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Elections 2026: what next for populism, democracy, Starmer and the Union?
Episode 318
Monday, May 11, 2026 • Duration 59:27
The implosion of the two traditional major parties and the widespread success of Reform (and, to a lesser extent, the Greens) have been widely described as historic, a shifting of the tectonic plates of British politics. But what does last Thursday’s vote mean for the present and future?
The Academy of Ideas team got together in the wake of Keir Starmer’s ‘speech of a lifetime’ to share their post-election thoughts in a wide-ranging discussion.
They also look ahead to two events:
The Academy 2026, the Ideas Matter annual residential weekend of lectures and discussions, which this year is titled ‘Hollow Leviathan: the state against the demos’, on 22 & 23 August.
Podcast of Ideas: Has Scottish devolution been a failure?
Episode 316
Saturday, May 2, 2026 • Duration 01:06:03
Ahead of the elections to the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 7 May, Alastair Donald and Rob Lyons talked to Dean Thomson, author of Scotland Undone: Nationalism, Dogma, and Decline in the Devolution Era. In a wide-ranging discussion, topics included:
Thoughts on what will happen in the election, including the fall and rise of the SNP, the Reform UK insurgency, the decline of Labour and Conservatives
The much-forgotten 'double out' voters who want to leave the UK and voted to leave the EU
How devolution came about and how the SNP went from opponents to claiming it as their own
The rise of the 'lanyard class' in Scotland
The prospects for the future - do we need a more federal UK?
Taking the PIP: who can reform welfare?
Episode 317
Friday, April 24, 2026 • Duration 01:16:37
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The government suffered serious embarrassment earlier this year when its attempts to rein in Personal Independence Payments (PIP) had to be hurriedly scaled back in the face of a backbench revolt. But the scale of welfare payments today remains a huge worry – and there seems little appetite to bring this spending under control. Earlier this year, there was a furore about the scale and availability of cars through the Motability scheme, which runs a fleet of cars said to be worth £14 billion.
According to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP): ‘In 2025 to 2026 the government is forecast to spend £316.1 billion on the social security system in Great Britain. Total GB welfare spending is forecast to be 10.6% of GDP and 23.5% of the total amount the government spends in 2025 to 2026.’ Of this spending, £174.9 billion goes to pensioners and £141.2 billion to children and working age adults. Going forward, an ageing population means these costs will continue to rise – and that’s without the huge liabilities for public-sector pensions.
Moreover, does the emphasis on state-funded welfare make sense? With millions on working-age benefits for sickness and disability, many worry that too many people are being incentivised to remain out of work. A new report by Policy Exchange, Out of Control, identifies how poor incentives and ‘concept creep’ have stretched societal definitions of mental ill-health and neurodivergence so far that public services are stretched to breaking point, with costs of support spiraling to tens of billions each year.Getting people into work would make them better off, reduce the welfare bill and potentially improve the economic outlook, too.
What is to be done? Are politicians prepared to have the difficult conversations, from reducing working-age entitlements to increasing the retirement age? Is the debate unnecessarily gloomy about the UK’s ability to afford welfare in the future? Or will we face an abrupt financial reckoning if nothing is done?
SPEAKERS
Dave Clements
writer and policy advisor; contributing co-editor The Future of Community
Lisa McKenzie
working-class academic; author, Lockdown Diaries of the Working Class
Why is my energy bill so high?
Episode 315
Friday, April 10, 2026 • Duration 01:12:53
The war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have focused attention on skyrocketing energy prices, leading to demands to encourage more output from the North Sea and causing travel chaos in Ireland. But bills were already high before this happened. This discussion with three experts, recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 at Church House in London, explains why - war or no war - we're all paying too much for energy.
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
Heating or eating? That has become a burning question for many people. From struggling households to steel works and factories, energy prices remain a hot topic. Ed Miliband’s assurance that bills would fall by £300 per year looks wildly optimistic.
The cost of energy bills became a major political issue when a combination of a post-pandemic resurgence of the world economy and war in Ukraine sent the price of energy in general, and natural gas in particular, shooting up. Prices have come down a lot since then, but remain higher than before. The Ofgem energy price cap for a ‘typical household’ increased from £1,137 per year in January 2019 to £1,720 in July 2025 – a rise of over 50 per cent.
