Eight years later they have graduated to positions of power and influence and now, for one of them, to scandal. There was Stephen Twigg, the former president of the National Union of Students, cheered by the nation on election night when he ousted Michael Portillo. Lorna Fitzsimons, who that year became an NUS executive officer and later succeeded Twigg as NUS president, and is now MP for Rochdale. Simon Buckby, now a journalist for the Financial Times, who was chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students.