The joy of being a Third Year is that you get to be jaded about things. With few people around who know anything more of this place than what happened in the last two years, people can understandably get over-excited about controversies – they seem so thrillingly important at the time. But you eventually realise, just as it’s too late and you’re gone, that they are simply regular, mundane beats on the metronome of university life, extending relentlessly back into a murky 800 year past. Someone at CUCA will have done something terribly racist. A reviewer will have panned a much-loved ADC show, kicking off a savage debate that looks set to answer the age-old “critics vs actors” question once and for all.

And, as we have seen this week, the Union will have invited someone well-known and horrible to speak. Whether it be Julian Assange, Dominique Strauss-Kahn or Marine Le Pen, there’s somebody to get very annoyed about whatever the term.

Everybody sticks to the playbook each time – people protest about the decision, write articles about it, provide publicity for the Union who sit sheltered behind their "promoting free speech"-barricade. The day comes when the protesters provide dramatic shots for the student and (if they’re lucky) the national media. Nothing much controversial actually happens, but Union officials and protest leaders come out of it with the ability to answer a job interviewer’s “Name a time you’ve dealt with a controversial situation”.

I’m being facetious, yes. I detest Le Pen, and I am sympathetic to the point that bringing her in is tacit validation for her beliefs. But I can’t help thinking that getting angry about this misses the point. Because the Cambridge Union will always be like this. They may as well have their attention-seeking decisions written into their constitution. They’re a student society dedicated to maximising attendance and membership. They are also hobbled by the fact that we’re mostly only here for three years.

Union committee members will tell you that it’s not just a breeding ground for future Cabinet members. Of course not – that’s the Oxford Union. But full of wannabe politicians or not, the Union has an inherently political structure. It has elections for various positions, a de facto career ladder to climb in the timespan of a single degree, and at the top a position of power that lasts for only a single term. Of course this is going to give rise to presidents wanting to make a mark, however ethically dubious. And let’s not forget that only a tiny proportion of speaker invites are accepted, and that those who accept are disproportionately likely to be the kind of ne’er do wells who would benefit from the Union platform. 

The self-importance of Union types is a lazy stereotype, but we may as well accept that people interested in succeeding at debating and politics are going to like attention. And the Union is a neat distillation of every problem with professional politicians in this country – those who go from their PPE degree at Magdalen to being a SPAD and then an MP. They always wanted to do politics, even from school-age. And to me, that defeats the point of representative democracy. No one who wants to hold power from that age should ever be allowed to do so. Nasties like Le Pen have every right to speak, but I truly wish they weren’t aided by ambitious 19 year olds in dinner jackets.