Academy of Ideas

Are the old political parties over?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
Victory for the Greens in the Gorton & Denton by-election is the latest sign that old political loyalties have broken down. In what was, even as recently as the 2024 General Election, a very safe Labour seat, Hannah Spencer was elected with a majority of over 4,000. Reform came second, pushing Labour into an embarrassing third place while the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both lost their deposits. Indeed, the three mainstream parties that have governed the UK for over 100 years managed less than 30 per cent of the vote between them. 
What does all this mean for the future of British politics?
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
Are the mainstream parties facing extinction or can they bounce back by the time of the next General Election in 2029? Can the Tories recover from 14 years of misrule? Will the Labour Party survive from its current economic woes? Will the political vacuum be filled by Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats or the ‘challenger’ parties like Reform or the Greens?
Take the Conservative Party: the oldest party in the world currently looks as if it is facing electoral wipeout. In a recent survey, 42 per cent of Conservative voters in the 2024 General Election said that even they wouldn’t vote for them. The party that squandered Brexit is desperately looking around for a purpose. Some Tories believe that Robert Jenrick poses a more credible alternative than the current leader, Kemi Badenoch.
But are they both fighting for a hopeless cause? Jenrick’s crime-fighting TikTok videos and Badenoch’s recent support of oil exploration got lots of media coverage, but Net Zero and the current failed model of policing were both introduced on their watch. Are they going back to their roots – if they can remember what those roots are – or are they simply mimicking Trump and Farage’s agendas from the sidelines?
Meanwhile, Labour seems to be imploding. A recent Ipsos poll ranked the current UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, as the most unpopular leader in modern times. In July 2024, his government won almost two-thirds of all seats, with a 174 majority in the Commons, yet a year later it is collapsing in the polls. The government has presided over cuts and tax rises, strikes and bailouts, two-tier justice and a zero-growth economy. The idea that if you pinned a red rosette on a donkey in Wales, it’d get elected no longer holds true.
Far from ‘smashing the gangs’, the immigration scandal that Labour inherited from the Tories means it is haemorrhaging support in Red Wall seats. Preferring Davos over Westminster, Starmer seems to prefer hob-nobbing with world leaders while taking British democracy for granted.
Yet the death of both Labour and the Conservatives has been declared numerous times before, only for them to revive. Is it too soon to count them out? Is Britain’s political map being redrawn, or torn up? Might proportional representation reinvigorate the mainstream parties? Must we wait for four more years? We’ll take a vote on it.
SPEAKERSRosie Duffield MPmember of parliament for Canterbury
Dr Richard Johnsonwriter; senior lecturer in politics, Queen Mary University of London; co-author, Keeping the Red Flag Flying: The Labour Party in Opposition since 1922
Mark Littlewooddirector, Popular Conservatism; broadcaster, columnist, the Telegraph and the Mail
Tim Montgomerieconservative journalist; founder, ConservativeHome, UnHerd and Centre for Social Justice
Graham Stringer MPmember of parliament, Blackley and Middleton South
CHAIRBruno WaterfieldBrussels correspondent, The Times

