I don’t think anyone is under any illusion as to where Jones’ political allegiances lie; the left-wing writer, who has an impressive cult-following of 277,000 loyal fans on Twitter, was as clear in person as he is in 140 characters about his beliefs in his talk to the Cambridge Universities Labour Club earlier this week. With the socialist revolution still pending, however, Jones is spending the general election campaign rallying the troops to Labour. But why, indeed, has he come to speak in Cambridge? Jones has a history of vocal criticism of what he regards as elitism in Britain’s top two universities; in 2011 he wrote a piece for LabourList entitled ‘Abolish Oxbridge’. 

When pressed, however, he gives me a slightly tempered alternative to the abandoning the universities. He proposes allocating a “certain amount of places automatically for the brightest kids from working class backgrounds”, telling me that many kids from these backgrounds are discouraged from applying because Oxbridge is a “completely alien world to them”.

“It’s got the trappings of a certain type of elitism,” Jones continues. “It feels very, very off-putting.” Jones admits media portrayals such as VICE’s recent ‘investigative’ documentary interviewing drunk ‘toffs’ at the annual Oxbridge boat race make him feel “sick”.

“It’s unfortunate that they basically tracked down intentionally the most obnoxious sounding people”, he observes, because it makes it seem like those universities are “full of these types of people”.

But his outlook isn’t entirely pessimistic. “Cambridge is actually slightly better than Oxford in terms of dealing with some of the trappings,” he tells me. A graduate of University College, Oxford, he laments his alma mater’s insistence on wearing a full suit and gown – “and the right colour shoes,” he adds – to sit exams, something not expected of Cambridge students.

Yet Cambridge is still undeniably a place where these kinds of “trappings” flourish. So what does he think of the fact that his employer, The Guardian, is sponsoring the white tie Peterhouse May Ball? He is taken aback. “Oh. I didn’t realise that.”

How does he respond to this controversial move from a left-wing paper? He pauses. “The Guardian sponsors all sorts of random stuff,” he says hesitantly. “It’s certainly not my department. I have no editorial control. Would I personally sponsor a white tie ball? No. But if that’s what The Guardian wants to do, that’s their money, I guess.”

Jones is a forthright advocate for the Labour Party, and why students in particular should vote for them: for him, they are the only party that will fight for the working class and place the issue of social mobility firmly back on the agenda.

He does not support the Party’s every move, however, and was less enthusiastic about Labour’s foreign policy record during his CULC talk. Though it is true that foreign policy remains less of an issue for the electorate when deciding who to vote for – it features below the economy, immigration and the NHS in surveys of important electoral issues – it seems to me the issue has been unfairly marginalised from the election coverage. Despite relative disengagement with foreign policy among the public, the toxic legacy left by the Iraq campaign on the Party still causes great disaffection among many left-leaning voters. So is Miliband taking the Party in the right direction?

“It is welcome that he broke with the New Labour approach,” Jones tells me. “He made it clear during his leadership campaign and since that the Iraq War was a calamity.”

He is also encouraged by Miliband’s “critical” stance on what he calls “the Israeli state’s continued occupation of the Palestinian people and the attack on their human rights”. 

But Jones still has his criticisms. “Miliband wasn’t critical in the way I would have been about the war in Libya,” he concedes, a conflict that has resulted in “a country that is frankly disintegrating”. He would also like to see a tougher approach from Labour towards dictatorships, an area again where Blair’s record is mixed. He is thus condemns Western support of absolute monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, a policy he argues perpetuates terrorism.

“Pressure needs to be put to bear on Labour to shift on that,” he says, arguing he has not seen this kind of approach from the opposition since 2010. He argues for “a totally different Western policy,” one based “on democracy and on human rights” rather than war and invasions.

Jones persuasively protested during his talk that he would prefer to argue to force a Labour government to make good its pledges on social reform than fight with a Tory one to stop policies such as the Bedroom Tax which, he argues, further marginalise the most deprived. But while his support for Labour on domestic issues is clear and passionate, his mixed attitudes towards Western foreign policy in general seems to leave him doubtful that the next Labour government will change the status quo that Blair’s government worked to support, with a greater focus on promoting human rights than engaging in bilateral foreign intervention. In this regard, Labour does not have a leg to stand on, especially in its criticism of Russia.

“Russia has undermined international norms, but that is what the West did in Iraq,” he tells me. “Their moral high ground has been completely eroded.” But the problems require more than foreign policy change.

“The problem with international law is that it is disregarded at a whim by large powers [when] inconvenient.”

From this perspective, it will require more work than one government could muster to genuinely promote the tenants of democracy and human rights. Particularly when that government is drawn from the same Party that led Britain into Iraq.