Five big issues to watch in 2024
My colleagues and I have had a brainstorm on some of the major events and trends that will be at the forefront of debate – and Academy of Ideas work - this year.
Happy new year, and I hope it is a good one for you all. Getting back to work after the holiday break, it is clear that the world has not stopped turning while we were enjoying a mince pie and a glass of Baileys. Wars rumble on in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, most notably. We are already thinking about the debates we might have at our Battle of Ideas festivals in the autumn as well as our other events throughout the year.
Our next Substack will feature videos of debates on international issues from the ‘Eye on the World’ strand at the Battle of Ideas festival last October. In the meantime, members of the AoI team here pick up on five events and trends coming or continuing in 2024: Net Zero, illiberal laws, immigration, world elections and the backlash against DEI policies.
Claire
1. Net Zero will make us all poorer
Rob Lyons, science and technology director
The elephant in the room of UK politics is the policy shared almost unanimously by all the major parties: Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The aim is to eliminate, almost entirely, the use of fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas.
The trouble is that we have no idea how to do it. Yes, we can build a few more wind turbines and solar panels – but they’re unreliable and have to be backed up with something else (at the moment, it’s gas). We could build more nuclear power plants, but their construction has been glacially slow. We’ll be closing old nuclear plants faster than we replace them.
Yet politicians are so wedded to this grand project that they are ploughing on, regardless of the damage it will do to our economy and livelihoods. Even Rishi Sunak’s slight rejigging of the timetable for banning petrol and diesel cars brought down a ton of opprobrium from the political and media class. Admitting that Net Zero is a disastrous and reactionary idea is an existential threat to the worldview of many of society’s movers and shakers.
Worst of all, we have little say in the matter. No party with a sniff of being in government is opposed to Net Zero. It is the best example of how the political class lives in a world set entirely apart from the concerns of the vast majority in society. Stopping it will require campaigns like Together’s No to Net Zero and some politicians capable of seeing sense before it’s too late.
2. Illiberal laws
Claire Fox, Academy of Ideas director
Increasingly, politicians use the law to institutionalise attacks on freedom and we need serious diligence in spotting and exposing the threats. In 2023, the Online Safety Act became law. Despite headlines suggesting this law is all about protecting children, its censorious tentacles are likely to become a real threat to what adults can say, write and access online in 2024.
Watching out for seemingly innocuous laws being used to smuggle in anti-freedom measures is also important. For example, in November, the Conservative government introduced an amendment into the otherwise anodyne Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which would force banks to surveil the accounts of welfare recipients. At present, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) can only ask for access to people’s bank records if it already has evidence of fraud or criminal activity. But this new ‘bank-spying clause’, allegedly aimed at cracking down on benefit cheats, will allow the state to monitor vast numbers of people’s bank accounts, regardless of any suspicions of fraudulent activity. This is a huge civil-liberties breach, especially after last year’s debanking scandal.
While the King’s Speech did not announce a Conversion Therapy Bill, there are two private members’ bills – one in the Lords, one in the Commons – that will ensure this issue will get lots of attention. Any conversion therapy legislation would effectively outlaw attempts by counsellors to explore options rather than simply affirming someone declaring themselves trans, forcing them to nod through social transitioning or medicalised interventions such as the use of cross-sex hormones or radical surgery. It would have a chilling effect on freedom of conscience and speech for medical professionals, teachers or religious groups – who often find themselves offering advice on sex and gender. It is crucial we use the private members’ bills – even if they do not make the statute books - to expose how dangerous any such legislation would be.
Finally, beware of laws that look as though they are opposing censorship. The proposed and awkwardly named Economic Activities of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill promises to outlaw public bodies such as councils and universities from adopting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policies. BDS infamously and disgracefully seeks to delegitimise Israel, and advocates censoring anyone connected with Israel. BDS tactics extend far beyond economic boycotts to attempts to prevent Israeli academics, artists and athletes from engaging with the West. We might note that BDS effectively blames and seeks to punish all Israelis for the actions of the state of Israel, which it singles out as uniquely evil.
Nonetheless, a state boycott of BDS boycotters is itself censorious and instead we need to argue for free speech for all. Let BDS make its case, and let’s commit to vigorously exposing its regressive arguments openly, not hiding behind the law to do the job we should all be engaged in, which is public debate.
3. Immigration
Ella Whelan, co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival
Immigration will be a defining factor in any upcoming election - not least because it has become a catch-all for a multitude of complaints. For some, the immigration debate is about resources, from limited housing stock to packed GP surgeries. For others, controlling our borders is a question of fairness - with the Brexit promise seeming like a distant memory. The immigration debate has also opened up multiple rifts in political parties - from membership of the European Convention on Human Rights to the efficiency of the civil service, and much more besides.
