[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Good evening everyone.
I'm Tim mason, I'm chief diversity officer for the university, and I'm delighted to welcome you to our inaugural Sheldonian series event on democracy.
The Sheldonian series is a new fixture for Oxford's calendar, and it brings together,
as you can see this evening, students, staff and alumni to engage with the big issues of the day and through it.
We hope to model what free speech,
inclusive inquiry and the vibrant exchange of ideas can and should look like within our collegiate university community.
We're so excited to be kicking things off this evening.
So a big thank you to all of you for joining us in this exciting adventure.
In dialogue this evening. We have a fantastic panel assembled to guide us through the topic of democracy.
On stage you will see Professor Ben Ansell, Sonia Soda, and Henry Zimmerman.
Also joining us on video will be Anne-Marie Slaughter and Professor Simon Johnson from the US.
And our discussion this evening will be moderated by Rachel Silvester, political columnist for The Times newspaper.
And can I say, we're so lucky to have Rachel and our panellists joining us tonight.
It is a truly stellar Line-Up. And to Rachel and the panel, we're looking forward to your thoughts on democracy and its prospects.
Before I hand over to Rachel, it's my pleasure to introduce our Vice Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracy.
The Sheldonian series is the brainchild of the vice chancellors, and ordinarily, she would be here to open proceedings and to convene this event.
Uh, on this occasion, she's unable to join us in person due to urgent business.
But we do have, as you can see, direct online from Nairobi.
And we'll cross to her. Now before we hear from Rachel and the panel.
Vice chancellor. It's Oxford calling. Okay.
Well, Nairobi calling straight back at you, Tim. Uh, wonderful.
And good evening. Uh, dear friends, dear colleagues. Um, it what a packed auditorium.
Looks absolutely fabulous. I am so sorry that I'm not able to join you there this evening.
Sincere apologies. But as Tim mentioned, it's urgent.
University business is taking me there just a couple of days here to Nairobi,
but just thrilled that we've been able to get this event, uh, launched this term.
And I'd like to express on your behalf my sincere and your gratitude to Tim, to David Isaac,
to Julius Grover, who have just taken forward this, uh, with such enthusiasm and energy.
And, uh, tonight is going to be a cracking evening. I absolutely know that.
Huge thanks also, of course, to Rachel, the moderator and all the panellists for the time that they've given up.
Uh, not just their expertise, but, uh, their precious time here this evening to join us very much.
Look forward to listening in to the discussion.
Uh, and so I'll stay tuned and, um, and hand it straight back to Tim and to you all to enjoy the evening.
So thanks so much again for coming. And, uh, apologies once more for not being there, but thanks again to the panellists and to the moderator.
Irene, thank you so much. And, um, this debate could not be more topical.
Um, democracies. Democracy has been on such vivid display this year.
There have been elections in eight of the ten most populous countries uh, Indonesia, in, uh, India,
Mexico, South Africa, France, and of course, the UK and the US have all had elections this year.
But at the same time, uh, visit dichotomy because people are increasingly unhappy with how they are governed.
One recent Ipsos survey found that eight Western in eight Western countries found that
citizens were overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the way that democracy is working.
Um, and in this country, the latest British Social Attitudes survey found that 45% of people almost never trust governments
of any party to place the needs of the country above the interests of their own political party,
and 58% almost never trust politicians of any party to tell the truth when they're in a tight corner.
So most people still think democracy is preferable, as Churchill put it, the worst form of government except for all the others.
But there is there is growing support for more autocratic alternatives, particularly among the young.
One poll found that 42% of 18 to 35 year olds supported military rule,
and 35% of young people felt that a strong leader who didn't hold elections was a good way to run a country.
So democracy is fragile. And I think what we're seeing everywhere is that the driving force in politics now is actually the anti politics mood.
Incumbents are being thrown out everywhere. And that's far more defining I think, than differences of left or right.
Brexit was part of that trend of course.
And Keir Starmer rose up that wave to victory and is now already suffering the consequences of it himself, as in his plummeting poll ratings.
And of course, so is the election of Donald Trump,
a man who boasted he'd be dictator for a day and openly challenge the result of the 2020 presidential election.
Um, so we've got a fascinating panel, as Tim said, Professor Bannon.
So professor of comparative democratic institutions, Sonia Soda, who's chief leader,
writer and a columnist at The Observer, and Henry Zelman, BBC's chief political correspondent.
Um, we've had some questions submitted in advance, so I will be putting some of them to the panel,
and we'll also have some time for questions from, uh, here at the towards the end of the debate.
So please do think about anything you'd like to ask the panellists.
Um, and to kick open the debate, we now have a video from Anne-Marie slaughter, president and CEO of the US think tank New America.
And Anne-Marie is a scholar, author and was also director of public policy in the US State Department during the Obama years.
And interviewing her today is David Isaac, provost at Worcester College and former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
I'm sorry. My first question is what does Trump's victory mean for the United States?
I can do this. I would love to be in the sheldonian proper.
Uh. But I think the question you ask is one that we cannot yet answer.
And one that Americans. From many different places and walks of life are asking themselves.
