Londoner's Diary
A race for the cushiest job in Britain opened up last night with the resignation of Chris Patten as Chancellor of Oxford University. After 21 years in the role, Patten, a former governor of Hong Kong and Tory deputy prime minister, is stepping down “with a heavy heart” as his 80th birthday approaches.
The chancellorship, a prestigious and largely ceremonial office, is open to election among Oxford graduates and usually goes to a former politician (Roy Jenkins and Harold Macmillan had the role before Patten).
The university confirmed this morning that for the first time the chancellorship election will be held online, rather than in the traditional manner which required graduates to attend the vote in full academic dress.
Who are the runners and riders?
Former prime minister Theresa May would be a predictable choice and we have already heard her name bandied about. An unflashy former Conservative prime minister from the more moderate end of the party, she would fit comfortably into the space left by Harold Macmillan, who was chancellor from 1960 until his death in 1986.
In the Jenkins model of a radical moderate who shot for No 10 but missed, the obvious candidate is Rory Stewart. A Balliol man like Jenkins, Stewart has the requisite intellectual chops as the author of four highly regarded books.
More wild-card candidates include Imran Khan, the former Pakistani PM and cricketer who has just been sentenced to a further seven years in prison in his home country, and former prime ministers Sir Tony Blair and Boris Johnson.
Johnson has previously called for the university to endow a college named after Margaret Thatcher. However, he has spent the past decade upsetting the same demographic of bourgeois metropolitans who will be voting in the election, so his chances are slim.
In the 1987 election, Jenkins triumphed after a highly-public showdown for the role with the unpopular former Conservative PM Ted Heath. Could something similar happen? And we note that in the last election, comedian Sandi Toksvig managed to get onto the ballot. With a new online voting system and the influence of social media, could a joke candidate do well this time around?
