Why This Election Matters
Students’ unions across the country are questioning their relationship with NUS. Several unions have already disaffiliated. Others are openly debating whether to follow.
This did not appear overnight. Confidence in NUS has been weakening for years. Students and elected officers feel that decisions taken nationally do not clearly reflect the views of the members NUS exists to represent.
Recent intense debates around Palestine have brought those tensions into the open, but they are not the root cause. They are a symptom of a deeper structural problem. At its core, the challenge facing NUS today is a crisis of democratic confidence.
The Core problem
Right now, NUS elections are the most direct democratic moment in the organisation’s governance, and they take place only once every two years.
At its best, NUS should operate as a democratic federation of students’ unions.
Member unions set priorities.
Conference votes shape policy.
Elected officers deliver on those mandates.
Students can clearly trace national decisions back to democratic processes.
Today, when members cannot easily see how decisions flow from democratic processes, representation begins to feel less accountable and less reflective from what it is meant to represent, even when intentions are good.
Rebuilding that democratic traceability is the central challenge facing NUS today.
Why me?
Rebuilding NUS to its former glory requires leadership that understands both the pressures students’ unions face and the structures that shape national decision-making.
As a Students’ Union President, trustee, and university governor, I have seen first-hand the pressure elected officers are under and have worked directly within those systems: navigating governance, representing students under scrutiny, and ensuring that democratic foundations translate into member led decisions.
Students continue to face shared challenges - rising rents, increasing student debt, visa uncertainty for international students, and growing political scrutiny of higher education. Those challenges require a national voice that is credible, democratic, and trusted by its members.
The task now is not to abandon the national union, but to rebuild it on stronger democratic foundations, where priorities are set clearly by member unions and national decisions can be traced back to those mandates.
That is the work I am standing to do.