Donald Trump was elected by a coalition of people who did believe he would do the things he said he would do, uh,
including being dictator for a day and weaponizing many departments against his political
enemies and doing things that we associate with autocracy rather than democracy.
But many of the people who voted for him voted for him, sort of notwithstanding or despite the things he said,
they didn't like him necessarily, and most importantly, they didn't believe he would do those things.
And that is now the great question is a lot of what he does Theatre.
Uh, and in the end, he will govern more as he governed last time, where definitely what he said and what he did were quite different.
That might be because he had a very different staff last time,
and this time he has a very organised staff and they have very clear plans about what they want to do,
uh, with the government, with the system as a whole.
So we just don't know. But we are I think many of us are very worried that we are now in a place we've simply never been before,
where a majority of Americans voted for someone who, at least rhetorically, uh, was rejecting the system, he would not say that's rejecting democracy.
He would say it's rejecting the system. And there's huge anger at the system.
But it may well be a very perilous moment for democracy in America.
And in a way that leads to my second question, which is what is Donald Trump's victory mean for democracy?
Well, it certainly gives strength and confidence and comfort to many right wing populist leaders,
many of whom around the world again say they are, uh, in fact, being democratic.
They are representing the people.
That is the nature of populism, or that it says we are representing the people, and the elites have captured democratic institutions.
They are not representative. They are not representing you.
And we are.
So, again, to talk about democracy often doesn't capture the the range of the threat, which in many ways is really to liberal institutions,
to liberal democracy, a democracy that is premised not only on the will of the majority but the rights of the minority.
From my point of view, certainly from the framers of the American Constitution,
those rights of the minority were as important as the will of the majority.
But now we will see and we are seeing a surge of populism, mostly from the right, but some from the left in Germany,
there's some from the left that is determined to remake our liberal democratic systems.
And that is, I think, deeply worrying around the world.
Henry, you've reported from Washington for the Times and is often said Take Trump seriously, but not literally.
Um, do you think it is fair? So do you think he's going to do what he said?
And if he does, what does that mean for democracy? Do you think [INAUDIBLE] try and stay on for another term?
For example, what do you think his approach will be? Well, on that last point, I mean, he certainly quipped about it,
but it is unbelievably hard in the U.S. Constitution to see how that could happen because it would require a constitutional amendment.
I mean, I should stress, I've not reported from America that I've been locked for four years now.
But one thing that I am really struck by, albeit a transatlantic remove,
is that the intensity of the response from those who lost the election supporters of the Democrats or liberals or progressives more generally,
is nowhere like it was after 2016.
Even if many of them would agree with all the concerns you heard expressed there about the
implications for American society and much more mundane ways and democracy in grand ways.
That same, I mean, after the 2016 election, after Donald Trump's first victory as a massive march in Washington,
within days, the Women's march, I haven't seen anything like that. I don't know whether that is fatigue from eight years of, um, liberals,
to use an imperfect phrase, uh, feeling like they are battling Trump and Trumpism.
Um, I don't know if in some quarters it's a sense that actually it wasn't so bad,
perhaps compared to when four years of a Democratic White House under Joe Biden.
And clearly, mathematically, some people who voted for Joe Biden then voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
I think an extra element to it is that after 2016, there was a sense.
Certainly among plenty of American Democrats who I met that well, he didn't really win properly.
It was a quirk of the electoral system. Uh, he lost the popular vote by really quite some margin to Hillary Clinton.
The Electoral College happened to fall in such a way in the Rust Belt. I mean, no such consolation for those people.
This time. He won the popular vote, albeit not by as much as it appeared in the first few days,
because some states which aren't close at all and nevertheless bewilderingly slow to count.
Um, one other point I'll make, because I spend all my time in Westminster in the UK talking to British politicians,
and partly because they all love The West Wing and Robert Caro's biographies of Lyndon Johnson.
Um, but also partly because America is really important. Basically everyone I've spoken to since November the 5th, or whatever it was, has, um,
been drawing laboured and sometimes not so laboured comparisons to the UK situation here.
And I can tell you that in Keir Starmer's Downing Street they all really spooked,
partly although they would never say this publicly because, uh, it partly because of the implications for democracy.
And, you know, clearly Keir Starmer did not what Donald Trump to win the election in and of itself.
And that would have been the case where he's still a barrister or whether he were prime minister.
Um, but also because a year ago, two years ago, I would have conversations with Labour's electoral strategists and they would say,
look how many models there are for a new centre left popular way of winning general elections.
Olaf Schultz in Germany, Emmanuel Macron, France although, you know, more centrist than the centre left for sure, uh,
Justin Trudeau in Canada, Joe Biden in America, and that textbook that they thought they were following is clearly not there.
And just one final point. What I think is something that is being thought about very deeply, not just in the UK, but around the world.
And you mentioned it in your introduction, Rachel, is we can talk about all the US particular circumstances which might have meant that Trump won,
but there is a irresistible thread across every election.
There's been an awful lot of them this year in the democratic world, which is the incumbents have been walloped,
even if they have ended up staying in government, as in Japan, for example.
They have all gone backwards. And I am obsessed by the question of whether that is just, by the way, has never happened before.
