Obiter-friend Michael Mansfield QC is a candidate in an arcane election that is due to ‘hot up’ in the next fortnight. We speak of the ‘Election for the Office of Chancellor’ at the University of Cambridge, which takes place on 14 and 15 October.

Mansfield has been nominated as an ‘anti-establishment candidate’ to take on the choice of the university’s nominations committee, Lord Sainsbury.

And there is some strong feeling against Sainsbury outside the university hierarchy. ‘Is it too rude to call him a plutocrat?’ one of Mansfield’s nominators asked Obiter.

‘He has inherited wealth, and represents some of the capitalist focus that threatens the ideas on which a university is founded.

'We’d like to see someone who is prepared to question the establishment.’

At first glance, a no-brainer for the independent-minded alumni who comprise the bulk of the electorate. Except that he is one of three anti-Sainsbury candidates. The owner of a local convenience store, Abdul Arain, was first. Shy and retiring actor Brian Blessed (pictured) sec­ured a nomination after a Facebook campaign by alumni uninspired by the prospect of a Sains­bury coronation.

In this crowded race, the runners have adopted radically different tactics. It seems Sainsbury or a supporter has thrown money at the campaign, securing the advertised Google link associated with the search terms ‘chancellor’, ‘Cambridge’ and ‘election’.

Arain’s gone quiet, but Blessed will be greeting voters in Silver Street pub The Anchor on the Saturday.

And Mansfield? Like the others he’ll make a final appeal by speaking at the Cambridge Union Society in the last week - Obiter hopes he knows the standard for a USP is unusually high in this election.