Supporters of renewable energy argue that the UK is still at the mercy of global prices for gas because ‘gas sets the price’ in the energy market, thanks to the way the ‘merit order’ works for wholesale energy prices: the most expensive form of energy that is used sets the price for everything. Generally, that is gas. Get rid of fossil fuels, we are told, and we would have lower prices and less exposure to world markets.
However, critics point out that the wholesale price is only part of the story. The retail price of energy includes a variety of subsidies for renewable energy that mean the actual price renewable producers receive is much higher. If renewables are really as cheap as their proponents claim, why do they need to be subsidised and why do countries that use a lot of renewables also have the highest energy bills? Will prices rise further as we use even more renewables? And if energy security is so important, why would we want to rely on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar?
In this session, energy experts will explain how our energy bills remain so high and what the consequences are for household finances and the wider economy.
Women and gender: Supreme Court ruling, one year on
Episode 314
Monday, March 30, 2026 • Duration 01:14:38
This debate was part of Battle of Ideas North on 7 March 2026 in Manchester.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The Supreme Court judgement in April 2025, in the case of For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers, was seen as a ‘landmark ruling’ in clarifying the definition of a woman as based on biological sex at birth. The hope was that by clarifying the law, women’s rights, including single-sex spaces, would be protected and, more broadly, gender ideology would wither on the vine. Yet, almost a year on, many institutions have failed to stand by the definition of ‘woman’ set out in the ruling, instead promoting ‘trans-inclusive culture’. They have ignored the need to provide single-sex spaces for women, and retain policies that fuel discrimination against gender-critical staff, volunteers and visitors.
Is this surprising when the UK government itself seems reluctant to fully pursue implementation of the ruling? Having been in possession for months of clear recommendations from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities secretary, has still to publish guidance on single-sex spaces. Similarly, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has been criticised for her weak protection of women’s sport. Her stance focuses on ‘including everybody’ and continues to suggest that the issue of trans athletes competing alongside biological women is not clear cut. The Scottish government has been similarly tardy in implementing the ruling, even though the judgement was specifically against it.
What’s more, public-sector institutions, along with charities, NGOs and trade unions, seem reluctant to accept biological sex as real, and insist on an ideological commitment to trans-inclusive policies, at the expense of women. Many schools and teachers openly defy the ruling in order to support trans ideology, often acting behind parents’ backs.
Recently, trade unions and organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing and Unison have either openly supported action against gender-critical feminists and single-sex spaces or retreated into bureaucratic cowardice, saying action is not possible until guidance is issued. The recent victory at an employment tribunal of eight nurses from Darlington against their NHS trust bosses, who penalised them for challenging the use of the single-sex changing rooms by a trans-identifying male, is a positive. But why do workers need to resort to the courts and tribunals to ensure institutions and workplaces enforce the law?
Letters on Liberty: Abortion and the Freedom to Forge Our Own Fate
Episode 313
Friday, March 27, 2026 • Duration 01:19:18
Following the vote in the House of Lords to approve the decriminalisation of women who have abortions after the legal limit of 24 weeks, the whole issue of abortion itself has once again become highly contested. In that context, this debate – recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October – is very topical.
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
Since 2020, the Academy of Ideas has published Letters on Liberty – a radical pamphlet series aimed at reimagining arguments for freedom today and inspiring rowdy, good-natured disagreement.
In her Letter – Abortion and the Freedom to Forge Our Own Fate – Ann Furedi, an author and former chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, argues that debates about abortion often focus on when human life begins in the womb. Instead, she argues that it is important to consider a different human life – that of the woman.
Furedi argues that the future of a woman’s pregnancy should be for her alone to decide, and this decision ought to be regarded as personal and private. There is no clearer illustration of the way choice, agency and responsibility matters than the consequences of a woman’s decision about her pregnancy, she says. To prevent someone from exercising their own choice, in a personal and private matter, is to strip them of their dignity and their humanity. Most importantly, she argues, we cannot respect the principles of freedom without acknowledging the freedom of reproductive choice.