The rise of the workplace speech police

Debate recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House, Westminster.
This week, Reform's Suella Braverman declared that if the party were elected to government it would 'repeal the Equality Act, because we are going to work to build a country defined by meritocracy not tokenism, personal responsibility not victimhood, excellence not mediocrity, and unity not division'.
In response, Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC that the Act represented 'basic values, one of which is should women be treated equally with men... I think it actually rips up something that goes to who we are as a country because I believe passionately that to be tolerant, compassionate and diverse is what it is to be British'.
What has been the impact of the Equality Act on British workplaces?
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
The British workplace is now too often a toxic environment, a hotbed of grievance culture, lawfare and an ever-expanding number of disciplinary codes unrelated to the nature of specific jobs. Over the past year, there’s been a 23 per cent rise in cases at employment tribunals and a two-year waiting list, due to a growing backlog, with workplace conflicts estimated to now cost businesses £28.5 billion annually.
How did this come about?
The UK is a world leader in human relations (HR). With over half a million HR workers – almost double the number of 15 years ago – Britain stands second in the global league table for size of HR sector as a share of all occupations. Over seven in 10 FTSE 100 companies now boast a ‘chief HR officer’ on their executive committee, reflecting the elevated status of this newfound ‘profession’.
We might expect this might lead to happier more productive workers, fewer grievances and higher job retention. Yet the growth of the HR industrial complex doesn’t appear to have led to better workplace outcomes or harmony.
Arguably, HR is as much the problem as the solution. HR departments – until recently humdrum administrative hubs managing payrolls, processing sick notes and checking firms complied with employment law – have now morphed into real centres of power. They are the enforcers of workplace orthodoxies, controlling what workers can say or do, who keeps their job, and even shaping corporate missions. For example, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is charged with versing workers in new values, from DEI literacy to managing emotional security.
What’s more, the traditional defenders of workers’ rights – trade unions – are increasingly acting in lockstep with HR managers’ priorities. A recent paper by the Free Speech Union, Shopped Stewards, revealed the divisive nature of union bureaucrats’ adherence to identity politics, which means they often side with the DEI initiatives of their employers, as opposed to defending their members’ rights. For example, teacher Simon Pearson was fired by Preston College after a complaint from a Muslim representative of the National Education Union (NEU). Pearson was accused of being ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘racially discriminatory’ for social-media posts, such as saying Lucy Connolly ‘should not have been jailed’.
Another report suggests that specific legislation has led to a deterioration in workplace relations. The Don’t Divide Us report, The Equality Act Isn’t Working, reveals the ‘expansionary logic’ of the Equality Act 2010 has provided the legal scaffolding that supports a surge in (largely unsuccessful) workplace race–discrimination claims. This, DDU argues, contributes to a grievance culture where people resort to ‘lawfare’ to resolve ‘petty disputes and imagined slights’, while empowering thin-skinned employees to wilfully misinterpret perfectly innocent comments or interactions.
Can the workplace be detoxified? How can we tame the HR monster? Can trade unions return to a ‘one for all, all for one’ role of protecting workers’ rights? Can laws that are divisive in workplaces be reined in?
SPEAKERSPamela Dowchief operating officer, Civic Future
Paul Emberyfirefighter; trade unionist; author, Despised: why the modern Left loathes the working class; broadcaster
Maya Forstaterchief executive, Sex Matters
Dr Anna Loutfiemployment and human rights barrister; advisory council member, Don’t Divide Us
CHAIRPara Mullanformer operations director, EY-Seren; fellow, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

Rape gangs, Post Office and Scottish self-ID: an anatomy of three scandals

A debate recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival at Church House, Westminster on Saturday 18 October 2025.
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
In recent years, Britain has been rocked by several scandals where the public has been kept in the dark. Politicians and the authorities have indulged in obfuscation, denial, cover-ups and even possible collusion – all to avoid accountability or admit responsibility.  As with previous scandals, it’s often been grassroots campaigners, victims’ groups and courageous journalists who have brought these issues to public attention.
What was it like being a key player on the frontline of history in three of these recent scandals: rape gangs, the Post Office miscarriages of justice and gender self-ID in Scotland?  Journalists Charlie Peters and Nick Wallis, and Susan Smith from campaign group For Women Scotland, tell their stories of activism, investigation and holding truth to power.
GB News reporter Charlie Peters, presenter of the 2023 documentary, Grooming Gangs: Britain’s Shame, has called it ‘the worst race-hate scandal and abuse scandal since the Second World War’.  Meanwhile, Conservative MP Nick Timothy, writing in response to Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement that he would – at last – commission a national inquiry on the back of recommendations in Baroness Casey’s National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (2025), stated: ‘Rape gangs are the biggest scandal of our generation.’
The Post Office Horizon IT scandal stands out as another one of the UK’s most significant miscarriages of justice. Faulty accounting software developed by Fujitsu led to the Post Office prosecuting over 900 subpostmasters for theft, fraud or false accounting, resulting in wrongful convictions, bankruptcies, imprisonments and even suicides. Nick Wallis, a freelance journalist, broadcaster and author, has been one of the leading figures in exposing and chronicling the scandal.
For Women Scotland (FWS) is a women’s rights advocacy group that was set up in 2018 to oppose the SNP’s attempts to force gender self-identification through Holyrood. Even when the Gender Recognition Reform Bill was blocked by the Tory UK government, the then first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, continued to defend the policy.  In a car-crash press conference, she famously refused to say whether double-rapist Adam Graham/Isla Bryson, who was initially sent to a female jail, was a man or a woman. The scandal caused a huge public outcry and has been partially blamed for Sturgeon’s sudden resignation a few months later. The furore also forged For Women Scotland into a formidable campaign group that eventually won a famous victory in clarifying equality law at the Supreme Court.
These scandals are only three of the many that have shocked our nation, alongside the Grenfell Tower fire, the Hillsborough tragedy, the infected-blood scandal and more.  Are such scandals simply a feature of modern Britain? Do they, as many argue, implicate the state itself as negligent, incompetent and mired in the tendency to cover-up and collude? What can we learn from these brave journalists and campaigners who have stood at the frontline, challenged politicians and the authorities, and held them to account?
SPEAKERS
Charlie PetersGB News national reporter
Susan Smithco-director, For Women Scotland; director, Beira’s Place; contributor, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht
Nick Wallisjournalist, presenter, BBC Radio 4 series The Great Post Office Trial
CHAIR
Claire Foxdirector, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!