In any year when there's been lots of elections, some incumbents have strengthened every previous year.
Um, so why this year, uniquely, every incumbent gone backwards?
Is that because inflation was especially bad in a world in lots of parts of the
world where people haven't really experienced inflation for a few decades,
or is there something that's happened in society, which means we don't give politicians the benefit of the doubt in the way that we used to.
Or is that something that's happened in politics? That means that they're not delivering what people want in the way that they used to.
I think whichever of those turns out to be the case really will shape what happens in British politics and in global politics for, for years to come.
So fascinating. Sonia, what do you think is the explanation and what do you think Trump's victory means for storm?
I was very struck, um, by that sense that the democracy is seen as something run by a liberal elite and somehow, um,
the disconnect between the electorate and the politicians of the particularly of the centre left and the issues that they choose to highlight.
When we saw it, uh, in America, with Kamala Harris really highlighting abortion when actually people worried about the price of eggs.
Yeah. Uh, what do you think? What are you seeing in, uh, Westminster?
And what are the what are the lessons? So handily, uh, I wrote my column on this, uh, last weekend.
So what are the lessons from the US that that Labour might want to pay heed to?
Uh, and I actually think Labour should be spooked when they look at, uh, the election result coming out of the US.
And that's because the most important factor in that election was the economy, um, was inflation.
Um, you know, Henry's talked about the trends of what's been happening with incumbents.
I think it really highlights that governments get punished when people are really feeling like things are going well for them,
you know, financially and they don't feel like things are going that well for the country.
And I think Labour's, um, you know, in a bit of a bind in some ways,
because I think there are some very long term structural issues with the British economy,
which weren't really that much of a problem for Labour last time around, because we have the city powering growth.
And we had easy credit available as a result of a buoyant housing market.
Those times are gone. There are really big structural issues in the British economy that we've made worse as a result of Brexit.
And I think what we saw in the 20 tens, and actually some of the support for Brexit, was people saying, actually,
this country doesn't feel that great anymore, that, you know, there are very sharp regional inequalities.
That's not how people would put it if you spoke to them. Um, but there are, there are things aren't feeling like they did in the 20 tens.
And I think the conservatives went out and, um, sort of rode that wave of discontent and they said, vote for Brexit and it'll all be great.
Now, I don't think Brexit was a big factor in the last election,
but what what was a big factor was that people felt that the conservatives didn't deliver what they said they were going to do.
And I think that's an issue when you have politicians saying, look,
there are these really long term structural issues, but here's a really easy solution.
And guess what? This time it's we're going to leave the European Union.
Things will be great. And then when they don't deliver that further erodes trust in politics.
Now I think Labour have got an issue. Which is it to fix some of these really long term issues with the economy?
It takes time. Then, you know, they have predicated the whole pitch.
The country as the last lot were terrible. They've left us with a mess.
But we're going to deliver growth. And it's by delivering growth. We're going to do things like fix the NHS.
And I think at the moment they're actually at risk of, um, overpromising and under-delivering.
And I don't think that's because there wasn't the intent there. I don't think it's Rachel Rees's vote.
Personally, I think in broad strokes her budget was absolutely right.
But the problem is it's not a budget that's going to deliver growth in the way that they need it in the next 3 or 4 years.
I'm not sure what that budget would be and what it would look like.
So I think they're in a difficult situation in the same way that Kamala Harris was that, um,
they were in a situation where I think that the OBR growth forecasts and forecasts for living standards weren't great before Trump got elected.
Um, Trump's presidency is going to make things worse, I think globally, um, uh, in terms of the economy.
So the growth forecast could actually be worse for Labour, the living standards could be worse.
And what the OBR in places like the Resolution Foundation have projected, and then they're going back to the country,
kind of like Kamala Harris was in 2024, saying, we know things aren't feeling that great, but vote for us anyway.
And I really think Labour have to be thinking about what their pitch is now.
If things aren't that rosy in four years and just saying things are going to be fixed in four years at the moment, uh, I don't think it cuts it.
I think I think the for me, the big political question is how do you break kind of this populist approach,
which is things aren't feeling great for you. Um, immigration is part of the problem.
Um, politicians and elites are partly the problem. Vote for us and will fix it.
And now Labour's got reform. Who will be saying that going into the next election?
The big, big question for politicians who genuinely want to address challenges that a country faces like we've got in the U.K. now,
is how could you have an honest conversation with the electorate about.
How they won't quick fixes. Labour isn't having that conversation at the moment.
It's had a conversation, which is that everything's so terrible because the last lock messed it up.
It's not having a conversation that's like, actually, guys, you know, things might not be feeling that great in voice time.
Now that's a very, very difficult conversation to have. I don't know how white they go about it.
I think it's an issue because I think like with Kamala Harris, they've actually got somebody at the helm.
Now, Keir Starmer has got a lot of strengths as prime minister. Communication and connecting with voters is absolutely not one of them.
So if they're not careful, they're going to find themselves in a very, very similar position to Kamala Harris in 2024.
That's going to be Labour in 2029. And they may not quite lose the election, but they may lose a lot of seats.
And they may actually I have never said this sort of 3 or 4 months ago.
They may lose the next election even though they've got that huge stonking majority.
