Academy of Ideas

#BattleFest2014: What makes a great sporting leader?

With the England cricket team experiencing a
turbulent tour of Australia, culminating in a humiliating whitewash,
and the problems of succession currently engulfing Manchester United,
the issue of management and leadership in sport has been thrust into the
spotlight. Is a great sporting leader born or made? What are the key
factors for creating a football dynasty, whether it be Sir Alex Ferguson
at Manchester United or Bill Shankly at Liverpool? And can a manager
really make that much difference today at a time when money plays such a
big role in sporting success?
Have the requirements of a great sporting leader changed with time?
For instance, could a celebrated leader from the past such as Brian
Clough succeed today while having to deal with the money, the egos, the
politics and the pressures of modern football? Or can a great leader
succeed in any circumstances?
Is a key component of a great leader the ability to accommodate and
manage disruptive and difficult personalities, if they are vital to the
success of the team? Or do great leaders need to exhibit a ruthlessness
in the world of personnel and ego management? What makes up the winning
mentality in 2014, and are there common ingredients to successful
leadership, whether in sport, business or politics? 







Speakers




Matthias Heitmann
freelance journalist; contributor, NovoArgumente; columnist, Schweizer Monat




Thais Portilho
journalist; campaigns and public affairs consultant




Luke Regan
research officer, The Sports Think Tank




Hilary Salt
founder, First Actuarial




Philip Walters
chair, Rising Stars (educational publisher), and the GL Education Group


Chair



Geoff Kidder
director, membership and events, Institute of Ideas; convenor, IoI Book Club; IoI’s resident expert in all sporting matters

#BattleFest2014: Cotton-wool campus?

When University College London’s students’
union banned a Nietzsche reading group in March, on the grounds that
discussions about right-wing philosophers could encourage fascism and
endanger the student body, many saw it as the reductio ad absurdum
of student-union bans in recent years. These have included bans on
Robin Thicke’s pop hit ‘Blurred Lines’, on the grounds that it might be
distressing for victims of sexual assault, as well as everything from
the Sun (thanks to Page 3) to ‘offensive’ T-shirts depicting
Jesus and the prophet Mohammed in cartoon form. So have British
universities become bastions of politically correct censorship? Or are
such restrictions - enacted by elected unions rather than the state - a
welcome attempt to ensure universities are safe spaces for all students?
Student politics has long involved political boycotts, going back to
campus bans on Barclays Bank in the 1980s (for operating in apartheid
South Africa), Nestlé products in the 1990s (for promoting baby milk in
the developing world), or Israeli goods in the Noughties (in protest at
the treatment of Palestinians). But for all their limitations, these
campaigns were an attempt to engage with the world of politics outside
the university. In the past few years, however, there seems to have been
a trend towards student politics turning inwards. Students’ unions have
instead become increasingly concerned with making campuses safe from
potentially hostile outsiders, by enacting ‘no platform’ policies, first
for ‘fascists’ and later other offensive speakers, from Islamists to
radical feminists.
For some this is a progressive move because student unions have a
duty to ensure that all students feel safe on campus, that no one feels
excluded from campus activities and that no offence is caused by those
activities. It is argued that women, LGBT and ethnic-minority students
are often especially vulnerable and must be protected from intimidation
and discomfort. Others feel the unions are engaged in acts of censorship
which undermine academic freedom and treat students as children rather
than adults. Do ‘safe space’ policies empower or infantilise students?
Are today’s students simply not as robust as previous generations and so
need protecting in ways their parents’ generation did not? Or have
unions simply become more sensitive to the needs of their more
vulnerable students?







Speakers




Tom Bailey
recent graduate, UCL; regular columnist, spiked




Ellamay Russell
postgraduate student, University of Sussex; writer, spiked




Michael Segalov
communications officer, University of Sussex Students’ Union; freelance journalist.




Harriet Williamson
columnist and blogger


Chair



Joel Cohen
administrator, Debating Matters; freelance writer

#BattleFest2014: Immigration: who should control our borders?

