Academy of Ideas

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

The past 20 years have seen astonishing advances in science, technology and medicine. Building upon the completion of the Human Genome Project at the turn of the century, scientists have developed ever more powerful ways to sequence and study DNA, enabling us to better understand genetic diseases and develop pioneering treatments. Now, AI tools such as the AlphaFold program developed by Google DeepMind are also providing unprecedented understanding of the human proteome – the complete set of proteins made from instructions in our DNA.

As well as acquiring powerful ways to study DNA, we have also acquired powerful ways to change it. CRISPR genome editing, which enables us to make precise changes to the DNA of humans and other organisms, is now widely used in laboratories across the world and has been used in life-saving treatments for devastating diseases. Meanwhile, stem-cell research has advanced to the point where it is now possible to create structures resembling early human embryos entirely from stem cells, instead of having to begin by fertilising an egg cell with a sperm cell. There is even speculation about one day being able to bypass pregnancy altogether.

Some are thrilled about the new possibilities opened up by these developments, while others worry about human life being mechanised in ways that seem distasteful. Genetics, genomics, neuroscience and psychology can be (mis)used to seek to reduce human beings to brain circuits and physiological mechanisms, which can then be managed via modification, drugs or nudge-based policy. Who gets to decide what counts as progress, and who gets a say in how science is governed?

What happens when the (in)famous Silicon Valley dictum ‘Move fast and break things’ meets biology? What can be learned from incidents such as the He Jiankui scandal of 2018, in which a Chinese scientist who worked on human embryos in secret breached scientific and ethical standards, resulting in the birth of three children with edited genomes? How can oversight and rules be imposed, when the science is so complex and fast-moving, and when the world is made up of diverse (and in some cases warring) nation states?

Over the past two decades, Sandy Starr of the Progress Educational Trust and Dr Stuart Derbyshire of the National University of Singapore have been involved in numerous national and international deliberations on science, ethics, policy and law in these areas. At this breakfast banter, they will compare their experiences, exchange insights and invite questions.

DISCUSSANTS

Sandy Starr

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

TERF Island is the story of the brave and determined women who led the charge against demands that undermined their rights and jeopardised the physical and mental health of children. They dragged shadowy campaigns into the daylight, exposing the harm that would result – and the harm that had already been done. They forced policy change, set legal precedents and transformed public opinion.

Fiona McAnena has been right there campaigning alongside them. Her unique insight and personal involvement bring to life the intimate human stories behind the movement to Keep Britain Terfy. This extraordinary, inspiring, furious and sometimes funny account shows how a few women, acting on their convictions, turned back a tide which threatened to sweep away the rights their foremothers fought for.

McAnena’s book offers rare insight into the strategy, setbacks, and successes of years of grassroots activism and reveals the key figures behind the resistance to gender ideology. It also critically examines the claims of transgender ideology and explores the impact of gender identity policies on law, language, sport, prisons and children’s health, arguing why sex matters in public life.

Should trans rights be prioritised over childhood and the protection of women? How have trans lobbyists unpicked past medical and scientific standards – undermining solid trials and ethical approval? Is there a way to move forward, to safeguard women’s sports and maintain vigorous scientific standards? What enabled the UK to be ‘TERF Island’ when so many other jurisdictions have fallen to trans ideology?

SPEAKERS

Fiona McAnena

Connie Shaw

CHAIR

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Plato wrote The Republic around 375 BC, making it 2,400 years old. Yet it has continued to reverberate throughout the entire subsequent history of Western philosophy. Any serious philosopher since has had to reference their ideas to the framework Plato originally set down in ancient Greece.

The Republic is the best known of Plato’s Socratic dialogues. In one sense, it can be thought of as a diatribe against Athenian democracy. It was this democracy that Plato blamed for the death of his friend and mentor Socrates. But it was also this same city, Athens, that allowed Plato to prosper.

What does Plato’s philosophy still have to say to us about the questions we face today? Have we yet managed to find our way out of Plato’s ‘cave’ or are we still flailing about in ignorance in the dark?

