It is a dread of conference-goers\neverywhere to see an audience member grasp the microphone during the\ninteractive section, only to announce their contribution \u201cis more a\ncomment than a question\u201d before rambling at a tangent for five\npainful minutes. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Battle of Ideas, a political ideas conference held in the Barbican arts centre in central London at the start of November, is rare in tolerating such behaviour, which would be swatted away by stricter organisers. But in allowing for this the event crudely tracks the descent of British public discourse, where the quantity of debate is imperilling the quality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Parliamentary debates, and\nespecially prime minister’s questions, increasingly see opponents\ntalk past one another as divisions over Brexit grow only deeper.\nBroadcasters on College Green, near the Palace of Westminster, are\noften interrupted by shouty protestors, backing both leave and\nremain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus the term \u2018battle\u2019 has scarcely been more apt for the weekend conference, which is organised by the Academy of Ideas, founded and run by former members of the UK’s Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Although the event has been going since 2005, it has taken on new relevance of late, as its director Claire Fox became a Brexit Party MEP in May when her party won a plurality of British seats in the European Parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fox’s success has been\naccompanied by similar triumphs for former RCP colleagues. A trend\nfor broadcasters to seek pundits with more diverse politics has seen\nmuch airtime for the self-described \u201cMarxist libertarian\u201d Brendan\nO’Neill, who also writes for the Spectator, a conservative magazine\nonce edited by the current prime minister Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conference itself confers\nrespectability on political outsiders, with the programme ranging\nacross worthy subjects like modern slavery, knife crime, artificial\nintelligence, Hong Kong, and England’s North-South divide. While some\nof the discussion is suitably wonkish, the temperature rises over\ndebates about \u2018the people\u2019, \u2018the establishment\u2019 and, of\ncourse, Brexit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stewart Wood, erstwhile advisor to prime minister Gordon Brown and now a Labour peer, made a nuanced pitch for a diverse \u2018people\u2019 with many views. \u201cClaiming that \u2018the will of the people\u2019 is the same as democracy is not just dangerous, it’s wrong,\u201d he said, adding that democracy could include concepts of limited government, the rule of law and guards against majority rule. For this he was slated by several audience members, with one criticising his membership of the House of Lords, which remains unelected but able to influence legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Wood rhetorically asked why the Lords remains in place, one of his critics raised his hand with his thumb rubbing against his fingers, evoking the greed of politicians. The peer countered that there has long been a majority for abolishing the Lords in Westminster, but \u201cthey can’t agree on what to replace it with\u201d \u2013 a pragmatic anathema to some in the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For other conference attendees\nthe scheming of the political class is not limited to Brexit or\nparliamentary reform. A session on world government prompted similar\ncomplaints, after three panellists noted national governments’\nstruggle to tackle climate change, the regulation of national\ncorporations, and nuclear weapons. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need a world characterised\nby rule of law and characterised by human rights, and you need to\nsolve global problems,\u201d said Mary Kaldor, emeritus professor of\nglobal governance at the London School of Economics, who called for\nglobal taxes to fund global government. Amid howls about Western\nelites imposing their ideas on the world, one questioner called the\nidea to abolish the nation state \u201cdeeply reactionary\u201d and\n\u201cmedieval\u201d, ignoring that the panellists had emphasised a role\nfor national governments in any global arrangements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Centrist champions will have a task talking round these critics, who once languished at the sidelines of British democracy, but are increasingly centre stage. The rowdy outsiders can no longer be ignored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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