Dictionary

student union politics en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (UK, idiomatic, uncountable) Political actions seen as being unprofessional or childish; resembling those of the students' union.
   • It really strikes me as student union politics. It's not a serious government concerned about the opportunities for young people in the future. 2025 June 1, John Healey, quotee, BBC News:
   • Momentum had stitched up the selection already to exclude good local candidates and now want to change the result because their candidate was not chosen. Local people won’t have it. It is crude – the worst kind of student union politics. 2019 November 6, Heather Stewart, quoting Lord Mann, “Labour accused of 'student union politics' in candidate row”, in The Guardian:
   • I am glad that, true to form, the Liberal Democrats have not risen above the student union politics that we expect from them. As long as “discouraging intellectual argument” can fit on the back of a “Focus” leaflet, that is fine. 2006 October 11, Stewart Jackson, “NHS Workforce and Service Development”, in parliamentary debates (House of Commons), column 329:
   • The rightwing Tory Philip Davies, the MP for Shipley, said the tactics of keeping the Conservative parliamentary party at Westminster to discuss the general election, and then staging a surprise unheralded vote on a future secret ballot for the Speaker, “smacked of the kind of student-union politics that has the fingerprints of the whips’ office all over it”. 2015 March 26, Patrick Wintour, quoting Philip Davies, “Tory backbench rebellion defeats Hague's attempt to unseat Speaker”, in The Guardian: