Filmed at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023, this engaging panel discusses contemporary trends.
Plato argued that excessive freedom leads to mass ignorance, hysteria and, ultimately, tyranny, but it has been Western cultural and political elites themselves that have often been driven by a sense of mistrust or even hostility towards democracy and the people. No doubt such fears are accentuated by populist parties being voted into power in Finland, Italy, Hungary, Sweden and more. The latest anxieties centre on the right-wing populist party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany. In the UK Liberal opinion frets that ‘green policies are the new Brexit’ and suspiciously eyes new rural-metropolitan divides, for example, as expressed by the Dutch Farmer Citizen Movement.
It can be convenient for mainstream politicians, especially on the left, to use the populist label to discredit grassroots opposition by denouncing the likes of protesters against London’s ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ) as alt-right conspiracy-mongers. But mainstream free-market conservatives can be equally ill at ease, for example with popular hostility to migration or globalism and can wince at expressions of old-fashioned socially conservative attitudes to family and working-class community norms.
Is populism an ally of conservatism, or the force of revenge against nominally conservative parties that bought into a liberal, elitist agenda? Does this reactive aspect to populism limit its ability to forge a new political movement?
If populism is worth embracing as offering a voice for people, can it provide a genuine alternative to the politics of technocratic governance? How can we move beyond populism being defined in the public eye by its detractors?
The speakers are:
Sabine Beppler-Spahl - chair, Freiblickinstitut e.V; CEO, Sprachkunst36; author, Off-centre: how party consensus undermines our democracy; Germany correspondent, spiked
Lord David Frost - member of the House of Lords
Tim Montgomerie - conservative journalist; founder, ConservativeHome, UnHerd and Centre for Social Justice
Jacob Reynolds - head of policy, MCC Brussels; associate fellow, Academy of Ideas
Freddie Sayers - editor-in-chief, UnHerd; former editor-in-chief, YouGov; founder, PoliticsHome
The chair is: Alastair Donald - co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; convenor, Living Freedom; author, Letter on Liberty: The Scottish Question
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