Although this week’s debate failed to attract as large a crush of students as showed up last week to feast their eyes on the inglorious bastards from Made in Chelsea, there was nevertheless a sizeable crowd at the Union on Thursday. Their enthusiasm wasn’t long in being rewarded. Moments after the sloppy warm-up debate had drawn to a merciful conclusion, there took the stage a group of people whose intelligent arguments, well articulated, near dazzled their audience.

Baroness O’Neill, former president of the British Academy, opened for the proposition by drawing a distinction between the rational desire for freedom, and the instinctual hatred of regulation, quoting Mill, Orwell and Milton and urging people to notice that there is a difference between a democratic press, that helps readers get the information they need, and a free press, that can give readers the information they want. The weird case that Tabatha Leggett’s made for the opposition (“because it is so rare to have a newspaper in a University as stuck-up as Cambridge that can break headlines like ‘Turd-class honours’ I urge you to vote for the opposition”) was entertaining, if not enlightening (she is co-editor of The Tab), and made Charlotte Harris’ speech seem comparatively brilliant.

Guy Stagg did more to make a case for the opposition, saying that editors never know the impact of a story until it is out, so we can either encourage them to be brave or cautious – the risk of the second being that we lose our freedom. He was followed by Professor Brian Cathcart, who closed for the proposition by arguing so earnestly that it was impossible for an audience to disagree. “I believe all I said with every fibre of my being,” he said after the debate. Max Clifford, with his familiar white hair and dark eyebrows, made the final case for the opposition, urging people to remember that although a free press might not be perfect, “there’re so many things you don’t know, that you should know, and the press can give you those things.”