The CUSU elections committee has issued a formal warning to three NUS delegate candidates after one of them violated the election rule which states that 'campaigners may not campaign for multiple candidates at the same time.'

The ruling came after CUSU received a complaint that one of the candidates, Keelan Kellegher, was simultaneously distributing campaign materials for himself, Khaled Labidi, and Thais Warren, and all three candidates received a warning as a result of this.

The three candidates share a similar platform, with each of their manifestos emblazoned with the same “Vote Marxist” logo. Their manifestos also share similar policy proposals and phrasing, with Kellegher’s arguing “for a Marxist NUS,” Labidi advocating to “transform the NUS into a fighting socialist union,” and Warren calling “for a socialist NUS.”

The three candidates are each running for one of the five available delegate positions to participate in next year’s NUS conference, which will take place in Glasgow in April. The five delegates, along with CUSU President Evie Aspinall, will form part of the group that elects the NUS’s national committee and votes on its national policies. The delegation must be gender-balanced, meaning at least two of the elected delegates must identify as female.

Kellegher told Varsity that he accepted the ruling and admitted that he had indeed violated the rule. However, he added “in my opinion, this rule should absolutely be changed”, arguing that the rule “depoliticises the election” by preventing candidates from running on shared political platforms.

“Instead, we are reduced to a collection of disparate individuals running on our own records and politics, which may or may not be similar.”

He said, “It is demonstrative of a broader problem, within our students’ union and NUS, whereby politics is not considered as important as individuals and their CVs”.

Labidi and Warren also told Varsity that they accepted the ruling but saw it as indicative of the depoliticisation of the campaign.

Labidi said that these rules make elections “about individuals rather than the politics we stand for” and Warren added that, in her view, they prevent the formation of wider platforms “with broader social and more relevant political appeal”, which “further alienates students from elections and student politics.”

Voting in the election, which was supposed to be open from 30 October, was postponed on Tuesday after it was discovered that many freshers were left off the electoral roll and thus unable to vote. Voting will reopen at 4pm today, Thursday 1 November, and close at 11pm 4 November.