Oliver Mosley
Head of Press, Easter 2014
Mobile: +44 798 880 7962
Email: pressofficer@cus.org
Last night, the Cambridge Union Society welcomed Katie Hopkins in a Q and A style event that allowed members of the Union the chance to engage and challenge her notorious views. All in all, the evening was certainly a controversial one and covered a wide range of topics, and allowed Hopkins the chance to go beyond what she described as “a 2 minute time slot… where you have to smash your point of view through” on television sofas. Considering her admission that, in the end, she just likes chatting to people and hates the idea that someone’s’ views would be drowned out, it is fair to say that she welcomed and encouraged the debate and criticism from the crowd.
Interviewer Katherine Reggler (1 st year historian, St John’s) got stuck in at the start with Hopkins’ views on
Europe, as a former candidate for the ‘We Demand a Referendum Party’, which revealed Hopkins’ close alignment with Conservative Party policy, citing the promised referendum in 2017 as the reason for stepping down as a candidate. On a broader note, Reggler delved into Hopkins as a person, leading to the admission that Hopkins had “never changed her mind on anything” of importance, and that “she won’t apologies for anything.” Hopkins pointed out that her life is not as linear as the average Cambridge student, and whilst she wouldn’t advise take her path, Hopkins’ noticed that the light of the end of the tunnel has made her career worth it. She did note, however, that she “has made herself look like a complete tit on a number of occasions”, but that she didn’t regret it.
An issue which cropped up repeatedly over the course of the evening was Hopkins’ views on women, prompted by her admissions that she would never put women in front line combat positions. Never one to shy away from an increasingly hostile crowd, she followed up with the claim that women are “naturally emotional creatures… governed by emotion” and they thus do not belong in a combat environment.
Concluding that she would never want to be anywhere “just for being a woman”, an angry student stood up and asked “Are you aware that what you just said is incredibly sexist?” to much applause. Undeterred,
Hopkins argued that the pursuit of equality cannot come on a tilted scale, and that women have to be just as competitive as men, referencing her incredulity as a small business owner at the notion of ‘maternity leave’.
After a fiery exchange, Reggler turned the conversation to more personal matters, asking about Hopkins’ earlier career in the army, and the effect that the media has had on her family. Hopkins’ mentioned that her leaving the army was not out of choice, and that after initially disguising her mild form of epilepsy from Army doctors, upon discovery the army concluded that it wasn’t sensible “having an epileptic with an SM58”. As for her family, Hopkins’ repeatedly referenced her belief in general Christian values that underpin British society, one of which being the importance of family. She admitted to running a strict household, and mentioned that the impact on her family was particularly bad for her parents (who we were informed believed the Daily Mail as “the gospel truth”, which proved problematic when it ran a story accusing Hopkins of being
“the biggest bitch in Britain”). However, in a theme that repeatedly came up that evening, Hopkins noted that if you don’t want to experience that kind of negativity, “don’t put yourself out there” in that way. She
THE CAMBRIDGE UNION SOCIETY, 9A Bridge Street, Cambridge, CB2 1UB, United Kingdom
Registered Charity, No. 1136030

Oliver Mosley
Head of Press, Easter 2014
Mobile: +44 798 880 7962
Email: pressofficer@cus.org
concluded with the controversial position that she didn’t believe the Police should investigate ‘Twitter abuse’, arguing that people should just accept the existence of ‘internet trolls’ and move on with their lives.
As expected, the Q and A from the floor started off with the much discussed arguments surrounding
Hopkins’ admission that she judges children in the playground based on their names. When accused of not allowing her children a fair chance in life by limiting their social interaction in this way, she argued that her “I don't want my children to have the opportunity to be equal with little shits”. Later on, this would lead to a question from the President of the Union expressing his confusion that, considering that the colour of someone’s skin statistically denotes their chances in life as Hopkins argues that names also do, how could she logically claim she would not discriminate her children’s interaction on ground of race, whilst simultaneously discriminating it on the grounds of other children’s’ names? Hopkins responded that she was not a racist in any way, and her position on a child’s names was based on past memories of names being given to children that she did not like. At one point, Hopkins would conclude with the statement “I am a massive snob” but argued that controlling the environment your children play in is a natural parental instinct.
The Q and A rapidly meandered through issues for Hopkins’ to respond to. She noted that she agreed with the squeezing of the benefit system, arguing that individuals must be made to ‘sign on’ daily to receive benefits to match the life of a working person. She also argued, in response to criticism about her need for a referendum on Europe but not on other institutions such as the United Nations, that she simply “had a feeling” about Europe but didn’t agree with repeated referendums as a good method of governance. When asked about Gary Barlow’s recent alleged tax avoidance, she mentioned that whilst evasion is rightly illegal, avoidance is simply prudent business strategy, also mentioning that 1 in 4 calls to the HMRC tax helpline in
2012 went unanswered, suggesting that the burden is on HMRC to improve their taxation systems. Finally, on the issue of schooling, her argument that university standards should not be measured by state school admissions, and that any attempt to skew the system in favor of state educated teenagers would compromise standards. Many students, at this point, took the opportunity to firmly reprimand her for the belief that, in their words, “leveling the playing field” would lower standards, and argued that admissions policy allows for the tapping of yet un-tapped potential. Hopkins’ suggestion that “preserving an elite system is a fantastic thing”, although it is fair to note that whilst she was presumably describing education based elitism rather than class based elitism, this may have been lost in translation to the students assembled.
Undoubtedly, the issue of feminism was the most frequent issue to come up that evening. Although describing herself as a feminist, she argued that campaigns like Everyday Sexism amount to “going into a cave and shouting”, allowing yourself to hear your echo and feel better for having shouted, but achieving nothing substantive. When pressed by students, she admitted that she had no problem with misogynist abuse in the street, even from men who verbally threaten rape in the street, which drew an angry reaction from the assembled students. “In her world,” she argued you have to “get up and move on”, repeating her mantra in life that “if you don’t like it, don’t put yourself out there”. She concluded on the issue of Page 3 that “a pair of tits in the paper” is unlikely to undermine the progress of female equality and that she doesn’t mind it at all, although conceding that that wasn’t the modern view.
Head of Press, Easter 2014
THE CAMBRIDGE UNION SOCIETY, 9A Bridge Street, Cambridge, CB2 1UB, United Kingdom
Registered Charity, No. 1136030