However, abortion is still regulated by law and legal limits, which can lead to a clash between an individual woman’s rights and policy priorities. This was vividly illustrated by the recent backlash after MPs voted to change abortion legislation to stop women in England and Wales being prosecuted for ending their pregnancy after 24 weeks. The landslide vote to decriminalise the procedure – considered the biggest change to abortion laws in England and Wales for nearly 60 years – was met with horror in some quarters and not confined to traditional anti-abortion circles. For example, even some feminists argued foetal viability creates a clash of rights. So, is abortion such a clear cut issue for women’s freedom?
How does a decision to continue or end a pregnancy relate to a woman’s freedom to shape her own life? With abortion regulation in many US states as well as other countries becoming more restrictive, does this reflect public sentiment? If not, how should we make the case for bodily autonomy in the twenty-first century?
Net Zero or ‘drill, baby, drill’? The future of UK energy
Episode 312
Friday, March 20, 2026 • Duration 01:36:01
With the war in Iran leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, preventing or restricting oil and gas being exported from many of the Gulf states, the UK's energy policy has come to the fore once more. Proponents of renewables claim that a rapid shift to homegrown wind and solar power will spare us from the volatility of international supplies of fossil fuels. Critics argue the UK will need oil and gas for decades to come, but we can produce more, either in the North Sea or by fracking on land.
This debate from the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 is, therefore, highly topical. Where should future energy policy go?
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
In June 2019, the Conservative government amended the Climate Change Act to insert a target of ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050. At the 2024 General Election, all the major political parties, with the exception of Reform, promised to back the goal, with any differences being about when to implement various policies, such as gas-boiler and petrol-car bans. Reform is well ahead in the opinion polls, and calling for the end of Net Zero and the resumption of fracking. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said: ‘We’ve got to stop pretending to the next generation… Net Zero by 2050 is impossible.’ Is Net Zero gradually being ditched?
For proponents of the policy, climate change remains a clear and present danger. The energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband declared in May that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are still backing Net Zero: ‘It’s absolutely central to their economic growth and energy security, as well as climate agenda … So as far as I’m concerned, they are 100% committed to this agenda.’ Labour has stopped new licences for gas and oil production in the North Sea and is committed to expanding renewable energy, with Miliband claiming: ‘People recognise that cheap, clean renewables beat expensive, insecure fossil fuels.’
But fuel bills haven’t fallen as the gas-price crisis of 2022 has faded. UK energy prices remain high by international standards, despite (or because of) the expansion of renewables, something highlighted by the need to rescue Scunthorpe steelworks. In June, it was reported that the government was planning to subsidise energy costs for energy-intensive industries. Sky News reported that in 2023, British businesses paid £258 per megawatt-hour for electricity compared to £178 in France and £177 in Germany, according to International Energy Agency data.
Island of strangers: is Britain broken?
Episode 311
Friday, March 13, 2026 • Duration 01:21:39
Recorded at Battle of Ideas North on Saturday 7 March 2026 at Pendulum Hotel, Manchester.
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
From immigration to an aging population, the UK has been experiencing rapid demographic change just as many mainstays of community life – such as pubs, churches, community centres and trade unions – are in rapid decline. Consequently, while individuals share a common geographic space they seem to live parallel lives, lacking any shared outlook, values and, in some cases, shared language. As Keir Starmer stated (but later disowned), ‘in a diverse nation like ours… we risk becoming an island of strangers’.
One consequence is that communities often seem about to implode. Many bemoan how once-feted towns have been replaced by low-grade sprawl. High streets now display the so-called ‘Yookay’ aesthetics of globally disparate food outlets, proliferating vape shops and barber shops of dubious legality. Young women fear for their safety amidst a series of random – and in the case of grooming gangs, organised – sexually motivated attacks.
Housing illegal migrants within local communities has fuelled protests and counter-protests outside asylum hotels. British Muslim communities feel they are under threat from the backlash, especially after the 2024 Southport riots. What are the prospects then for uniting communities? Or is this fragmentation one key component of why so many feel Britain is broken?
