Rachel Johnson (Boris’ sister), editor of The Lady magazine took on glamour model, Katie Price otherwise known as Jordan, in an exciting debate at Cambridge University on Thursday evening. The motion was “This house believes the only limit to female success is female ambition” with Rachel arguing for this claim, and Katie opposing it.
On Rachel’s team there was Steve Moxon (author of The Woman Racket) and Liz Jones (Daily Mail columnist). On Katie’s team there was Charlotte Vere (founder of think tank, Women On) and an economics student from Cambridge University.
The debate took place with 600 students watching, other sources say 800 students; couldn’t they have just taken a simple attendance list so we could have got the correct numbers? Haha. Each team member was required to give a ten minute speech arguing their case. I hear Rachel argued extremely well and with humour too, to add to the lively evening. The ended result though was: Katie’s team with 497 votes, Rachel’s team with 39 votes and there were 51 abstentions.
I think it would have been difficult to argue that “the only limit to female success is ambition” particularly because one would have to take a somewhat anti feminist stance. Rachel attended one of the top all girls’ schools in the country, St Paul’s Girls’ School, and then went on to study at Oxford. She has had an extremely successful career as a journalist; having been a columnist for many well established newspapers and is now editor-in-chief of The Lady magazine, which she has completely made over to have a very happening new image. Her writing career also stretches to being an author where she has written several books including “Notting Hell”. This fun novel is about life in Notting Hill. I’m just reading about it on Amazon and I’m really tempted to purchase it! I think it might definitely be one of my next reads.
Anyways back to the debate! I wish I had been there to witness the evening. I would have been able to give an amazing run down commentary of what took place and who said what. Tried looking online for a video but have just found out that no pictures were allowed to be taken that evening which obviously means recording must have been banned as well. What a shame. This event is like a crazy dream one would awake from. Moreover the debate officially makes Cambridge University cool.
My opinion: I think we should all have ambitions, and success is defined differently for everyone. So whatever you want to do in life, go for it!