[3] A political row broke out after Labour MP and then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (who later became Prime Minister) commented on the decision at a Trades Union Congress reception.
Brown accused the University of Oxford of elitism, saying that Spence's rejection was an "absolute scandal" and that he believed she had been discriminated against by "an old establishment interview system".
[4] Colin Lucas, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, said that Brown's remarks were "disappointing", and an unnamed Conservative spokesman reportedly told the BBC: "This is ignorant prejudice.
[8] In a House of Lords debate on higher education on 15 June 2000, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, a Liberal Democratic peer and then Chancellor of Oxford University, criticised Brown for his comments on student admissions, saying that "nearly every fact he used was false", and that Brown's speech on Spence had been a "little Blitzkrieg in being an act of sudden unprovoked aggression", but "The target was singularly ill-chosen."
[9] The Laura Spence affair recurred in the headlines in the UK throughout the summer of 2000 (both before[10] and after Brown's speech) and is arguably one of the major events that pushed "widening participation" in higher education into the political spotlight in the United Kingdom.
She also encouraged more British students to study in the US, citing the "broader, more balanced curriculum" of a liberal arts education and the availability of scholarships and need-based financial aid to assist with fees that may seem "astronomically prohibitive".