The Union’s final debate of term on Thursday night saw MPs clash over New Labour’s record in government. Speaking on the motion ‘this house believes New Labour ruined Britain’, Conservative MPs Andrew Mitchell and John Redwood, alongside Peter Hitchens, were up against Labour’s Andy Burnham and Hazel Blears.

Andrew Mitchell, Conservative International Development Secretary until last year, began by congratulating the Cambridge Union for its response to the sexism directed at a Cambridge debater at the Glasgow University Union, but quipped that in the Union’s termcard it looked like "the only person who has visited the union with a skirt below their knee was the Archbishop of Canterbury".

Mitchell resigned as government chief whip last October after the ‘plebgate’ scandal saw him accused of throwing verbal abuse at police officers on duty outside Downing Street.  Referencing the allegations, Mitchell said, “police reform” was “an area which probably needs a bit more attention at the moment", to laughter from students.

He told the audience that “any good which New Labour did was obliterated” by mistakes on defence and the economy, claiming that as a result "people on benefits could earn more than hard working families next door”.

Labour MP Andy Burnham, who held multiple positions in the Gordon Brown government, responded by telling students New Labour had “completely transformed” the country when it came to race relations, the position of LGBT people and also working people who had been “demonised by parts of the press and the Conservative party”.

Before the last government "Britain was a divided place where the authorities held all the power", but "Britain in 2010 was a better place than in my youth" he said, suggesting as proof the number of New Labour policies which had been accepted by the Tories in their 2010 election manifesto.

Conservative commentator and author Peter Hitchens described the New Labour project as “a new form of radical leftism”, responsible for “turning us into serfs” and “assaulting our constitution and civil liberties”. Hitchens argued New Labour had resulted in the domination of British politics of “government by careerist ... a professional political class which cares mainly for itself”.

But the journalist, a former member of both major political parties, did not spare the Conservatives his ire, saying that he had left both Labour and the Tories “in disgust” and that New Labour had ruined the country “ably assisted by the Conservatives”.

Hitchens reserved his strongest criticism for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “I think the Iraq War was one of the most unforgivable ... acts ever taken by a British government”, he told students. Asked by Andy Burnham whether he would rather have Saddam Hussein still in power in Iraq today, Hitchens responded: “absolutely, yes”.

Labour MP Hazel Blears clashed with Conservative John Redwood over the last government’s economic record, with Blears saying it was “simply a lie” to say public spending had bankrupt the country. The former local government secretary told students that government spending as a percentage of GDP had actually risen only 1.2 per cent during Labour’s time in office, and argued that New Labour “laid the foundations for a better future for the vast majority of people in the country".

Redwood claimed that as well as giving “massive powers” away to the European Union, New Labour had “shattered the economy” over thirteen years in government. The former Welsh Secretary told students that Labour’s policy of devolution had “tore the country apart”, the result being that “we weren’t allowed to be English any more”.

Outgoing Union President Ben Kentish spoke for Labour’s defence, arguing that while “New Labour did not get everything right” on civil liberties and bank regulation, “they also got a hell of a lot right”. Kentish told students that New Labour investment in health and education and efforts to expand equality had rebuilt the country, after Margaret Thatcher’s years in power had created “a social underclass abandoned by its government”.