SPEAKERS

David Perks

CHAIR

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, Hinge, Feeld – whatever your dating preference, there’s an app for it. Gone are the days of hitting the town in the hopes of catching someone’s eye in a busy bar. People moan about their problems, and some want to leave digital dating behind, but for today’s generation, the first spark often happens over a keypad.

Should we be worried about the prevalence of online dating? For some, the game-like approach to virtual romance, with love thwarted or given a chance with a swipe of the thumb, is degrading. Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani recently called for a ban on dating apps, as they ‘encourage the worst possible behaviour towards other people’. Others argue that the addictive nature of online dating, where multiple partners can be found at the touch of a button, has fed the addictive and attention-deficit qualities of an already fidgety generation. When love is always just a click away, why would anyone stick with just one partner?

On the other hand, without online dating many argue that finding love would be near impossible. Pub closures, lockdown-hangover regulation on social spaces and less intergenerational mixing means it can be hard out there to meet someone the old-fashioned way. Many argue that panics about online dating foget that the app is just a tool to facilitate what people continue to do – meet up in person and carry on as normal. Building a profile online is no different to a lonely-hearts advert in the paper, or wearing your best dress and standing by the bar.

Is love only worthwhile if it’s found in the flesh? Is the boom in hook-up apps merely the straight world catching up with what gays have been enjoying for some time? Should we loosen up about online dating? Or is there something lost when it comes to romance if the story we tell our kids of how we first met starts with a ‘swipe right’?

SPEAKERS

Ella Dorn

Ralph Leonard

CHAIR

The Academy of Ideas team of Alastair Donald, Geoff Kidder and Rob Lyons are joined by Sebastian Moore from the Take Me Home podcast to discuss why England lost that semi-final, what they thought about the performances of England and Scotland in the tournament, why 64 teams isn't as mad as it sounds, and who they think between Argentina and Spain will walk away with the trophy on Sunday.

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

After Labour’s election last year, the new defence secretary, John Healey, wrote a memo to Cabinet colleagues in relation to the scandalous Afghan data leak and the subsequent cover-up of relocations. Healey stressed the need to ‘maintain control of the narrative’, particularly in the wake of that summer’s riots. The riots themselves were arguably fuelled by suppression of information about the Southport murderer, in an attempt to contain public reactions.

The desire to control the narrative by curtailing public information has implications for the media’s idealised role of telling ‘truth to power’.  Beyond super-injunctions, governments seem preoccupied with muting the widespread availability of counter-narratives on social media. Countries across Europe are introducing measures such as the UK’s Online Safety Act or the EU’s Digital Services Act, which are partly designed to deal with threats to the establishment narrative via suppressing what has been dubbed ‘misinformation’.  This mirrors governments’ pressure on online and offline media during the Lockdown period to suppress any challenges to official, ‘consensus’ health advice.

However, the media stands accused of having taken it upon itself to have become more partisan in its reporting of our rapidly changing political landscape – championing a single, biased point of view, with little insight or empathy into what is driving new, popular concerns.

Two recent events in America – the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the brutal stabbing of a young Ukrainian woman, Iryna Zarutska on the subway – have catalysed this sense that the mainstream media is more concerned with shaping narratives rather than reporting on them. In the case of Kirk, reaction from the mainstream media seemed to focus less on the appalling nature of the political violence or why he was so popular with millions of young people, than in communicating that Kirk was a ‘MAGA troll’.  With Zarutska, whose murder by a black repeat felon was captured on CCTV, the media ignored the story for 18 days, despite its dominance on social media. Eventually, the New York Times reported only how the case had ‘ignited a firestorm on the right’, a culture-war framing echoed widely in the mainstream.

