The government’s decision last week to suspend contact with the NUS was welcome and necessary. As our revelations today make clear, the student union’s failure to engage with concerns over antisemitism and anti-Israel extremism have led it to a deepening crisis.

The continued refusal of president-elect Shaima Dallali to explicitly support the IHRA definition of antisemitism means that, even on the NUS’s own terms, she may be ineligible to take office, according to sources within the Government.

Under the NUS constitution, she is obliged to support the definition. Not only does her past behaviour indicate otherwise, but she has refused since being elected to confirm her support. 

Asked by the JC if she supported IHRA, she was unable to bring herself to offer even the most mealy-mouthed acceptance of the internationally recognised definition of antisemitism. 

The key issue here is not the definition itself; it is that Ms Dallali’s behaviour undermines any claim she has to be a suitable leader of an organisation such as NUS.

To make all this worse, Civica, the company which acts as returning officer for the NUS, has declined the Government’s latest request to investigate.

A once great student institution is in danger of becoming irrelevant to all but the most extreme members. This calamitous decline is entirely of its own making.