China's Trump card? Rare earths and geopolitics

Recording of a debate at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTIONOne consequence of Donald Trump’s trade war with China has been increasing attention to a group of minerals called ‘rare earths’. Rare earths are vital to the production of everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to wind turbines and advanced weapons.
Despite the name, rare earths are not particularly rare. For example, cerium is more abundant in the earth’s crust than copper. But they are spread thinly as trace impurities, so to obtain usable rare earths requires processing enormous amounts of raw ore at great expense – and with considerable environmental impacts. China has been willing to massively subsidise this process to support its own industries while keeping the price low, making the processing of ore uneconomic elsewhere in the world.
The potential geopolitical consequences are obvious: China’s rivals are currently utterly dependent on it. Years ago, China secured a significant proportion – almost a monopoly – of excavated rare earths in Venezuela, Brazil and other parts of South America and has now imposed export controls on many rare earth elements in response to Trump’s tariffs. China is responsible for 60 per cent of all rare earths mined but, more importantly, it controls the processing of 90 per cent of all global refined rare earth output.
Given that US is reliant on production plants in in China/Taiwan for its computer chips, it was slow to respond to the geopolitical power shift. China has already flexed its muscles in this regard, having banned exports of rare earths to Japan in 2010 over a fishing dispute (subsequently overturned by the World Trade Organisation) and has imposed export restrictions on the US since 2023. In May, Ford had to stop production at a car plant in Chicago because of the shortage of magnets made with rare earths. China has also placed an export ban on the technologies used to extract and separate rare earths.
A desire to open up access to these metals was said to be a major feature of Trump’s negotiations around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After Zelensky’s painful ambush in the White House, Trump quickly concluded a deal allowing the US access to Ukraine’s natural resources, especially the coveted rare earths. Some have also suggested that claiming these metals is one of the aims of Russia’s war.
What should the rest of the world do about China’s monopoly? Is it feasible to create alternative sources of supply – and what would it cost? Can innovation reduce the need for rare earths – or can recycling save the day? What does it all mean for the direction of geopolitics?
SPEAKERSRobert Figpartner, the metals risk team
Animesh Jhaprofessor, applied material science
Henry Sandersonjournalist; author, Volt Rush, the Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green
CHAIRAustin Williamsdirector, Future Cities Project; honorary research fellow, XJTLU, Suzhou, China; author, China’s Urban Revolution

Podcast of Ideas: Trump's intervention into Venezuela

The Academy of Ideas team – Alastair Donald, Claire Fox, Rob Lyons and Jacob Reynolds – discuss the immediate fallout after President Trump's decision to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Why did Trump act? Is it about narcotics, oil, democracy or his desire to create a 'Don-roe doctrine' of US dominance in the Americas?
What has been the role of domestic politics – is this the culture wars by other means?
For those who believe in that sovereignty is a vital right for nation states, should we make an exception here given the appalling nature of Maduro's regime or must sovereignty be defended at all times?
What's left of the 'rules-based international order' when Trump is not only intervening in Venezuela but threatening Denmark's control of Greenland, too?
Will the reaction against Trump's actions weaken the hand of populist forces elsewhere?