Failing communities once looked to political leadership or the state to help overcome problems. Yet as local elections approach, many worry that elected leaders will reflect and reinforce political and religious sectarian divides rather than overcome them. The police’s reputation is also tarnished. For example, the police failed to investigate grooming gangs for fear of being accused of racism. More recently, West Midlands Police were caught favouring vocal sectarian minorities over the wider interests of local communities when excluding Jewish Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from a football match in Birmingham.
Meanwhile, local councils seem to entrench divides. When locals hung British and St George’s flags in local streets, rather than recognise the prospects for uniting communities around patriotic pride, officials tore down flags while labelling flaggers as ‘racist’ and ‘far-right’ for wanting to celebrate their towns and traditions.
After Greenland: understanding the new geopolitics
Episode 310
Monday, March 2, 2026 • Duration 29:15
This is an extract from the Academy of Ideas Economy Forum discussion 'After Greenland: understanding the new geopolitics', which took place on Tuesday 24 February 2026.
First, economist and author Phil Mullan offers his analysis of what the Greenland affair tells us about the present and future of international politics. Then James Woudhuysen explores the changing nature of warfare today.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
President Trump’s insistence that the US must take control of Greenland has caused a furore, particularly among America’s NATO allies. Many are scratching their heads about why Trump went in so hard – including threatening new tariffs and even military action against America’s supposed friends on the world stage. After all, the US already has the power to station troops and weapons systems in Greenland thanks to a decades-old treaty.
Just weeks after the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, the Greenland controversy was widely seen as the assertion of a ‘Don-roe doctrine’, with America asserting itself in its own ‘backyard’. One thing for sure is that the notion of a ‘rules-based international order’ – more convention than reality – has not been called into question as much in decades.
Trump’s over-riding concern seems to be China as an international rival. The Chinese government continues to demand control over Taiwan and has been marking out a zone of influence in the South China Sea and elsewhere. Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was viewed by many as the return of Great Power politics. Signs that Trump is more interested in settling the conflict than in supporting Ukrainian sovereignty only strengthen that belief.
How can we understand these new developments? Is this a sign of American strength or weakness? Is the world going to be divided into rival regional power blocs? With Europe now unable to assert itself, will it be marginalised now? Is there any chance of a new, stable international settlement?
SPEAKERS
Phil Mullan
writer, lecturer and business manager; author, Beyond Confrontation: globalists, nationalists and their discontents
James Woudhuysen
visiting professor, forecasting and innovation, London South Bank University
Are the old political parties over?
Episode 309
Friday, February 27, 2026 • Duration 01:26:49
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
Victory for the Greens in the Gorton & Denton by-election is the latest sign that old political loyalties have broken down. In what was, even as recently as the 2024 General Election, a very safe Labour seat, Hannah Spencer was elected with a majority of over 4,000. Reform came second, pushing Labour into an embarrassing third place while the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both lost their deposits. Indeed, the three mainstream parties that have governed the UK for over 100 years managed less than 30 per cent of the vote between them.
What does all this mean for the future of British politics?
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
Are the mainstream parties facing extinction or can they bounce back by the time of the next General Election in 2029? Can the Tories recover from 14 years of misrule? Will the Labour Party survive from its current economic woes? Will the political vacuum be filled by Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats or the ‘challenger’ parties like Reform or the Greens?
Take the Conservative Party: the oldest party in the world currently looks as if it is facing electoral wipeout. In a recent survey, 42 per cent of Conservative voters in the 2024 General Election said that even they wouldn’t vote for them. The party that squandered Brexit is desperately looking around for a purpose. Some Tories believe that Robert Jenrick poses a more credible alternative than the current leader, Kemi Badenoch.
But are they both fighting for a hopeless cause? Jenrick’s crime-fighting TikTok videos and Badenoch’s recent support of oil exploration got lots of media coverage, but Net Zero and the current failed model of policing were both introduced on their watch. Are they going back to their roots – if they can remember what those roots are – or are they simply mimicking Trump and Farage’s agendas from the sidelines?
Meanwhile, Labour seems to be imploding. A recent Ipsos poll ranked the current UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, as the most unpopular leader in modern times. In July 2024, his government won almost two-thirds of all seats, with a 174 majority in the Commons, yet a year later it is collapsing in the polls. The government has presided over cuts and tax rises, strikes and bailouts, two-tier justice and a zero-growth economy. The idea that if you pinned a red rosette on a donkey in Wales, it’d get elected no longer holds true.
