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IS THERE A CASE FOR TARIFFS TODAY?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/protection-measures-is-there-a-case-for-tariffs-today/

On 2 April, President Trump announced ‘Liberation Day’, imposing swingeing tariffs on imports, even on friendly countries with low or no trade surplus with the US. Using the tariffs, Trump has negotiated deals with a wide array of countries, with many on significantly favourable terms for the US. However, it is far from clear that the policy has solved America’s trade deficit and may indeed have made it worse. Many worry that the result may be higher prices for Americans.

The Western consensus for almost three-quarters of a century, following the end of the Second World War, was that the use of protectionism by developed countries was, at best, counter-productive for the imposing country and, at worst, a danger to global peace and prosperity.

Most economists from the centre and the right – and some from the left, too – criticised protectionist barriers to trade as being harmful to domestic economic prospects. They warned too that the imposition of protectionist measures by one country risked retaliatory escalations, which would spread adverse growth effects around the world.

However, attitudes to protectionism have moved rapidly in the past few years. It is not just that the tariffs imposed by the Trump administrations – and by Biden’s in between – have helped to normalise the use of protectionist measures. The increasing backlash during the 2010s to the iniquities of economic globalisation was already tarnishing the belief in the benefits of international trade. As a result, restrictions on trade seemed less sacrilegious.

Then the disruptions to global supply chains during the pandemic lockdowns, subsequently aggravated by the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, alerted Western leaders to their dependence on supplies from abroad. The wider rise of geopolitical tensions has further rekindled interest in protectionism as a means to promote domestic industries and reduce reliance on foreign producers.

Now protectionism is advocated as a legitimate means to advance a nation’s interests. So, were the downsides of protectionism always overstated? Can tariffs help an advanced country re-industrialise and become more self-sufficient? Doesn’t the reawakened legitimacy of national interest justify protectionism as bettering the lives of a country’s population?

Speakers
William Clouston
party leader, Social Democratic Party

William C. Hicks
co-chair, Life Sciences Practice Group, Mintz

Catherine McBride
economist and trade specialist

Phil Mullan
writer, lecturer and business manager; author, Beyond Confrontation: globalists, nationalists and their discontents

Chair
Rob Lyons
science and technology director, Academy of Ideas; convenor, AoI Economy Forum; author, Panic on a Plate

Is there a case for tariffs today?

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ERA OF THE DOWNWARDLY MOBILE GRADUATE
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/rise-of-the-downwardly-mobile-graduate/

With nearly five million graduates now working in non-graduate roles, recent reports have warned of a new political threat: the ‘downwardly mobile graduate’. Burdened by debt, underemployed and politically disillusioned, will this new demographic turn on the parties who sold them the dream?

The Blairite mantra, ‘Education, education, education’, once signalled the ambition of creating a ‘learning society’ to overcome decades of economic woes. By expanding university places, Britain was to be transformed into ‘a high-skill society, competing in the global economy by virtue of brain power and innovation’. But while New Labour’s target of sending half of all 18- to 30-year-olds to university has been achieved, few believe this has delivered the promised transformation.

Instead, the job market is flooded with (over)qualified candidates and many graduates, especially post-pandemic, face grim prospects. Arts students have long struggled with the employment market, but now graduates in traditionally solid fields like accountancy, engineering and medicine also face challenges. Rampant grade inflation means that ‘good’ qualifications no longer stand out, with 32 per cent of students gaining first-class degrees, double the proportion of a decade earlier. AI also poses a threat, especially to white-collar jobs: job hunting site Adzuna shows entry-level and graduate vacancies have dropped by a third since the launch of ChatGPT.

Consequently, universities now struggle to explain their value. While the employer-friendly promise of developing ‘critical thinking skills’ might once have worked, today many undergraduate courses appear unable to cultivate basic intellectual competencies. And while studying a subject for its own sake can be worthwhile, many courses now demand little in terms of reading, discussion and critique, so degrees may no longer appear the most fulfilling or financially savvy way to become educated.

How can we improve the prospects of graduates? Are disaffected university leavers likely to offer a challenge to the status quo, or might they drift into disengagement, as in China, where educated youth increasingly withdraw? Can the system be reformed to serve both students and staff – or should universities cut places and reinstate selectivity? In a world of falling wages and rising automation, does doing a degree still make sense?

Speakers
Poppy Coburn
acting deputy comment editor, Daily Telegraph

Tom Collyer
senior executive, Pagefield; writer; alumnus, Debating Matters

Nick Hillman
director, Higher Education Policy Institute

Dr Linda Murdoch
former director of careers, University of Glasgow; researcher on wellbeing and work ethic

Tallulah Sutton
sociology and politics researcher; University of Cambridge; author, Labour Heartlands in Brexit Britain

Chair
Toby Marshall
film studies teacher; member, AoI Education Forum

Era of the downwardly mobile graduate

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BOOKSHOP BARNIE: BIJAN OMRANI ON GOD IS AN ENGLISHMAN
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/meet-the-author-bijan-omrani-on-god-is-an-englishman/

Bijan Omrani’s latest book, God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England, is an exploration of how religion has been part of our island story for almost 2,000 years. Amongst other things, he explores the foundational impact of the church on the language, laws, education, government and morality of England. He contrasts this with the contemporary decline of Christianity in England, and asks what this means for government, civil society and established mechanisms of authority, as well as for our understanding of history, creativity, belief and truth.