Some of those majorities in those seats are very, very small.
So they've they've got to think very, very carefully about what they deliver in the next few years and how they talk to people about it,
because I don't think the current strategy is, is quite right. Mhm.
Ben, I want to just take a step back a bit from the day today.
And there's a question here from David. Ben's in the audience.
Um, is the free and fair election of a leader with authoritarian tendencies such as Donald Trump or Viktor Orban,
evidence that democracy doesn't work because democracy ought to keep power away from leaders who abuse it,
or that democracy does work, because giving power to those abusive leaders is what the majority sincerely wants.
And I think it's really interesting.
You said in your Reith Lectures that democracy is supposed to be about ruling ourselves, so why are we so unhappy with our choices?
And I just wonder what your reflection would be on those two thoughts.
There actually is the electorate to blame. Well, it's all been a bit depressing so far, hasn't it?
Um, and I don't want to depress everybody because this is the year to 2024 that's had the most people able to go out and vote in the world.
2 billion people or 2 billion people live in countries where there were free and fair elections this year.
I think that's something that if we are standing back, we should stand back and say, well, surely this isn't a terrible thing.
Now, one of the best known political scientists who studies democracy is the NYU professor Adam Kane.
He has a very nice definition of democracy, which is democracy is a system in which parties lose.
Well, we saw a lot of that this year. And so that's a big success for democracy that we could kick the bums out.
And lots of bums got kicked out all around the world.
Now if you kick everybody out every single time, then I guess in the end there's not really any incentive to govern well.
But I suspect that this won't happen again in quite the same way.
So I think we want to be a bit careful before signing The last Rights of democracy,
because it's not only the case that strongmen rulers were elected in free and fair elections in the US.
Um, you know, maybe less so when even the Hungarian elections are not.
They're not authoritarian, although they're imperfect. But strongmen leaders in India, in Turkey, they fell backwards in the vote.
So if we'd been having this lecture series in October,
I think we could have actually told quite an optimistic story about how the strongmen of the world were doing.
But because we've ended on the note of Donald Trump or indeed the Romanian elections, uh,
of for the presidency, where the final two include a populist who came from nowhere.
Well, now we're telling a slightly different story, and we don't want to get obsessed with the last piece of news.
Let me just say one final thing.
Uh, an ageing president who was, uh, a commanding legislator who stands down because there's foreign policy crises and high inflation.
A vice presidential candidate who moves into the position at a conference held in Chicago,
where the opponent is somebody who's been in the Oval Office beforehand,
is much hated by the public, and nobody thought that they would ever return to power.
That's 1968. Okay. It's also 2024.
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Maybe we don't want to go back to the Nixon administration.
Maybe those of you who don't like Donald Trump can hope that there's a Watergate.
But we have been here before, and I know there were many assassinations that year.
You know, people who listen to the rest is history can listen to their wonderful five part series,
the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King of Robert F Kennedy Jr.
And there were attempted assassinations of Donald Trump this year, two of them.
We should be very glad those didn't happen. But that's not that long ago.
Right. That's that's the period in which my father and mother were in their 20s and 30s.
So we've been here before. Let's not panic too much.
And the other thing that's happened is just politics has become so much more polarised.
So it's not just left and right, it's sort of almost you're right.
You know I'm right. You're wrong. I'm good. You're evil.
Um, so your point isn't, do you do you worry about the state of free speech?
It it's almost become impossible for people to disagree in a civil way.
It's become people shouting at each other on Twitter, but also in Westminster and on campus.
Yeah, I do worry about it. And I think social media plays a big role in it, actually.
And some people might say, oh, well, it's just Twitter or X, like, you know, we can still have normal conversations in the real world.
But unfortunately, I think that the way that we interact with each other in social media and it is very polarising, you know,
these social media companies make a lot of money out of, um, fermenting, um, uh, you know,
fermenting hate, not just hate, but people being really quite mean to each other.
You know, sometimes when I use X, because of the way it's structured, you find yourself writing a really grumpy response to someone and you're like,
hang on, I said, maybe they didn't mean it quite like that, and maybe you don't need to go back with this.
So and I think it affects the way we talk about things, um, in the real world as well.
So the way our politicians talk about things in Westminster,
and actually we were just having a conversation about assisted dying before coming on stage,
which is, you know, it's clearly an issue that people feel really, um, very, very strongly about.
I've got show me health views. Other people have shown me health views.
But I think it's when you look at how it was discussed in 2015 and how it was being discussed now, it's a huge difference.
And now it's almost like if you don't support this, you're really awful.
Or perhaps, you know, if you if you're supporting this, you're a bad person.
And I do worry about that.
I also think when you mention free speech, Rachel, and, you know, obviously it's important not to be sort of too hyperbolic, shall we say.
But I do think there's an issue with free speech increasingly in our society now and probably in the US.
If you look at it and I think our culture has become more censorious.
So one of the issues that I write about a lot is a politics of sex and gender.
Yes, it's very controversial. I'm a gender critical feminist.
You know,
I think biological sex is important and remains relevant in some areas of law in society and can't be replaced by the concept of gender identity.
