Beating Isis and toppling the government were among the satirical promises that won a university election for one Durham undergraduate, who mocked the “irrelevant grandstanding” of student union leaders.
Tom Harwood, 20, used his campaign for election to the National Union of Students to lampoon the body, claiming that its leaders use it as a soapbox for their left-wing views on global politics.
Mr Harwood, who ran the student wing of the Vote Leave campaign, won a landslide victory this month in an election that drew a 300 per cent increase in turnout among students at Durham. He also vowed to build a 217ft statute of Malia Bouattia, the NUS president.
He described the NUS as a “redundant organisation that has been hijacked by people with pretty extreme politics that aren’t representative of students as a whole”.
An NUS spokeswoman said: “NUS is a diverse organisation made up of a range of interesting people and we look forward to Tom’s contributions.”