Members of Labour Club, the York Tories, the UoY Lib Dems, York UKIP, York Greens, PalSoc, York Liberty and York Union are joining forces to write a motion demanding YUSU leave the NUS.

York Vision understands the group wants to force a referendum as early as next week. They will propose the motion at the YUSU annual general meeting on Monday, and hope students will go to the polls before Friday.

A leaked provisional copy of the motion calls the NUS a "fundementally undemocratic" organisation that "focuses most of its energies on futile causes."

The students say the NUS "will never be representative" in its current format, and its "leadership is wildly out of step with the collective mood of students across the country."

It is not yet clear whether members from all eight political groups involved were also involved in drafting this version of the motion. Only individual Labour Club members endorse the motion, but York UKIP is officially backing it.

The largely unprecedented demands come amid mounting student anger at decisions made at the NUS national conference, which is ongoing in Brighton.

The conference has so far voted through a motion urging “restrictions” on YikYak during student elections. YUSU president Ben Leatham said he voted for the motion, though he admitted it was "vague and unclear."

"People were targeted" during the YUSU elections, Leatham said. "It was out and out harrassment and it was not acceptable."

The motion said the NUS should "open a dialog with Facebook, Twitter and YikYak to introduce restrictions on 'anonymous' or troll accounts during election periods."

This morning delegates applauded a speaker who suggested the NUS should not commemorate the Holocaust. “I am against the NUS ignoring and forgetting other mass genocides and prioritising others,” the student, from Chester University, said.

Southampton University voted to leave the NUS in 2002, and voted not to join it again in both 2010 and 2012.