Some people in society to think seem to think about view is not just hateful, it should not be allowed.
There were women who've lost their jobs for holding that view. They're women.
And who have been bullied and hounded out of institutions.
Uh, there are people who've had the police go knocking out, warn them about making posts about this on social media,
perfectly lawful posts where the High Court and the Court of Appeal have had to come in and say,
actually, in this country we don't have Esterhazy yet.
We've got the police behaving unlawfully and trying to police people's speech.
That's a huge issue. And I think we do need to think about how we wrote back from that.
You know, there's also a big debate about academic freedom and free speech in universities,
too, around what universities legal obligations are and how we should enforce them.
You know, this Labour government has decided to pause the implementation of the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Bill,
which I think, you know, there were probably things that needed to be tweaked tonight.
But it's a shame because there there's clear evidence that in some universities,
academics are not at universities and colleagues are behaving unlawfully.
Um, uh, two academics who hold views that are unpopular, for example, on sex and gender, but also say there's been a case of an academic who,
um, you know, has been disciplined by a university for saying things on China that her Chinese students didn't like.
That's incredibly worrying. So I think there is an issue, and I think we need to think about.
My worry is, is that the debate about free speech itself has become polarised.
And you have people defending the free speech of people they agree with, but not who they disagree with.
So, you know, this big war with Alison Pearson?
I share very few political views with Alison Pearson, but I thought it was extraordinary that for a tweet that I thought,
you know, used racial stereotypes, was nasty, was incredibly unwise, that the police were investigating it as a criminal matter.
It was absurd. And I'm willing to speak out and say that and say that's problematic.
Too often, though, people just defend people on their own side.
And so you have the left, you know, kind of like fitting, you know, the left sort of see free speech as a right wing issue and sometimes vice versa.
And that is a very bad thing, because if we've got the police going round and knocking on people's doors and saying,
you need to watch what you say because you can't say that. And if we've got people filing non crime hate incidents against other people
because they just don't like what they say and they find it a bit offensive,
that is problematic. And it means that we don't have the, you know, on sex and gender.
We have not had the Democratic debate that we need to have because people are too scared.
And that is wrong because that's how you get bad policy.
Henry, there's also an issue, isn't there, with the online world about different versions of truth.
So whether it's online conspiracy theories, fake news, you know, in one way the internet has democratised information anyone can post.
You know, you've got citizen journalists, um, anyone can say their truth, as it were.
But on the other hand, that's led to a kind of lack of a shared reality.
And actually, there is a truth. Um, you know, you had Michael Gove in the Brexit campaign saying British people have had enough of experts,
but actually there needs to be some sort of expertise and truth in the world.
Do you think that's a problem? Has the internet been a force for good in that way, or force for bad?
I don't know. And I mean that in a genuine sense.
I don't know the extent, partly because of my age, uh, to which there ever was a shared reality.
I mean, my understanding is that and I wish this was still the case, but professional reasons that 20 or 30 years ago,
people were, you know, newspapers were in rude health because people would go out and buy one of them.
And they would do that every day because that was their way of finding out what was happening.
Uh, and they would read that newspaper and therefore the editor of that newspaper, uh,
who probably was a man who went here, uh, which, uh, would curate their view of, uh, not necessarily their view, actually.
Sorry. But, you know, you're right there, um, their own version of what sort of spectrum and constellation of opinions was commercially viable?
Um, nothing wrong with that. But, you know, uh, I actually wonder if, um, in a funny way,
polarisation is partly the fact that people can see much more of what other people think and say than they ever used to.
Uh, and whether there's more actually, therefore more inflammatory discussion in debate in society, because, uh,
people are more keenly aware in a way that perhaps didn't used to be the case of what other people were saying.
But look, clearly, um, you know, misinformation, uh, is a problem.
I think the democratisation of information is a good thing in many ways.
Um, I actually am sort of slightly gripped by the ways in which I feel, even in the ten years or so that I've been reporting on Parliament in the UK,
I feel like the incentive structure of the internet as compared to a newspaper or a TV bulletin,
um, doing a sort of old fashioned gallery report of this.
This person said this in the House of Commons and then this passive citizen response.
People are now optimising and politicians are now optimising completely rationally, by the way, optimising their behaviour or social media.
Um, I think that has made parliamentary debate in the truest sense of the word debate much worse.
And perhaps we're seeing this in assisted dying. MPs stand up and deliver clips for social media.
Uh, they don't engage with what the previous speaker said, because why would you?
People aren't going to say it in that context.
Um, and I think that combined with some sort of other structural things about who are becoming politicians,
and I'm sure by the way, this is the case in other, um, countries, and I'm pretty sure it's the case in other countries,
because pretty much if I ever see a speech from a U.S. Senator or House of Representatives or someone in another country,
it's because it's been clicked on social media and I'm watching it that.
Um, so I think there's all sorts of distortions beyond misinformation, disinformation and so on in which, uh,
which are the product of what is clearly a radically different and increasingly different is it's very much an ongoing process.
Uh, you know, changes to the way in which we absorb information. We've got another video clip now from Professor Simon Johnson,
an Oxford alumnus who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for research on global inequality.