Historian Simon Heffer lays the blame for the collapse of Christianity squarely on the shoulders of twenty-first-century abuses by the Church of England. Omrani identifies the 1960s as the source of the decline. Author John Milbank argues that the rot set in with the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

The Critic magazine review says: ‘The purpose of Omrani’s book is not so much to uncover anything new but rather, at a time when it is desperately needed, to reassert things which were once self-evident.’

With the prime minister an avowed atheist, the leader of the opposition declaring her agnosticism and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, expressing doubts about the existence of God, is it time to hang up the cassock? Is Christianity’s time over? Or is a faith in God essential to renewing our faith in humanity?

Speaker
Dr Bijan Omrani
historian, University of Exeter; columnist; author, God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England

Host
Austin Williams
director, Future Cities Project; honorary research fellow, XJTLU, Suzhou, China; author, China’s Urban Revolution

Bookshop Barnie: Bijan Omrani on God is an Englishman

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RAPE GANGS, POST OFFICE AND SCOTTISH SELF-ID: AN ANATOMY OF THREE SCANDALS
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/rape-gangs-post-office-and-scottish-self-id-an-anatomy-of-three-scandals/

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 Peters
GB News national reporter

Susan Smith
co-director, For Women Scotland; director, Beira’s Place; contributor, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht

Nick Wallis
journalist, presenter, BBC Radio 4 series The Great Post Office Trial

Chair
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!

Rape gangs, post office and Scottish self-ID: an anatomy of three scandals

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DESPISED: WHY THE MODERN LEFT LOATHES THE WORKING CLASS
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/despised-why-the-modern-left-loathes-the-working-class/

Drawing on his background as a firefighter and trade unionist from Dagenham, in his book, Despised, Paul Embery examines the disconnect between the left political establishment and the working class. He argues the left establishment swallowed a poisonous brew of economic and social liberalism and has come to despise traditional working-class values of patriotism, family and faith. Instead, it has embraced globalisation, rapid demographic change and a toxic, divisive brand of identity politics.

Embery contends that the left can only revive if it speaks once again to the priorities of working-class people by combining socialist economics with the cultural politics of belonging, place and community.

In the five years since Embery wrote Despised these trends have arguably developed further. We now have a Labour government mired in controversy over everything from asylum hotels to flags and women’s rights. Can the left fix these problems or are the divisions too deep? What does the future hold?

Speaker
Paul Embery
firefighter; trade unionist; author, Despised: why the modern Left loathes the working class; broadcaster

Jane Sandeman
founder, AoI Parents Forum; former director of finance

Chair
Geoff Kidder
director, membership and events, Academy of Ideas; convenor, AoI Book Club

Despised: why the modern Left loathes the working class

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INCITEMENT LAW: A TOOL FOR CENSORSHIP?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/incitement-law-a-tool-of-censorship/

After riots that followed three fatal stabbings in Southport last year, over 30 people were arrested for social-media posts, and many subsequently convicted. Most prominently, Lucy Connolly was jailed 31 months for ‘stirring up racial hatred’ after tweeting ‘set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care’. Andrew McIntyre received seven and a half years for posting on his Telegram channel a call for attacks on mosques and including maps. But since then, Labour councillor Ricky Jones has been acquitted of encouraging violent disorder when urging attendees at a London rally to cut the throats of far-right protesters. And punk duo Bob Vylan escaped police charges for chanting ‘death, death to the IDF’ to Glastonbury crowds and BBC viewers.

Such cases have reignited debate over the definition and purpose of the charge of ‘incitement’. Sitting at the murky intersection between speech and actions, even firm free-speech advocates draw differing conclusions. In respect of Lucy Connolly, Lord Sumption defended the conviction as consistent with the law. Others, such as Andrew Doyle and the Free Speech Union, said that Connolly’s words either fall short of true incitement or her punishment was disproportionate to the crime. What factors determine an offence of incitement, placing what is said beyond the realm of free speech within the law?

While liberal democracies traditionally drew a clear line between speech and action, this line is blurring. In Britain, ‘hate speech’ legislation can mean that emotional impact is conflated with intent, subjective offence with objective threat, and expressions deemed likely to incite hatred can be punished regardless of whether violence follows.

In the US, incitement is strictly defined by the Brandenburg test: speech must be intended to incite ‘imminent lawless action’ and likely to produce such action. Few cases have ever met this threshold. But growing criticism of a lack of regulations on ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation’, and disapproval of Trump’s actions on free speech, mean that constitutional protections are being tested. Will incitement become an issue in America, too?

How should incitement be defined?  When does robust speech become criminal incitement and how should free speech be balanced with public order? Do we need a Brandenburg test in Britain, or is America’s approach dangerously lax? Is there a danger that protecting public safety is a pretext for silencing people, and that law becomes a tool of political policing, weaponising incitement law for ideological ends? And what counts – or should count – as free speech, even if it’s offensive to many?

Speakers
Albie Amankona
broadcaster; financial analyst; executive member, 2022 Group; champion, Next Gen Tories; general council, LGBT+ Conservatives; co-founder, Conservatives Against Racism.

Steven Barrett
barrister; broadcaster; writer on law, Spectator

Bryn Harris
Chief Legal Counsel, Free Speech Union

Dr Joanna Williams
academic; author, How Woke Won and Women vs Feminism

Chair
Luke Gittos
criminal lawyer; author, Human Rights – Illusory Freedom; director, Freedom Law Clinic

Incitement law: a tool of censorship?

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Is there a case for tariffs today?

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