political disposition – there is a clear distinction between being functional as a society and remotely impressive.

These societies can admittedly be disappointing in their execution, allegedly devolving into sessions of networking and natter. Their wavering relevance is not, however, symptomatic of being unfit for their purpose, but a case of often not living up to what they could do with the frameworks already in place.