Academy of Ideas

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?
SPEAKERSColin Brazierjournalist; farmer
Andrew GoldYouTuber; host, Heretics
Dr Pamela Pareskyacademic dissident, Harvard; founder, Free Mind Foundation
Tom Slatereditor, spiked; co-host, spiked podcast and Last Orders
Baroness Stowellformer chair, Communications & Digital Select Committee
CHAIRJacob Reynoldshead of policy, MCC Brussels; associate fellow, Academy of Ideas

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.
SPEAKERSProfessor Khalid Mahmoodformer member of Parliament; visiting professor, Birmingham City University; director, KN Strategic Solutions Ltd
Baroness Amanda Spielmanconservative peer, former chief inspector; Ofsted
Nick Timothy MPmember of parliament, West Suffolk; former special advisor, Home Office; author and comment writer
Toby Younggeneral secretary, Free Speech Union; associate editor, Spectator; editor-in-chief, Daily Sceptic
CHAIRDr Jan Macvarisheducation and events director, Free Speech Union

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?
SPEAKERSLucy Beneycounsellor; children's correspondent, Save Mental Health
Baroness Joanne Cashlife peer and radical
Dave Clementswriter and policy advisor; contributing co-editor The Future of Community
Dr Ashley Frawleysociologist; author, Significant Emotions and Semiotics of Happiness
CHAIRProfessor Ellie Leeprofessor of family and parenting research, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies

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?
SPEAKERSSabine Beppler-Spahlchair, Freiblickinstitut e.V; CEO, Sprachkunst36; Germany correspondent, spiked
Dr Jochen BittnerUK correspondent, Die Zeit
Professor Ulrike Guérotpublisher; author; director, European Democracy Lab e.V.
Katja Hoyerjournalist; historian, King's College London
CHAIRBruno WaterfieldBrussels correspondent, The Times

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.

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
‘I have the feeling that this competition is going to be as important, if not more important, than the Champions League’, said Chelsea manager, Enzo Maresca, after his team had won the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup. This summer’s competition was intended to showcase club football from all continents of the world. But many involved in the game derided the tournament as an unnecessary addition to an already overcrowded football calendar.
Saudi Arabia helped to bankroll the Club World Cup, and is fast developing into a powerhouse for club and international football. The country will host the 2034 World Cup and is planning to build 11 new futuristic stadiums. Saudi club sides are competing with top European teams to sign world-class players such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Sadio Mane. The Saudis have even greater financial muscle than the English Premier League or La Liga in Spain. On the world stage, it seems, money talks, while concerns about democracy and human rights are muted.
In the UK, the fate of football clubs, big and small, is rightly considered to be of enormous importance to local communities. The response from Westminster has been the passing of the Football Governance Act into law. The Act means a government-appointed regulator will be in place to check on the health of clubs and monitor negotiations within the English football ‘pyramid’. Currently Morecambe FC and Sheffield Wednesday are on the brink due to recalcitrant owners, and many people say that the football regulator cannot come soon enough. But would such a regulator be able to save these clubs anyway?
Another big change has been the rise of women’s football. The Lionesses’ victory in the Women’s Euros 2025 will provide a big boost to the women’s game in England – but it is also noticeable that the women’s game is growing in both quality and audience figures.
Are we entering a new age of football? Is football now conquering the globe? Or has the beautiful game finally become disconnected from its fans and roots with ever-more fanciful tournaments taking place in soulless arenas to satisfy a multi-billion-pound industry?
SPEAKERSDr Tim Blackbooks and essays editor, spiked
John McGuirkeditor, Gript Media
Linzi Smithhospitality manager
Dr Dominic Standishwriter and commentator on risk and sport; professor, University of Iowa; author, Venice in Environmental Peril? Myth and reality
CHAIRGeoff Kidderdirector, membership and events, Academy of Ideas; convenor, AoI Book Club

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Jane Austen turns 250 this year, prompting the question: is one of the world’s greatest female novelists still relevant? With too many BBC and Netflix adaptations to count, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Colonel Brandon, George Knightley and Austen’s other love interests remain staples of romantic fiction that others continue to draw from.
Some argue that Austen’s female characters, while feisty and ‘knowing their own mind’, were not particularly radical. Moving relatively seamlessly into the institutions they so ‘resisted’, her protagonists end up falling into happy marriage – seemingly waiting for a man who can handle them. While Austen may be the pioneer of the love match, is her reverence for society’s patriarchal institutions her downfall in the twenty-first century?
Others point to the fact that Austen’s work changed the landscape of literature completely. She was not a political feminist, nor a political activist, yet her novels developed women as complex individuals with curious minds beyond their physicality and a world beyond their roles as mothers and wives. By making the space for strong and independent women within marriage, she sparked confidence to make matches that suit the individuals, not just the social order.
Some argue that Austen was a victim of her circumstance, most notably to her financial constraints and her dependence on her family. She herself did not marry, perhaps recognising the limitations on time and agency of settling down and running a household. Indeed, she was rather entrepreneurial for a woman of her time. By viewing Austen as the victim spinster, do we risk falling prey to the same shallow stereotypes of women that so many characters in her novels are railing against?
How should we judge Jane Austen, more than two centuries on? Does it matter if she is read by inner-city youth or merely celebrated with Georgian-themed fancy-dress parties? Should we judge her characters by the standards of modern feminism? Are there still lessons for Austen to teach us about relationships and social norms? Or was she simply a brilliant writer, with a turn of phrase and a talent for big finales unmatched for centuries?
SPEAKERSJack Aldanehost and producer, The Booking Club
Emma Gillandevent co-ordinator, Academy of Ideas; convener; Battle Book Club
Matilda Martintrainee English teacher; tutor
Cheryl Robsonwriter, editor and publisher, Aurora Metro Books
Sarah Tuckernovelist; broadcaster; columnist
CHAIRJane Sandemanfounder, AoI Parents Forum; former director of finance