Battle Of Ideas

The UK's premier festival of ideas, produced by the Academy of Ideas. Join us at this year's festival at Church House, London, on Sat 15 & Sun 16 October.From the cost-of-living crisis to the war in Ukraine, and from culture wars to institutions in meltdown, this has been a year of enormous challenges. The death of Queen Elizabeth II marks both the end of an era and of an important connection with the past. In just a few days in September, we had both a new prime minister and a new king. Yet our political leaders – only recently in some turmoil themselves – don’t seem up to the task, and many people feel like their voices aren’t being heard. We need to get beyond lurching from one emergency to another and start moving society forward. We must understand how we got here, with an eye to shaping a better future. The aim of the Battle of Ideas festival and events is to provide an opportunity to debate the issues in a full and frank manner, bringing together a wide variety of voices and, most importantly, creating a space for everyone to have their say. THE STATE WE’RE IN Rising inflation, falling living standards and eye-watering bills are front and centre of most people’s minds. And after the pandemic, the already-weak institutions of government seem incapable of rising to these challenges. If the failure to prepare for Covid was bad enough, the absence of any meaningful planning on a wide variety of issues – from energy to healthcare, housing to infrastructure – has truly been exposed. We seem to find ourselves in a state of permanent crises – from not being able to get a GP appointment to civil servants revolting against their ministers. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown into question our previously held assumptions about international relations and shaking up the world order. There is a general feeling of instability, with uprisings in Iran – where women are burning their head scarves in protest against the morality police – and shock election results in both Italy and Sweden. When the Cold War ended, we were told we were at the End of History, that there was no more need for big ideas. There was no alternative to the world envisaged by globalist thinkers: a free market, managed by technocratic experts moving the whole world towards some form of liberal democracy. Recent events have challenged such complacency.