The poll suggests the problem is not with banning speakers as such, but with which speakers.
An interesting, make-you-look-twice headline, was reported in the Telegraph this week, informing that more than one in three British undergraduates believe Reform UK should be banned from speaking at university events.
The finding comes from a new Savanta poll for the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), based on a survey of 1,012 full-time undergraduates conducted in November 2025. HEPI has been asking similar questions since 2016, making it possible to chart the evolution of student attitudes towards free expression.
According to the poll, 35 percent of students think Reform should not be allowed to speak at higher education institutions. This is a record figure for HEPI, surpassing the levels of support previously recorded for banning the British National Party in 2016 (31 percent) and the English Defence League in 2022 (26 percent). Reform, unlike the BNP and EDL, is considered a mainstream party that led the national opinion polls for much of 2025, but that detail appears not to have softened student opinion.
Other parties fare considerably better. 16 percent of students believe Labour should be banned from campus events, while just 12 percent would extend the same treatment to the Conservatives. Support for banning the Greens and Liberal Democrats is lower still, at 7 percent and 6 percent respectively, suggesting that the problem is not with banning speakers as such, but with which speakers.
As the Telegraph notes, the figures sit rather awkwardly alongside students’ professed devotion to free speech. Nearly seven in ten (69 percent) say universities should “never limit free speech,” up from 60 percent in 2016. A growing majority also say academics should be free to research and teach whatever they want, provided, presumably, that nobody from Reform UK is invited to listen.
Nick Hillman, HEPI’s director and author of the Are students still ‘woke’? report, acknowledged the contradiction.
“We have been tracking students’ views on free speech issues for a decade. Today’s students are more definite in their views than their predecessors,” he said. “Confusingly, however, they offer stronger support for the principle of free speech while also being even keener to see specific barriers against free expression.
“I am shocked that more than one-in-three students support banning Reform UK from university campuses.”
The Telegraph also cited comments from Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, who blamed university leadership for what he described as a culture increasingly hostile to his party.
“These findings are appalling,” he said. “British universities abandoned being centres of genuine learning, rigorous debate and intellectual challenge long ago, instead opting to become echo chambers of far-Left indoctrination run by activist academics.
“University leaders bear responsibility for allowing this culture to fester in our institutions. The government must pull grant funding unless this is changed urgently.”
The poll follows the introduction of new free-speech duties for universities in England, requiring them to actively promote academic freedom and protect external speakers. On current evidence, students appear broadly supportive of this principle, in theory, at least just not, it seems, if they’re with Reform UK.
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