And he's being interviewed by Doctor Julius Grover, the um, smart fellow in law at Saint Hugh's College.
So the first question is, it is impossible to think about the global dimensions of democracy without considering questions of power,
inequality and technology. What role do you think technological advances are having on global democracy?
Well, I think technology unfortunately of late, has had a really, um,
adverse effect on democracy because what we've seen over the past 40 years, and this is a big reversal compared to the previous 100 years.
But over the past 40 years, new technology, particularly in the form of digitisation, has put a lot of pressure on the middle class.
We lost a lot of middle class, middle income jobs in many economies, including the United States and many parts of Western Europe,
and people who were previously in those jobs got pushed down to the lower end of the labour market and the lower and lower end of the labour market.
United States real weekly earnings for men have barely budged since the 1960s,
which is extraordinary when you consider all the things that that have happened in supposedly progress has gone on.
But a lot of people watch that and say, well, look, my dad was better off, my grandfather was better off, my dad was better off.
You know, I can't keep this house that I've had. The whole community may be disintegrating.
And it's not all technology. It's also globalisation has played a role in the decline of trade unions.
But at least in our analysis, um, it's about technology and automation and digital technologies that are really,
really, really had the biggest negative effect on, on democracy, uh, through that mechanism.
Thank you. And can I ask what kind of reform or changes do you think are necessary for strengthening democracy right now?
Well, I think the biggest, most important thing to strengthen democracy is something that's fairly easy to say,
incredibly hard to achieve, which is we need to redirect the way in which technology developed,
particularly artificial intelligence, AI,
so that it doesn't just benefit people at the top with a lot of educational people who went to Oxford, frankly.
But it also benefits people who didn't go to university at all.
So in the United States, with a recruit of people who did not go to four year college,
and that's the focus of our research group, how to, um, develop AI both as a sort of technology,
but also as a set of applications and tools that make people with less education more productive,
because if they can become more productive, that opens a pathway to higher pay and better standard of living and so on.
And and if it doesn't help them, only helps people at the top, um, with really good degrees or even post-graduate education,
then you're going to be further exacerbating polarisation and I think undermining democracy.
So I could go either way. We hope and, and and we want it to strengthen the middle and strengthen the lower end of the education scale.
Um, but that's going to require a pretty big pivot from the US technology sector.
And I think other technology players around the world.
And I just tack on one last question very cheekily then, and ask you if you think it's likely that Western liberal democracies,
the states, the United Kingdom will be able to get on the right side of the curve of technological advance?
Or are you afraid for the future? Well, I'm certainly concerned about the future of democracy, but it's under a lot of pressure right now.
And this is a very tough moment in the United States for for obvious reasons.
I do believe that democracy of the kind that has been built in this Western tradition is really remarkably resilient.
And I do think there's a lot of people out there who are smart, who've got money,
who who would want the middle class to get stronger and want people working,
people to get decent pay and be able to, you know, afford to live in a reasonable fashion.
So I think there's a lot of positives we have going for us, but we don't currently have a strategy that that's clearly articulated.
We don't have leadership. We don't know which companies are building this.
The way to make a lot of money quickly is to run digital advertising that manipulates people and really hurts children is super bad for democracy.
So for all the short term indicators are pointing in a bad direction.
But it's a choice. It's always a choice you have about technology.
And this is a massive one. And this is one that we advocate for.
And also I mean, we're economists, not engineers, but we work with a lot of people who are on the science engineering side,
particularly at MIT, which is pretty strong global hub with this.
And I'd say at the level of people who invent stuff, they get it and they are interested in doing something differently.
But then there's a profit motive. Where's the money come from? Who wants the rate of return?
How can we scale this?
And so there's real difficult pressures that to us resemble early days of the industrial revolution, when Manchester, in the north of England.
I'm from Sheffield but utterly transformed and a set of people got really rich.
But ordinary working people didn't see much movement in their wages for 40 years, 60 years.
I mean, that's incredible, right? Given the machinery that was introduced. And if somebody says to you, hey, good news, AI is going to boost your.
Income and income of your children in 60 years. Right.
That's too long to wait. And that's going to just feed the frustration. Fantastic.
Thank you very much. Cheerio. Um. Then how much of this, uh, rise in populism is driven by economic factors?
Is it really a kind of frustration with that sort of growing economic inequality?
Well, one way to look at this is to take some of the examples Simon gave there
historically about moments of great technological change and economic disruption.
And, and look at what happened after them. Right.
And the early industrial revolutions, followed by the revelations of 1848,
the last great era of globalisation at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries,
followed by the First World War and then 20 years of authoritarian regimes.
And then we had this very managed globalisation after the Second World War.
That's when the IMF and the world Bank and GATT and the Bretton Woods agreement and all of our currencies aligned with one another.
A lot of grist was put in the mill there.
And perhaps it's not coincidental, then,
that you had these 30 great years afterwards where everywhere except for Britain, which has like ten gradients.
But, you know, the French, Italians, they had this great era of growth.
And then over the last 30 or 40 years, we've been back in the same hyper globalised world, hyper winner take all world,
where our levels of inequality look very much like those that prevailed in the first 20 years of the 20th century.