Immigration is a fraught political issue.
Those opposing immigration – and especially the EU policy of granting
freedom of movement to all EU citizens – argue that low-skilled workers
from the relatively impoverished East are now driving down wages in the
West. Then there is the spectre of the overseas benefits claimant,
taking out without ever giving anything in return. The pro-immigration
side counters that immigration is actually good for the economy.
Migrants in the UK pay more in tax than they consume in public services,
not least because inward migrants are more likely to be working age
than the population in general. So does immigration help or hinder the
UK economy?
Or does that question miss the point? While the much prophesised rush
of immigrants taking advantage of the exhaustion of the seven-year ban
on immigration from Romania and Bulgaria at the start of the year may
not have come to pass, there are still plenty who claim that immigration
is a big problem. To respond to public disquiet, the government has
concentrated its efforts on non-EU immigrants. But for all its talk of
caps and limits, the government seems incapable of enforcing anything of
the sort. And for some, that is exactly the problem. EU rules
effectively mean the UK government does not control its own borders,
rendering the debate about whether immigration is a bane or a boon
somewhat moot.
Moreover, it sometimes seems that what drives the nominally
pro-immigration side is not so much freedom of movement, but the
unsavoury associations of anti-immigration arguments. It is claimed that
anti-immigration parties like UKIP will prompt ‘kneejerk xenophobia’,
or exacerbate people’s ‘ill-informed prejudices’. Is this a
pro-immigration position or anti-masses sentiment? Where are those
willing to defend immigration on the grounds that everyone should be
entitled to freedom of movement regardless of their passport or their
skill-set? Is there a case for giving up on controlling borders
altogether? Conversely, are arguments against immigration too defensive?
Are secure borders essential to maintaining national sovereignty? Is it
time for a different kind of debate?







Speakers




David Goodhart
chair, Demos' Advisory Group; author, The British Dream




Philippe Legrain
visiting senior fellow, LSE’s European Institute; author, Immigrants: your country needs them and European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics are in a Mess – and How to Put Them Right; former economic adviser to the President of the European Commission




Bruno Waterfield
Brussels correspondent, Daily Telegraph; co-author, No Means No




Steven Woolfe
UKIP Frontbench Spokesman on Migration and Financial Affairs
Co-ordinator EFDD Group, EU ECON Committee


Chair



Claire Fox
director, Institute of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze

#BattleFest2014: Should we fear democracy?

After surging forward through the latter
part of the twentieth century after the defeat of fascism,
decolonisation and the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy appears to be
in something of a retreat. According to the Economist, even
though 45 per cent of the world’s population live in countries that
‘hold free and fair elections’, there is now widespread recognition that
‘democracy’s global advance has come to a halt, and may even have gone
into reverse’. After many years of trying to spread democracy abroad,
the US and other Western powers seem to have lowered their sights
following the tragic, contemporary debacle in Iraq. Elsewhere, the ‘Arab
Spring’ has fared little better. Even in the established democracies of
the West, democracy appears to have lost its enduring appeal, with
declining voter turnout and a hollowing-out of once mass-membership
political parties. It was once claimed that only democracies could
develop economically; now, democracy is blamed for gridlock. The
contrast between the failure of the US Congress to agree a budget and
the ability of China to get things done is much remarked upon.
Very few in the developed world openly discount democracy as an
ideal, but nearly everyone agrees the reality is flawed. Some would
reform it in various ways: lowering the voting age, using more new
technology, etc. Occupy activists oppose ‘representative democracy’
altogether, preferring ‘direct democracy’. Some argue for limits on
democracy in favour of the considered opinion of experts. Elected
governments in Greece and Italy have even been replaced by interim
technocratic administrations during the European economic crisis, and
democratic mandates can be annulled when people vote the ‘wrong way’, as
when the Irish voted ‘No’ to the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 or when the
Muslim Brotherhood was voted into power in Egypt. And far from being
cheered as a historic democratic exercise that ousted an entrenched
Gandhi dynasty, this year’s election in India provoked fears that
815million voters were expressing atavistic religious prejudice.
If anything sums up the contemporary concern with democracy, it is
the word ‘populism’. In Europe, it is the fear of people voting for the
wrong sort of political party: the Front National in France, the PVV in
the Netherlands, UKIP in the UK. In America, it is the fear of what used
to be called the ‘moral majority’: conservative voters out of step with
the liberal consensus on social issues.
Are populist political movements simply throwbacks, appealing to the
bigotry of greying voters? Or do they give voice to the frustrations of
citizens who feel increasingly cut off from an aloof and deracinated
political class? Will the twenty-first century see the demise of
democracy in favour of technocratic governance? What has so tarnished
our view of what used to be the foundational principle of Western
civilisation?







Speakers




Professor Ivan Krastev
Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia; permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna




Professor Chantal Mouffe
Professor of political theory, University of Westminster; author, Agonistics: thinking the world politically




Brendan O'Neill
editor, spiked; columnist, Big Issue; contributor, Spectator




Dr David Runciman
professor of politics, Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), Cambridge University; author, The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War 1 to the Present


Chair



Claire Fox
director, Institute of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze

#BattleFest2014: Cultural regeneration or gentrification?

Cultural policy is seen as essential in
helping to regenerate previously unfashionable areas of east London and
right across the capital. Every neighbourhood seems keen to emphasise
its credentials as a creative, artist-friendly hub and no urban space is
complete without short-let ‘pop-up’ shops and restaurants, temporary
cinemas or urban beaches. Supporters argue that such playful,
small-scale interventions can help ‘citizens take ownership of their
city’ and engender a community spirit seen as sorely diminished after
the 2011 riots.
Yet others are more sceptical about the merits of such schemes,
seeing them as invariably corporate-sponsored examples of ‘hipster
gentrification’, which undermines rather than bolsters civic engagement,
with even the creatives of east London’s Tech City complaining
development of the area will change its ‘unique character’.
While many artists claim to be committed to being friendly with
residents and helping to improve neighbourhoods, the sceptics argue that
they are, knowingly or unwittingly, helping gentrification. CityLab
magazine recently called it ‘Artwashing’: getting an area cleaned up
before properties are bought up cheap, with existing residents removed
and flats sold for the highest price possible.
Some hail the rise of artist-led cultural initiatives as a radical
challenge to both the problems of austerity and the perceived stifling
sanitisation of contemporary public life. Are playful, small-scale
interventions and urban explorations a challenge to the sanitised city,
or merely part of it? To what extent do they provide a means to nurture
the urban realm and engender community spirit? In any case, is
gentrification inevitable?







Speakers



Alan Miller
co-director, NY Salon; co-founder, London's Truman Brewery; partner, Argosy Pictures Film Company


Emma Dent-Coad
leader, Labour Group, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council; design and architecture journalist






Feargus O’Sullivan
Europe correspondent, CityLab




James Stevens
strategic planner, Home Builders Federation


Chair



David Bowden
coordinator, UK Battle Satellites; columnist, spiked

#BattleFest2015: From Magna Carta to ECHR - do we need a British Bill of Rights?

Next year marks 800 years since the signing
of Magna Carta. While the build-up to its anniversary has been dominated
by arguments about whether it should be taught in schools as part of
lessons on ‘British values’ aimed at tackling ‘Trojan Horse’ extremism,
others have strongly suggested Britain needs a contemporary equivalent.
Whilst the coalition’s Commission on a Bill of Rights produced
ambivalent conclusions, leading Conservative politicians have pledged
that it will be a key part of their general election manifesto. Yet
while the original brief for the Bill of Rights was for a document
‘which incorporates and builds on Britain’s obligations under the
European Convention on Human Rights’ such a move is widely seen as a
potential replacement for the Human Rights Act with Britain leaving the
ECHR altogether.
Supporters see a British Bill of Rights as an important move in
regaining control over key areas of national sovereignty, threatened by
increasingly activist judges based in Strasbourg. Many opponents,
including leading civil-liberties campaigners, charge the proposal as
being a return of Tories as ‘the nasty party’ keen on limiting
individual and worker protections enshrined under the Human Rights Act.
In any case, it is not clear what immediate gains a UK government would
make from leaving the ECHR, given the increasing willingness of British
courts to challenge government policies – for example, on workfare - and
the need to meet Western standards around universal human rights.
Some see the British Bill of Rights as an opportunity to rethink our
contemporary attitude to rights. Historically, many see a rights culture
as standing in a British tradition dating back to the Magna Carta of
1215 and embracing the 1688 Bill of Rights. Others see sharp
distinctions between the natural-rights tradition dating back to John
Locke and that which culminated in the French Declaration of the Rights
of Man in the wake of the French Revolution and the American Bill of
Rights of 1791.  Is it significant that these documents that talk the
language of natural rights tend to seek freedom from the state whereas the human rights
tradition embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) tend to seek the
state’s protection?
Could a British Bill of Rights represent a more democratic
alternative to the ECHR, or simply greater powers for unelected judges
in Britain rather than their counterparts in Strasbourg? Does it
represent an opportunity to safeguard civil liberties and national
security, as various supporters hope, or risk sacrificing hard-won
rights to contemporary opportunist politicians? What advantages would it
hold over the existing framework provided by the Human Rights Act?
Would its introduction be a triumph for democracy or populism? Who
should we trust to make our laws?







Speakers




Jon Holbrook
barrister and writer on legal issues for spiked and the New Law Journal




Martin Howe QC
barrister; member, Commission on A Bill of Rights




Helen Mountfield QC
barrister, Matrix Chambers, London; trustee, Equal Rights Trust




Rupert Myers
barrister and writer




Adam Wagner
barrister, 1 Crown Office Row
Chair



Claire Fox
director, Institute of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze

#BattleFest2012: To build or not to build?

