The league heats up

As the penultimate half term of the academic year draws to a close, all eyes turn to the so-called "Top Four"; the members who have the largest numbers of league points and are therefore are on course to take on one another in the annual Grand Final debate. As it stands, the Final will make for a very interesting clash as the Top Four currently consists of two of our Year 7 squad and two elder debating veterans. Ben Wallace, Year 8, and Willem Evans, Year 10, are neck-and-neck in the contest for first place, on 18 and 16 points respectively, significantly ahead of their nearest rival, Levi Croom. Levi's performance in the monarchy debate yesterday earned him a welcome four points, pushing his already impressive total to 12 and propelling him from fifth to third place. James Green and Milo Dibdin share fourth place, on nine points a piece. James has another debate lined up, however, so he is almost certain to pull ahead of Milo and, feasibly, even put himself onto an equal footing with Levi. It is possible that the entire dynamic of the Top Four may change before the Final, with other debaters making gains at the expense of the third and fourth placers. Debaters who will be speaking after the break must do their best to maintain hopes of a place in the Grand Final.

Here is a graph showing the progress of debaters over the year until this week. Note that the graph does not take into account the rules of the league, which state that when debaters are on the same number of points, the percentage of the debates they have won, rather than participated in or received the judges' bonus for, is taken into account. The full league data can be found at the Society website.

Mini-election results in left-wing landslide...but parliament is still hung

Who should win tomorrow’s general election?

Well done to the four politicians-in-the-making who did each of their adopted parties credit in our perennial favourite, the party-political panel debate, which was held at the Union Society today in honour of tomorrow’s crucial general election.

An interesting result saw Labour and the Greens share the audience’s support, whereas the Lib Dem and Tory parties languished on one vote a piece. This didn’t reflect the high standard of articulation and argument demonstrated by all four participants today; it truly was a closely-contested battle.

Willem seemed to drift into, at best, misunderstanding and, at worse, deception, when outlining Labour policies. Fortunately, as chairs, James and I were able to challenge his supposed commitments to scrapping tuition fees and re-opening closed Post Offices. Sahan’s struggle was with public sector pay, Thomas’s with taxation and David’s with education.

Overall, though, these four gentlemen responded excellently to questions on health, education, taxes, the environment, and more; and in a few years time, I’ve no doubt they’ll each make excellent spokespersons for any party on the BBC’s Question Time.

Yesterday: Well done to Sahan, Sam and Willem, who saved the day by stepping in at the last possible minute to speak on behalf of the Labour Party at a sixth form debate on Tuesday. They lost out on a win by just two votes, but did the Union Society a fabulous service nonetheless.