And so we should be worried. We don't want again to talk about history rhyming and repeating.
Well, we don't want a repeat of the interwar years. So I think there's good reason to think that economic dislocation matters.
With that said, it's not totally clear to me that, for example, the election of Donald Trump is just because of left behind Americans.
It's true. Everybody hates inflation. We now know that. Had we forgotten it from the 1970s, we have been reminded that everybody hates inflation.
But Donald Trump was not elected by the most poor and dispossessed people in America.
There are a lot of reasons, some very mundane, like not like inflation,
some cultural in nature about people not liking what they perceive to be changes
in how society thinks about race and gender and sexuality and so forth.
Some people who are attracted to strongman politics, so there's quite a lot going on, and I don't think we want to blame everything on Elon Musk.
And I, um, I think that politics is diverse and interesting because there are so many things that compel us as humans.
And if we start saying, gosh,
if Labour can just fix the economy and just make sure that the left behind aren't left behind anymore, they'll win an election.
We might find, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did after biodynamics, that they say, no thanks.
See ya. Um, yeah. I mean, I just want to clarify that's not what I'm saying, but I do think, um, economic growth is pretty key to Labour's pitch.
Like if people aren't feeling better. So I'm not saying that's all they've got a job.
If they haven't done that, they've got a big political problem or that necessary, if not sufficient.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. The one thing I'd add to that,
the the lesson that they definitely take from Joe Biden and his fortunes is that even growing the economy might not be sufficient,
because if you just exactly if you just say to people, no, no, no, you don't understand GDP.
So for example, in a case, Starmer for two years, probably before the election,
didn't you notice talked about his five missions as distinct from the six first steps to change and the priorities.
Anyway, uh, that's my problem to get my head around.
Um, but number one, the mission, the growth mission, the way that they are to and this is still government policy,
not the way they are to show that has been achieved as if the UK gets the fastest economic growth
of any G7 country over the first parliamentary term by the end of the first parliamentary term.
Now, never mind that they can't control the other six. Um, they can try to pay them.
Well, I think there is an increasing view in the Labour Party that they can't just shout at people.
No, no, no, you don't understand. Growth is really fast.
They need to find a way to be able to feel astonished that, well, that's where the key thing is, the living standards forecasts.
And when you look at the living standards forecast for the next four years, they're pretty grim, basically,
that the forecast is this will be the worst parliament in terms of average wage growth apart from one other in recent history.
And, um, people don't like that because they don't feel that I was talking to somebody who runs lots of focus groups,
and he was saying to me, um, you know,
that the sort of overwhelming feeling in focus groups at the moment is and it's right across the income spectrum,
I go out to work, I'm doing the right thing, and I've got nothing to show for it at the end of the month.
And people don't like that and they punish governments for that.
Um, I'm gonna open up to questions in just a moment, but there's one question in advance, and I think you might be the person to answer this.
This is from Dylan Turner. Uh, given the UK's constitutional monarchy has evolved over time to encompass both democratic and non-democratic elements,
creating a system that's actually more stable and less volatile than others, such as for America.
Is it time we stop looking at democracy as a panacea to political problems and re-embrace elements of the non-democratic?
Re embracing the non-democratic. What a what a motto to have.
Uh, I guess I would argue that the United States is substantially less direct democratic than the UK in all kinds of ways.
I mean, it is the land of James Madison. It's the land of separation of powers, checks and balances of governments at every level.
There are, you know, there are a couple of ways to think about democracy. That's that Madison, in a way that people aren't angels.
So they have to be checked all the time. And then there's a kind of Robespierre weird way that there's a pure democratic will.
And I'll cut your head off if you don't agree with me about it.
Um, I suppose having an independent monarch having non-democratic elements in democracies is very common,
and it's not a bad thing, because those non-democratic parts often just mean you can't do everything you want.
Immediately they chain Robespierre down.
That's a good thing. But that might be the House of Lords as well.
Or it might be our judicial system, or it might be a free press, both private and public.
And on the House of Lords, I would say, actually, I'm somebody who doesn't think the House of Lords should be elected.
I would reform it for sure. But, um, I yeah, I don't think having a second elected chamber is going to add anything to our democracy.
Henry, what about do you think democracy has had its day? Um, well, uh, I, uh, I definitely can't have a view on that as a BBC correspondent, but I.
Put it this way. I certainly, uh, so. Yes. No, I mean, one thing and I'm sorry to make this parochial again, but one thing I think.
We are going to hear an awful lot more of in the UK.
Political debate over the next few years is whether our particular way of mediating voters preferences, i.e. first past the post, has had its day.
So because and this is an extremely premature thing to say just four months after a general election,
but one of the most striking things about the general election was that it was, uh, electorally, a massive win.
Parliamentary terms, a massive victory for the Labour Party. But they only got 33% of a relatively low turnout vote.
Um, there's nothing new in that in the sense that Tony Blair did that after the voters were wearied by eight years of him.
There is something distinctively new about that. At the start of, uh, party's electoral government cycle.
And the polling so far post election suggests the, uh, the support for the Reform Party, it's not going away.
Certainly hasn't yet support for the Greens to Labour's left. Um, independents got elected in numbers like never before at the general election.