This podcast was recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival at the Barbican in London on Sunday 21 October, 2012


From Boris Island to the Dale Farm gypsies, no building
project seems too big or small to fall foul of the UK’s notoriously
stringent planning laws, which sometimes seem to exist to prevent
development rather than manage it. In contrast to China, which delivers
new development equivalent to a country the size of Greece every six
months, the UK planning system seems to be in a permanent state of
denial. The Thames Gateway, High Speed Rail 2, Heathrow’s third runway,
Battersea Power Station redux, Green Belt housing and even Eco-Towns
have all run up against a wall. Perhaps the biggest issue is in housing,
where building languishes at the lowest levels since the First World
War. By some estimates, five million people are waiting on housing
registers. According to Shelter, the younger generation bears the brunt
with a fifth of 18- to 34-year-olds living with their parents because
they can’t afford to rent or buy a home.
At Inside Housing, Colin Wiles argues the need to build three
million new homes on greenfield land in the next 20 years. But few
others seem willing to countenance actually increasing housing stock.
The charity Intergenerational Foundation argues the problem is
‘under-occupation’ and that elderly people should be encouraged to move
out of their ‘big houses’ to make room for larger families. Eight
‘radical solutions’ to the housing crisis discussed on the BBC News
website included curbing population growth, forcing landlords to sell or
let empty properties, and banning second homes. Meanwhile, the likes of
the National Trust, the Countryside Alliance and the Campaign to
Protect Rural England campaign against any liberalisation of planning.
More broadly, many people distrust developers, fearing they will scar
the countryside and destroy our architectural heritage.
Some ask why has planning lost its way and what happened to the big
visionary plans of the past. David Cameron wants us to rediscover how
‘to build for the future with as much confidence and ambition as the
Victorians once did’. But will cutting ‘red tape’ and simplifying the
system be enough? Does the new ‘presumption in favour of sustainable
development’ merely reinforce the ‘green tape’ that is already a barrier
to development? What are the smart ways to deliver good urban
development? Is the solution better top-down planning, more bottom-up
planning, or something else altogether?

Speakers

Professor Kelvin Campbellmanaging director, Urban Initiatives; author, Massive Small: the operating system for smart urbanismPenny Lewislecturer, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, Robert Gordon University; co-founder, AE FoundationPaul Minersenior planning officer, Campaign to Protect Rural EnglandDaniel MoylanThe Mayor of London's Aviation Adviser; Conservative councillor, Royal Borough of Kensington and ChelseaChristine Murrayeditor, The Architects' JournalChair:



Michael Owens
commercial director, Bow Arts Trust; owner, London Urban Visits; formerly, head of development policy, London Development Agency

#BattleFest2014: Opera: are we all invited?

Despite the economic crisis, art in Greece
is booming. By 2015, new museums and cultural organisations are
scheduled to open their doors to the public, many of them privately
funded rather than state-run as in the past. As Greek classical
orchestras and opera companies find themselves in a bleak financial
situation due to government spending cuts, private funding seems to have
offered a way out. At the same time, non-traditional venues such as
Syntagma Square’s metro station and airplane flights have been used as
opera stages, in an effort to promote it to new audiences.
Yet the question of how opera, along with other elite art forms such
as classical music and theatre, can and should be made more accessible
to all is a fraught one. Some argue, for example, that the key lies in
demystifying some of opera’s difficulty by incorporating elements from
popular culture and emphasising its contemporary socio-political
relevance. Yet others warn that such an approach risks alienating
current and potential audiences who are attracted to art precisely
because it is so strange and diverts us from everyday concerns. They
argue that the opera world – especially critics - should certainly focus
their energies on inspiring and explaining opera’s virtues for the
curious, while accepting that The Ring Cycle isn’t for everyone.
Can such projects – whether privately or state funded - really be
justified when they bring little obvious benefit to most Greeks,
especially in a period of economic crisis? What emphasis should
performers and critics place on making opera more accessible versus
making judgments on purely artistic grounds? Does opera, or any other
‘difficult’ art form, by definition need to be held to different
standards of accessibility than popular culture?







Speakers




Dr Eugenia Arsenis
director; dramaturg, Center for Contemporary Opera, New York




Dolan Cummings
associate fellow, Institute of Ideas; editor, Debating Humanism; co-founder, Manifesto Club




Dr Nikos Dontas
head, Dramaturgy Department, Greek National Opera; music critic, Kathimerini




Dimitrios Kiousopoulos
historian; columnist, Eleftherotypia




Ioannis Tselikas
assistant professor, Hellenic American University; music editor and performer


Chair



Alan Miller
co-director, NY Salon; co-founder, London's Truman Brewery; partner, Argosy Pictures Film Company





Produced by




Geoff Kidder director, membership and events, Institute of Ideas; convenor, IoI Book Club; IoI’s resident expert in all sporting matters




Ira Papadopoulou director of cultural affairs, Hellenic American Union




Dr Nikos Sotirakopoulos assistant lecturer in sociology, University of Kent