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CHAIR
Rob Lyons
science and technology director, Academy of Ideas; convenor, AoI Economy Forum; author, Panic on a Plate
SPEAKERS
Lord Mackinlay
director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Kathryn Porter
consultant, Watt-Logic
David Turver
energy policy analyst, Eigen Values
CHAIR
Rob Lyons
science and technology director, Academy of Ideas; convenor, AoI Economy Forum; author, Panic on a Plate
Why are governments and institutions so willing to drag their feet on implementing a ruling given by the highest court in the land? What are the consequences of this for the rule of law, even democracy? How can we rescue institutions from the capture of trans and other ideologies? What is the balance between lawfare and building a wider political movement capable of pushing through change?
SPEAKERS
Emma Hilton
academic scientist, University of Manchester; interim chair, Sex Matters
Bethany Hutchison
NHS nurse
Barry Wall
creator, the winning mindset seminars; youtuber, Court of the EDIJester
Ella Whelan
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want
CHAIR
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!
SPEAKERS
Dr Piers Benn
philosopher, author and lecturer
Ann Furedi
author, The Moral Case for Abortion; former chief executive, BPAS
Margo Martin
PhD student, Aberystwth University
Jacob Phillips
professor of systematic theology, St Mary’s University, Twickenham; author, Obedience is Freedom
CHAIR
Ella Whelan
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want
Will the Net Zero consensus break down further – and should it? At a time when China’s greenhouse gas emissions dwarf those of the UK and are still rising, does it make economic or environmental sense to decarbonise? Or does the threat of climate change demand that the UK takes a lead and we accept lower living standards to save the planet?
SPEAKERS
Jonny Ball
contributing editor, UnHerd
Dr Caspar Hewett
lecturer, School of Engineering, Newcastle University; co-director, NERC FLOOD-CDT; director, The Great Debate
Ruari McCallion
freelance writer
Ali Miraj
broadcaster; founder, the Contrarian Prize; infrastructure financier; DJ
Kathryn Porter
consultant, Watt-Logic
CHAIR
Austin Williams
director, Future Cities Project; honorary research fellow, XJTLU, Suzhou, China; author, China’s Urban Revolution
Who and what should shoulder the blame for the many recent failures? How do we create the places and communities that work for all that live there and which commit to common norms? Given cultural sensitivities and institutional failure to investigate the likes of grooming gangs, what are the prospects of the state finally getting a grip? And given the seeming drift to sectarian political divides, where pride in our communities and the nation is frowned upon rather than celebrated, how can we replace the ‘island of strangers’ and instead strengthen community and belonging?
SPEAKERS
Dr Remi Adekoya
lecturer of politics, University of York; author It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth and Biracial Britain
Ada Akpala
writer and commentator
Lisa McKenzie
working-class academic; author, Lockdown Diaries of the Working Class
Graham Stringer MP
member of parliament, Blackley and Middleton South
CHAIR
Ella Whelan
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want
Far from ‘smashing the gangs’, the immigration scandal that Labour inherited from the Tories means it is haemorrhaging support in Red Wall seats. Preferring Davos over Westminster, Starmer seems to prefer hob-nobbing with world leaders while taking British democracy for granted.
Yet the death of both Labour and the Conservatives has been declared numerous times before, only for them to revive. Is it too soon to count them out? Is Britain’s political map being redrawn, or torn up? Might proportional representation reinvigorate the mainstream parties? Must we wait for four more years? We’ll take a vote on it.
SPEAKERS
Rosie Duffield MP
member of parliament for Canterbury
Dr Richard Johnson
writer; senior lecturer in politics, Queen Mary University of London; co-author, Keeping the Red Flag Flying: The Labour Party in Opposition since 1922
Mark Littlewood
director, Popular Conservatism; broadcaster, columnist, the Telegraph and the Mail
Tim Montgomerie
conservative journalist; founder, ConservativeHome, UnHerd and Centre for Social Justice
Graham Stringer MP
member of parliament, Blackley and Middleton South
CHAIR
Bruno Waterfield
Brussels correspondent, The Times