Woke politics: ‘People are realising it is deeply authoritarian’

In a wide-ranging interview, Andrew Doyle talks to Claire Fox about his new book, The End of Woke and why there is much still to be done to defend freedom.
 
Andrew notes that while some things have shifted in recent months – from the Cass Review and the UK Supreme Court judgement on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act to the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term – it doesn’t mean that our problems are over. The ‘new puritans’ he identified in his previous book are still very much there and clinging on to their power and influence.
 
It's now five years since the death of George Floyd and the hysteria around Black Lives Matter. Claire and Andrew reflect on what the hell happened and the dangers that arise from a re-racialisation of society. They also look at how identity politics and racial thinking has led to a white grievance culture and a tit-for-tat outlook, which Andrew argues has more to do with revenge than with promoting a liberal society. 
 
Above all, the conversation focuses on the continued importance of the fight for free speech, even for 'cosplay' rebels like Irish rappers Kneecap. And they tackle the way in which woke has undermined the search for truth: when even something as common sense as biological sex is called into question, then anything goes – and society suffers.

Cure or cult? Special educational needs in the classroom

Dave Clements is a policy adviser, writer, and parent of a child diagnosed with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite a longstanding scepticism about the claims made about the increase in these and other similar conditions, since becoming a father he has been forced to question his views. Clements describes his son’s condition as something that ‘runs through him like a stick of rock’. ASD, in particular, can have a profound effect on children and their families. And yet, as Dave tells us in his forthcoming book, there seems to be something else going on, too. He is struck by the record numbers of pupils being labelled as ‘neurodiverse’, having special educational needs (SEN) or struggling with anxiety and attendance issues. Do we know what normal is anymore, he asks?
The book is less about providing answers than posing uncomfortable questions. Are we in danger of making identities out of disorders? Why do some parents appear oddly eager that their children be labelled neurodiverse? Has SEN become a hold-all category for too many different kinds of issues and conditions, and thus an unhelpful term? At a time when schools struggle to fund SEN provision, is a growing ‘awareness’ of neurodiverse, and other similar conditions, part of the problem or the solution? Are there other reasons for the increasing rates of referral and diagnosis, and for rising numbers of children needing support in class?
As the SEN agenda becomes a greater part of the school experience, is teacher autonomy being undermined by the expectation that they follow scripts produced by SENCOs and SEN departments for some pupils and lessons? How are mainstream schools expected to cope with students who are unable to regulate themselves against sudden, intense, and uncontrolled expressions of emotion or aggression? Instead of experts being brought in to teach teachers how to teach pupils with neurodiverse conditions or other special educational needs – wouldn’t it be better if experts taught these kids in specialist schools? Or is the problem of inclusion, and the variety and nature of the needs children bring to the classroom, more complicated than that?
SPEAKERDave Clementswriter and policy adviser; contributing co-editor, The Future of Community

The scary new powers to trawl through our bank accounts

Claire Fox sits down with Jasleen Chaggar of Big Brother Watch and author Timandra Harkness to talk about the latest attack on our privacy.
The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill does not sound like the kind of legislation that will set your pulse racing. But one part of it in particular should be more widely known and the cause of great concern: the new eligibility verification powers for welfare recipients.
Essentially, if the Bill passes, the government will be able to demand that banks trawl through the accounts of anyone receiving welfare benefits and use algorithms to flag up any possible fraud or erroneous payments. The government already has the power to see bank statements from those who are suspected of welfare fraud, but these new powers go much further, automating these checks on any account receiving welfare payments AND any linked accounts, too. This is guilty-until-proven-innocent stuff.
The civil liberties implications are very serious.