Inside the academy there is a cultural perspective that it should run itself, in the sense that "business as usual" should be done with no one's hands obviously on the levers. This theory reaches its high point in the "self-government" of Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In this article, the author explores the question, "who runs our universities?", and explains that it is the duty of university governance, leadership and management to analyse, adjudicate and steer through the overheated battle between those inside and those outside UK universities about who is really in charge.