“University politics are vicious,” Henry Kissinger once quipped, “precisely because the stakes are so small.”

On the latter point, the 35 student activists running for positions at the forthcoming NUS Annual Conference are out to prove old Kissinger wrong. But vicious, the NUS elections are most certainly turning out to be. The first saga to emerge from the student scrum centres on an argument between NUS presidential candidate Wes Streeting, and Kevin Atkinson, a man that Streeting alleges “is a leading figure” in the campaign of one of his rivals, Ciaran Norris.

Streeting, currently NUS Vice President for Education, proclaimed in his blog that “the dirty tricks and smears are now well underway.” That was in response to an article published in The National Student newspaper, under the headline “‘Dirty Games’ - NUS presidential election stitch-up”.

The National Student reported that Kevin Atkinson, a Manchester Metropolitan University officer, had accused the NUS top brass of “backroom deals” and “dirty games,” by allegedly stitching up a deal “that will see NUS president Gemma Tumelty’s ‘Organised Independents’ faction being handed the vice-president higher education position for Aaron Porter, in exchange for them not standing a candidate against Streeting for president.”

Tumelty had announced this earth-shattering political deal at a Labour Students Political Weekend in Grantham, Lincolnshire, the paper claimed.

Factions and back room deals in student politics? Surely not. (Well, surely not a surprise to anyone with any experience in NUS politics.) But the utterly curious thing is that at the time Tumelty allegedly revealed the deal, she appears to have been 120 miles away from the venue reported. Far from being in Grantham, she was at the NUS Disabled Students’ Committee in London, her presence presumably confirmed by the numerous people she made her presentation to. This was followed, Wes’s blog helpfully points out, by a trip to see The Sound of Music. He continues: “On [the following day] Sunday November 18th, Gemma was introducing her partner to her parents for the first time. If you’d like to corroborate this, then I suggest phoning the NUS press office for comment from Gemma’s Mum!” That’s okay Wes, we’ll take your word for it.

– No doubt the student politicians are hoping to emulate their predecessors in making the short leap from student union oblivion to national parliamentary success, like Jack Straw, Charles Clarke, or Lembit Opik. Or maybe not.

If Charles Kennedy was Chatshow Charlie, then Opik is swiftly turning out to be Light Entertainment Lembit, popping up on our screens more times than you can shake a glitzy showbiz stick at. This time it was in aid of Sport Relief on a celebrity version of The Apprentice. It wouldn’t have done much for his street cred down Westminster way, or indeed for the credibility in general of former student politicians (he sat on NUS’s National Executive Committee following a stint as Bristol’s student union president).

Following team leader number one's resignation 45 minutes in after ex-Sun chief Kelvin Mackenzie (in his usual diplomatic way) compared him to Hitler annexing Poland, Opik stepped into the breach. But the verdict on his leadership skills (he is hoping for his second presidency to be of the Liberal Democrats when the incumbent stands down) was far from overwhelming. The contestant who was ultimately fired, Hardeep-Singh-Kohli, offered a particularly scathing appraisal, calling Lembit “a welterweight politician from a c-list party”. Ouch.

On the other side of the board-room, Sir Alan sneered: “I don’t understand this Lembit fellow in the middle there – every time I ask him a question, he goes off into some kind of like party political broadcast.” It seems you can take the man out of politics …

– Meanwhile, you certainly can’t take the politics out of the nation’s student unions, with election fever certain to be sweeping through a campus near you. For those of you with political leanings, here’s a debrief.

LSE seem to have missed a century or so of female political emancipation, with The Beaver's front page hailing "Jobs for the boys” as it reported on the election of “an all male self-proclaimed ‘dream team’ of close friends as its new paid Sabbatical Officers.”

It was more of the same at Cambridge and Bristol, with re-elections for both presidents, and all four of the 07/08 sabbatical officers at Cambridge who stood for a second year also winning their campaigns. At Manchester, the student paper proclaimed“Hard Left Suffer Crushing Defeat” as Rob Pinfold, “the Labour pin-up boy, beat [incumbent] Tom Skinner in a fierce battle between the hard left and the ‘Incredible’ slate.” Disney and Pixar’s ‘The Incredibles’, that is.

– Following my report last month that the student press have surveyed us and found us to be body-obsessed, sex-mad, binge-drinking individuals, Student Roundup was hoping for a let-up in the current round of student bashing. But the student press themselves aren’t helping things. This time, it was the turn of two of the so-called “elite” universities. Bristol’s Epigram proclaimed on their front page that “60% of Bristol students take class A drugs,” while Cambridge’s Varsity reporters hit tabloid gold with the headline “Class A Cambridge”. The crux of the stories? Apparently students take drugs. Quite a lot. We await more positive news in the coming fortnight. In the meantime, one word comrades – solidarity.

If you know of a student story that you think should be featured in our news round-up, please contact Etan Smallman at etansmallman@gmail.com.

Times recommends

• Students face big rise in university fees
• Students to rate lecturers online
• Lord heads team to look at raising tuition fees