In the UK, media narrative-shaping is a familiar accusation on everything from the coverage of the unexpectedly large ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march to the Southport riots. Populist anger has for some time focused on the supposed bias, arrogance and aloof nature of what is dismissed as the ‘MSM’. There is fury at the way protests and movements are often described as ‘far’, ‘hard’, ‘extreme’ or ‘ultra’ right – with media outlets almost running out of adjectives to communicate the idea that these movements are thinly disguised racists. No wonder journalists have been shunned or abused when they turn up to report on events. Trust is declining.

All this touches on an older debate: does the media shape or reflect reality? Anti-populist commentators regularly accuse media outlets of amplifying populist talking points, contributing to moral panics about the small boats or ‘whipping up’ hate about asylum hotels. Nigel Farage’s frequent appearances on BBC Question Time are seen as a key explanation for Reform’s credibility, indeed for the size of the 2016 Brexit vote.

Has the role of the media changed, or have different outlets always be partisan? What drives governments to control the narrative for public consumption? Is mainstream media ill-equipped to deal with the pace of political change or has it abandoned even the ideal of impartiality? Can anyone, new or old media, credibly claim to merely report events rather than try to shape them?

SPEAKERS

Andrew Gold

Dr Pamela Paresky

Tom Slater

Baroness Stowell

CHAIR

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

In February 2025, the then deputy prime minister and communities secretary, Angela Rayner, established an independent government working group, chaired by former Conservative MP and Attorney General Dominic Grieve KC, to advise on a definition of ‘anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia’. The demand for such a definition comes after an official definition of anti-Semitism was adopted in 2016. Critics have argued since that, for the sake of fairness, something similar must be done for Muslims.

The formation of this group, as well as its objectives, has incurred criticism from many quarters and sparked intense public debate. Questions have been raised over the transparency of the group’s proceedings, the independence of its members, the marginalisation of certain Muslim communities’ voices and the chilling effect that such a definition could have on free speech. The fear of being accused of Islamophobia is, some have argued, part of the reason for the lack of action on grooming gangs.

Critics argue that a non-statutory definition of Islamophobia will inevitably be highly subjective and perception-based in its application by public bodies. This will limit freedom of speech by confusing criticism of the religion of Islam with prejudice against Muslim individuals, something which is already addressed through existing legislation.

The freedom to interrogate and ridicule the tenets of all faiths is fundamental in a modern society and restricting this freedom for one faith risks quelling not only criticism of that religion from non-believers, but also criticism of it from within, amongst fellow believers who disagree over interpretations of texts and controversial practices, such as face coverings.

This is why the working group’s approach has led to criticism from Muslim groups, some of whom also make the point that through attempting to define what Islamophobia is, the government is neglecting the importance of addressing actual cases of anti-Muslim hate crimes. They also fear that at a time when many see the UK as a state that is on the road towards the application of ‘two-tier’ justice, singling out Islam for special protection and threatening its critics with speech-restricting measures, such as non-crime hate incidents, will only increase tensions.

This Free Speech Union discussion will give voice to leading opponents of defining Islamophobia who all have their unique and legitimate concerns over the wider and deeper consequences of this policy. The panel features voices from within Parliament, the Muslim community, the legal profession and campaigners.

SPEAKERS

Baroness Amanda Spielman

Nick Timothy MP

Toby Young

CHAIR

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

There is no doubt that far too many of our children and young people are not thriving mentally or emotionally in the way that they should be. In 2024, almost 20 per cent of school-aged children in the UK had been diagnosed with a mental-health condition, up from 10 per cent 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, the line between ‘learning disabilities’ and ‘mental-health issues’ has also become increasingly blurred. According to the charity ADHD UK, a diagnosis of ADHD is listed as a ‘mental-health disability’ under the Mental Health Act 1990. Over 1.6million pupils in England have been identified as having special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), up 24.9 per cent since 2016, while the number of children with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) has risen by an astonishing 83.4 per cent – up 11.6 per cent in the past year alone.