One thing almost everyone agrees on, including a large proportion of their own MPs, is that the current government has failed on the issue of immigration. The Rwanda policy, once a bid to prove that the government was tough-talking when it came to illegal migration, has become a farce, with Rwandan officials now warning the British counterparts not to do anything to upset international bodies. Attempts to solve the cost of processing migrants also seem to fail, with migrants either being locked in hotels or consigned to barges with Legionella in the pipework. And even those who are critical of high levels of immigration balked at recent government announcements to crack down on legal migration, with punitive new rules for dependents and higher income-thresholds for those wanting to live and work in the UK.
While politicians of all stripes treat the issue of immigration as a numbers game - brandishing backlog numbers or claiming to have reduced small-boats crossings - for voters this fails to grasp the complexity of the issue. In Ireland and other European countries, protests and riots have broken out because of tensions around immigration, with many communities feeling like they have no say in how resources are used. Talk about the I-word, and you risk being called a racist.
The best idea Whitehall can manage seems to be to return to Blair-era proposals of detention centres on the Scottish Isle of Mull. And while the Labour Party might be hopeful about an election victory, it has yet to announce any plans for immigration that differ from the status quo. Whatever your view on immigration, liberal or conservative, most of us understand that it is a question of democratic control - who really is in charge? One thing is for sure, unless politicians grasp this challenge, the immigration debate is going nowhere fast.
4. The world goes to the polls
Jacob Reynolds, associate fellow, Academy of Ideas
From the US to South Africa, the EU Parliament to Westminster, 2024 is a bumper year of elections. Given that our elites claim democracy as one of their fundamental values, you’d think we’d see some excitement as the voters prepare to cast their ballots. But instead, this year is being billed as the year that ‘democracy is on the line’. The irony of democracy being seen to be at stake only when actual elections happen is apparently lost on the elite. For one commentator, this year will see the ‘democracy paradox’ in full swing: the paradox being that sometimes elections return results that the political elites don’t like!
But for us freedom-loving guys at the Academy of Ideas, we’ll be relishing this year’s series of polls. We’ll be watching out for the elite to get a kicking. The EU elections will likely see a swathe of populists being voted onto the gravy train between Brussels and Strasbourg – a much-needed wake-up call for the out-of-touch Euro elite. Trump may well send the US chattering classes into a meltdown in the close-fought race in America. And while the unedifying spectacle of a lifeless Rishi Sunak slumping to defeat against that caricature of a technocrat, Keir Starmer, might have us reaching for TV remote, we will watch with interest the results of smaller parties and, perhaps even more importantly, the possible meltdown of the Tory party. And polls in India, Indonesia and South Africa are sure to be fascinating.
So, keep with us this year and we’ll do our best to make sense of it all.
5. Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) under fire
Mo Lovatt, programme coordinator
The New Year heralded some long-awaited and much-deserved criticism of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI). These controversial policies have attracted a range of high-profile critics, from business leaders like Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, to politicians like US Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and the UK’s business and trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch. The debate about DEI is back on the agenda – supercharged, in large part, by the furore surrounding the resignation of the Harvard University president, Claudine Gay, a keen advocate of DEI whose failure to condemn anti-Semitism at the Congressional House Committee hearing in December attracted widespread criticism.
Many of our leaders are waking up to what we, at the Academy of Ideas, have held firm on from the start: that the philosophical underpinnings of DEI are based on a highly divisive system of stratification where people are divided on the grounds of race, gender and sexual orientation and set into an intersectional pyramid of oppressor and oppressed. Rather than judging people on the basis of merit or with regard to viewpoint diversity, they are judged on such factors as sex or skin colour. Equality of outcome is given preference over equality of opportunity, and people’s moral worth is bound up with their immutable characteristics, rather than any sense of individual character, personal accomplishment, or their motivations and actions.
However, freedom lovers can’t afford to take their eyes off DEI in 2024. We see evidence of this across the board. Publicly and most obviously in the uneven policing of the pro-Palestine protests this winter, but also in more subtle ways. This week, for instance, in internal documents sourced by the Telegraph, it was revealed that Camden Council are ‘beginning to ask businesses to demonstrate their commitment to LGBTQ+ equality before we procure them’.
It is clear that Camden Council is among many of our institutions committed to ostracising any business or service that falls foul of that ubiquitous and sinister new mantra: you do not align with our values. The Free Speech Union has supported over 2,000 people across the UK who’ve been disciplined or lost their job simply for having uttered entirely lawful views.
At the Academy of Ideas, we stand against discrimination and ‘cancel culture’ in all its forms, including that done in the name of DEI, and applaud those fighting back. 2024 will see us continue to defend the fundamental tenets of liberal democracy – the presumption of innocence, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech.