The Oxford Union won’t miss George Abaraonye

George Abaraonye is close to being ousted from his role as president-elect of the Oxford Union, following his gleeful celebration of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination last month.

A chaotic ballot of all Oxford Union members, including alumni, was held on Saturday on the motion: ‘Should George Abaraonye, president-elect, be removed as an officer of the society?’ On Tuesday morning, it was revealed that of the 1,746 votes cast, 1,228 were in favour of his removal. Abaraonye, a second-year PPE student at University College, is disputing the no-confidence vote on the grounds that those campaigning against him had ‘unsupervised access’ to the email account collecting proxy ballots. If he fails to overturn the result, he will no longer assume the presidency of the Oxford Union as he was scheduled to next term.

This controversy has been bubbling away for over a month now. Back in September, Abaraonye sent messages to a WhatsApp group chat expressing joy following the murder of Kirk, not long after videos of him being shot in the neck at a college campus event went viral. ‘Let’s fucking go’, read one of Abaraonye’s messages. Later, on his Instagram, he wrote: ‘Charlie Kirk got shot loool.’ These messages were all the more chilling, given that Abaraonye had actually met and even debated Kirk during his visit to Oxford in June.

Union members may have made the right call here, but if Abaraonye is forced to step down, a key question remains: how was someone, who clearly has zero interest in free speech and debate, voted into such a prestigious role in the first place?

In the run up to his election in June, a friend texted him saying: ‘If u hate [the union] then you should run for presidency!!!’ Abaraonye replied: ‘Real lol that’s what I did.’ Either he very successfully hid his contempt for the union and its values during his campaign, or his election says a lot about the qualities his student peers are looking for in a leader.

Either way, Abaraonye’s potential presidency does not bode well for the reputation of the two-century-old debating society. His comments have already landed it in some very hot water. Kirk’s friends at Turning Point USA have even threatened to ‘personally contact every American political speaker who has ever graced the union’s chamber and urge them never again to lend their name, time or reputation to that institution that has betrayed its founding ideals’, if Abaraonye does not resign.

You do not need to have been a fan of Charlie Kirk to think Abaraonye is unfit for the role. Of course he should be free to hold whatever contemptible opinions he wants. But after publicly celebrating the brutal assassination of someone merely exercising his free-speech rights, he shouldn’t be heading up a society founded on the principle of freedom of speech.

When Abaraonye debated Kirk, Kirk had been civil with him. Abaraonye had perhaps been less so with Kirk. He showed up in sweatpants and slippers, tetchily engaged with his opponent, before sauntering away from the exchange while yawning. That his fellow students could have watched this display and still voted for him as union president a month later is baffling.

The Oxford Union will survive this controversy, just as it has survived countless others. What will be harder to recover is its reputation as a training ground for bright young minds, rather than a platform for mean-spirited provocateurs.

Georgina Mumford is an editorial assistant at spiked.