The care minister, Stephen Kinnock, has confirmed that the government is committed to its manifesto pledge to put a ‘mental-health practitioner’ into ‘every school in the country’. The idea has widespread support, with the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives offering similar commitments. Already, there have never been so many staff and volunteers working within schools with a specific responsibility for the emotional wellbeing of pupils: senior mental-health leads, educational psychologists, mental-health support teams and more. Access to counselling is available in many schools. Despite this booming school-based ‘mental-health industrial complex’, the wellbeing of pupils continues to deteriorate and rates of ‘mental illness’ continue to rise.

However, a recent Family Education Trust report by Lucy Beney, a qualified counsellor, asks if such interventions are not only ineffective, but perhaps harmful. She discusses everything from ‘diagnostic inflation’ and ‘social contagion’ to definitions of ‘mental health’ and ‘neurodiversity’, from the impact of schools encouraging young people to look at life through the subjective filter of their own feelings to the capture of mental-health professional bodies by critical social justice theory.

If one fifth of children are suffering so much that they are deemed as having a ‘disorder’, should our focus be on where we as parents and teachers are going wrong rather than what’s wrong with children? Is school the best place to address such mental distress, however it’s categorised? And what are the opportunity costs if classroom time and resources are taken away from academic pursuits that could potentially be more conducive to better mental health?

SPEAKERS

Baroness Joanne Cash

Dave Clements

Dr Ashley Frawley

CHAIR

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

When US Vice President JD Vance warned in a Fox News interview this summer that Europe risked ‘committing civilisational suicide’, he was chiefly concerned with Germany, which he says is in danger of bringing about its own demise.

While Vance’s fire was directed primarily at Germany’s failure to control its borders and the destabilising effects of rising immigration, Europe’s longstanding economic powerhouse faces challenges on many fronts. That famed economy is sputtering, partly reflecting a green agenda that has caused soaring energy costs and created fears of deindustrialisation. Attempts to restructure around defence and infrastructure haven’t allayed fears over the failure to tackle structural problems. Reforms have stalled, such as on welfare, and a managerial overclass has created administrative bloat. Meanwhile, the pivot to foreign policy as a show of international dynamism now collides with rising tensions within the EU, such as over trade, rearmament and energy security.

The refusal or inability to shift course – especially on immigration and environmental policies that are increasingly opposed by the electorate and even parts of the establishment – both reveals and entrenches the political stasis. In February’s elections, right-wing populists AfD emerged the second-strongest force, yet power was retained by a coalition of decaying traditional parties.

Yet the struggle between defenders of the status quo and insurgent challengers is complicated. The surprise electoral success of a revitalised Left Party demonstrated that more challenger parties can emerge, while rifts are growing among the populists – over issues such as Ukraine or Israel. What does stasis allied to fragmentation mean for Germany’s political future?

In response, the coalition government – from day one, the most unpopular in modern German history – is increasingly propped up by state power. These include tightening controls over public discourse and laws that crack down on ‘defamation’ of politicians, which have led to hundreds of prosecutions over social-media posts critical of elected officials. While supporters call these measures necessary to protect democracy, critics see them as authoritarian overreach.

Where is Germany heading? Some observers say this is just the beginning of a new political upheaval. Can a coalition presiding over economic decline and mired in cultural and social conflict find the solutions that help regain voter trust – or is it likely to drive more citizens into the arms of populist challengers? Will Germany regain its economic dynamism and its capacity to act as the engine of European integration or will it become a growing source of instability at the heart of Europe? And is there a danger that Germany is drifting into a new kind of authoritarianism – with ramifications domestically and throughout Europe – and if so, how can that be challenged?

SPEAKERS

Dr Jochen Bittner

Professor Ulrike Guérot

Katja Hoyer

CHAIR

The AoI team of Geoff Kidder, Rob Lyons and Jake Weston are joined by Donald Clark, author, speaker and CEO of Wildfire Learning, to discuss the start of the knockout phase of the tournament. They reflect on Scotland's exit, England's struggles, the rise of the diaspora teams like DR Congo and Morocco, and how multiculturalism may be affecting the way fans in England enjoy the tournament.