As Cambridge elects a new Chancellor, there are two serious candidates to consider

It still matters who lands the job of titular head.

John Browne (via Alamy/ BMY6YK)

Elections to be the Chancellors at Oxbridge happen less than once a decade; now two have come along practically at once.

A few months ago, Oxford ended up choosing the obvious candidate in William Hague. Now the race is on in Cambridge to vote for a new titular head, following the retirement of the worthy Lord (David) Sainsbury, who succeeded the late Duke of Edinburgh back in 2011.

This is only the second time Cambridge has held an election for the job. The record number of ten candidates contains a melange of self-promoters, self-publicists, grumpy academics and serious candidates.

It matters who gets the job. Oxford and Cambridge are the UK’s world-renowned universities and while some may decry elitism, they both appear consistently towards the top of independent ratings of the best universities in the world. They are Britain’s “soft power” manifest.

As Harvard is experiencing in the United States, this is no longer a time when universities are left quietly to get on with their academic business – they are under constant fire from the right for being woke and from the left for not being woke enough. They need figureheads who are respected, rigorous and independent while personally committed to their institutions.

Under the guise of democratising the selection process, the administrators and faculty of both universities pushed to take full control back in house, in an attempt to exclude the distinguished white males who have occupied the posts consistently. Men have been Chancellor 108 times running at Cambridge, starting with William of Wetheringsett in 1215, with 160 men taking over at Oxford since 1224.

Last year, Oxford threw nominations open and ended up with a ludicrous 38 registered candidates including a Zumba teacher. Online voting winnowed this parade down to five conventional hopefuls – William Hague, Peter Mandelson, Dominic Grieve, Lady Angiolini and Baroness Royall. It remains unclear why the two women on the final shortlist of five were both heads of colleges, since the rules appeared to ban people working for the university. Cambridge does not have such a stipulation.

Cambridge stuck to the old method of requiring 50 nominations by Cambridge alumni with MA degrees or above or members of “Regent House”, the University’s administrative body. As at Oxford, those graduating with a bachelor’s degree get an automatic bump up to a Masters after a decent interval.

By closing registration to vote online on 2 May, long before the list of candidates was released at the end of the month, the Cambridge authorities will have succeeded in suppressing the number of external voters in favour of those now working at the university, who will be on site for voting in person on 12 and16 July. It will not be so easy for graduates to attend. I have yet to meet anyone who went to Cambridge who registered online in time.

So what about the candidates? Let us start with those who, in my opinion, are not sufficiently “people of distinction”, as Desert Island Discs has it, to merit consideration for such a high profile post.

Ali Azeem describes himself as “an unlikely candidate to study at Cambridge let alone be its chancellor”. Cambridge “saved me”. Now he is “advising CEOs”. Dr Ayham Ammora, another “C-suite leader”, also put his name forward for the Oxford Chancellorship. Oxford-based Dr Mark Mann is a “strategic innovation specialist”.

Why go for advisors when there are major CEOs on offer?

Then there are Cambridge academics grinding their axes. In his manifesto, the educationalist Tony Booth boasts “I am not famous, or rich and I do not have a wealth of establishment contacts”. The astrophysics Dr Wyn Evans wants to settle scores with an “administrative oligarchy” from the inside. He insists that the “best candidate for Chancellor is an internal one… If Cambridge needs a high-profile or celebrity chancellor to be noticed, we might as well give up and rebrand the University as a reality TV show”. Evans has the second highest number of backers at 112, mostly from within the university.

Unfortunately for the professors, the job description for the Chancellor is explicit that an insider, interfering with the running of the university, is not wanted. According to the rubric,“The person elected is the University’s formal and ceremonial head, and while they have no executive responsibilities, they will play a vital part in Cambridge’s public-facing activities, fundraising, and in providing advice to senior members of the University”.

That brings us to the two high-profile and admirable women who have put themselves forward: the campaigner, Gina Miller, and the comedian, Sandi Toksvig.

Cambridge has always been less political and more secular than its Thames Valley rival. Thirty-one British prime ministers attended Oxford, compared to just fourteen at Cambridge. Unlike Oxford, Cambridge’s chancellors have not been major political players. Miller and Toksvig are both founders of political parties - the True and Fair Party and The Women’s Equality Party respectively. Toksvig also stood for Oxford Chancellor in 2003.

Meanwhile, if the Oxford election is anything to go by, identity politics and DEI do not weigh heavily with the broader university electorates.

Chris Smith is both a former Labour Cabinet minister and an academic insider. Baron Smith of Finsbury has been Master of Pembroke College Cambridge since 2015 – with a sideline lecturing on the Romantic poets.

Cambridge needs a Chairman or woman of the Board, albeit with less power than any chair in business. On that basis there really should be only two serious candidates to consider: the Egyptian-American financier and economist, Mohamed El-Erian, and John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley, the former “Sun King” CEO of BP.

El-Erian was the CEO of PIMCO, an American Investment Fund, before becoming President of Queens College which he attended as an undergraduate. After five years in Cambridge, he is clearly the favourite of colleagues inside the university with the most declared supporters, 254, mainly local figures but also including Gordon Brown, Stephen Fry and Emily Maitlis. He has a doctorate from Oxford and held posts at Harvard and Wharton in the US. El-Erian is stepping down at Queens this summer and has reportedly told friends that he intends to relocate to live in the US.

John Browne has a life-long association with Cambridge. He went to school and university there, where he studied engineering. He is currently renovating a house in historic Cambridge, which he is leaving in his will to his old college, St Johns. He takes his title from an area of the City, where he had a home.

Some of Browne’s rivals are attacking him for coming from “Big Oil”. Browne was an early environmentalist who controversially took BP “beyond petroleum”. He left BP when his sexuality was weaponised against him. He subsequently wrote The Glass Closet: Why coming Out is Good for Business. His current business activities include chairing BeyondNetZero, a green investment fund. He also trained at Stanford University in California, the American tech bros’ favourite institution, lecturing there on the global environment.

Browne is a philanthropist, especially of the arts and education. In 2010, he produced a report on higher education funding for the government. He holds 17 honorary doctorates, mostly from British Universities. His select list of supporters includes Gillian Tett, Provost of King’s College, Mervyn King, Nicholas Serota, Anthony Gormley, Ed Stourton, Peter Hennessy, Nicholas Coleridge, Andrew Roberts and Peter Riddell. All of them are great achievers in their own sphere who have also done the public realm considerable service, just like John Browne. He already has the wealth and a peoples’ peerage, leaving him with nothing to gain from the Chancellorship other than doing it right.

In her drily witty preview of the chancellorship contest, the Cambridge Classics don and media star, Mary Beard, refuses to take sides or even name the candidates. She merely says: “I longed for a three line statement that said simply the person concerned would do the job as asked, as well as they could”.

I do not know who Mary Beard will support, if anyone. Having gone to the other place I have no vote myself but I can think of only one candidate who might live up fully to her hopes.