The race to be the next chancellor of Oxford University

Several British politicians have endorsed cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan to be the next chancellor of Oxford University after the incumbent Lord Patten stands down in February.

Formerly Pakistan's prime minister, Khan was removed from office by a contentious no-confidence vote in 2022. Since then, he has faced a series of what his supporters describe as politically motivated charges, including corruption and violations of Pakistan's Official Secrets Act. Those legal entanglements mean Khan is running for the "prestigious role" from his prison cell, noted Middle East Eye, but that hasn't stopped Tory peer Lord Daniel Hannan and independent MPs Shockat Adam and Adnan Hussain from backing him.

Khan faces competition from other candidates, including "stalwarts of British politics" Peter Mandelson and William Hague, the university's Pro Vice Chancellor Lady Elish Angiolini, and east London bartender Ryan Ahmad.

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Voting by a convocation

The position of Chancellor of the University of Oxford has existed since 1224. A "largely ceremonial" role, according to the BBC, past officeholders include figures such as Oliver Cromwell, the Duke of Wellington, and former prime minister Harold Macmillan. If Lady Elish were to win, "she would be the post's first woman" – conversely, if Hague wins, "he would be its 36th 'William'", said The Economist.

The forthcoming election features several notable firsts. One is that the incoming Chancellor will be elected to a term of 10 years, a departure from the previous convention that the post would be held for life. The second is that voting by "a convocation" of Oxford students, staff and graduates will take place online. Plans for a further change, which would have allowed the university's Election Committee to strike off candidates not considered "suitable", were cancelled after the move was criticised as anti-democratic.

Initial voting will take place in the week commencing 28 October, using the Alternative Vote system, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If the number of candidates is fewer than 10, there will be only one round of voting, and lower-ranking candidates will be eliminated until one candidate achieves 50% of the vote. If there are 10 or more candidates, a second round of voting will take place in November.

The frontrunners

A graduate of Oxford's Keble College, Khan studied politics, philosophy, and economics in the 1970s "while winning honours for the university's cricket team", said The Guardian.

Khan's Oxford connections and a CV that includes an eight-year tenure as chancellor of the University of Bradford may give him an edge in the election, despite having been in prison for more than a year.

"He is someone that has proved he stands up for justice, integrity and freedom,” Sayed Zulfiqar Bukhari, who was Khan's special assistant in government and is now his aide, told Middle East Eye. "These are the principles he got from Oxford and they are what the university stands for."

It would also send a message to the Pakistani government "that although the country has gone so far back it's put its most popular leader behind bars", from "the UN to Oxford University everyone can see he shouldn't be there".

Mandelson, who studied at St Catherine's College, told the university's student newspaper Cherwell, that the last Conservative government "gave universities and students a really hard time financially", with universities "denigrated by ministers". He promised to use his links with the new Labour government to advocate for Oxford and the university sector more broadly.

Lord Hague told The Telegraph he was "definitely standing and an application has gone in", and he is likely to be the main Tory candidate, after Theresa May, the former prime minister, "ruled herself out of the race".

Dominic Grieve, MP for Beaconsfield until 2019, and former Attorney General for England and Wales, is the latest to throw his hat into the ring. As a student at Oxford's Magdalen College, in the 1970s he "failed to get on to the Oxford Union's standing committee, and his presidency of the Conservative Association was secured by virtue of no one else standing", said The Times.