Um, so I think, well, if you have a general election, you probably won't.
But if you have a general election in 2028 or 2029 with um,
party vote share along the lines of what opinion polls are suggesting at the moment is utterly unpredictable to me.
What first past the post then spews out from the geographical complications and all of that.
I think you will hear people talking about that in the next few years.
It's not quite democracy, but it is quite important to how we experience democracy and our preferences becoming outputs.
And I think it's just worth saying, in case people aren't aware,
this last general election is not only the lowest two party share in modern history of the vote, Labour and the conservatives.
It's actually the lowest three party share. But our system is totally multi-polar and how people are voting and totally bipolar
and what happens in Parliament at the end and I just it it's increasingly untenable.
I think, uh,
if our voters aren't behaving in the way that our system is used and you've got a coalition of left and right now advocating reform because reform,
the Reform Party was a million votes.
Um, and how many seats and the Liberal Democrats are now a bit quieter about electoral reform have been delivered far more MPs.
That's a key thing there, isn't it? So I remember I did Theory of Voting as my, uh, one of my, um, focuses here.
I'm politics. Oh, I loved it. It was actually my favourite course because I'm a massive geek.
But the big takeaway from that course for me was there's no such thing as a fairer voting system.
Your electoral system has to work with the electorate.
And, um, as Ben says, there is now a mismatch, which we've got really we've got more fragmented electorate.
Um, first past the post. It works well if you've got lots of people voting for the two main parties, you know, you get this system.
It doesn't work as well when you're fragmented. So to go completely against what I just said, nothing is permanent 2017, which is not that long ago.
The two party share. I can't remember what it was, but it was massive.
And that was under Theresa may and Jeremy Corbyn, two leaders who were not especially popular then,
and certainly we don't think of as having been particularly popular now.
Uh, and that was on quite high turnout. So. We as a society and as voters.
Uh, pretty weird. And I've been very wary of drawing the sorts of conclusions that I've attempted to draw out.
Are there any questions? And if possible, if you if I've already read out your question, don't ask another one.
I don't know how it would be reading here. I don't know, I think we have some roving mikes.
And I'm going to take three questions at once and then come back to the panel if that's okay.
If it, um. So then okay here, then there and then do you want to go first?
Thank you. So can you hear me? Yeah. So I'm Peter Burke from Oxford for Europe.
And my interest is particularly, I suppose, in, um, how the electoral process can be converted.
I mean, um, many people feel that that's what happened in 2016, in this country.
And certainly the evidence of that in the states this year.
And I think part of the problem is that, uh, and it's not about people voting the wrong way, because clearly that's meaningless.
But people sometimes vote against their own best interest.
And part of it is, I think, over overreliance upon the will of the people, the belief that people can't get those, can't get it wrong.
Um, I mean, blind majoritarianism, um, and and the fact that, um,
often candidates are unable to stand for election and win despite the fact that they wouldn't qualify for any normal job,
um, uh, certainly Donald Trump and possibly I said Boris Johnson having been sacked twice and would be in that position,
they wouldn't pass deficient proper person test.
So my question is this should we have some moderating system on the electoral process that ensures that, um,
people actually aren't coming forward without passing a basic test, uh,
and that people are not in a position to make a choice that is, uh, against the national interest.
Okay. Uh, there was a question at the front here. Hello.
Thank you. Um, it seems that one of the issues about democracy today is that minority groups or minority opinions,
um, aren't brought into the mix and that people end up feeling cross and, um, valued and listened to.
And I wonder if you are an advocate for democracy.
How you building a system that enables those people and viewers to feel included, and for the majority to want to include them?
Um, and then there was a question on the second row that. Thank you.
Um, so in the context of Cop 29 and the urgency of climate action, is it ever justifiable to override democratic processes to implement,
say, um, climate policies that are essential for human survival even when these measures face significant, uh, public opposition?
And so, um, how can governments balance the need for decisive action with the principles of democratic governance?
Okay. And you want to stop it? When can you override them?
It's such a good question and very well framed. It's a little bit like compulsory purchase orders for a high speed railway.
So something like somebodys right gets transgressed for some greater perceived collective good.
Um, governments do this in wartime all the time.
Governments did it during Covid, and I think it's just worth, by the way, saying we haven't mentioned Covid yet.
And if we're looking for things that might have caused the massive public dissatisfaction with government that the last few years would,
you know, that's exhibit A, I think, the challenge for climate change.
In terms of compelling people is that unless the disaster is upon us,
most people will not be fully convinced that now is the time to stop or do something.
So it is a bit of a problem from [INAUDIBLE] where it's asking people to do something preparatory,
something prophylactic to prevent the really bad thing that is still in the distance from happening.
And I suspect, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on your views of how important it is to listen to people,
that kind of compulsion is not going to be possible until people see the heat, damage their property or damage their loved ones.
Um, Henry, do you want to pick up on the fit and proper person question?
Um, any of the questions? Well, I mean, I guess on that.
You know, it would seem to me that the other way of looking at what you laid out is, you know,
perhaps if the public keep electing people who would not guess, you know, as you put it, would not get appointed in any other walk of life.
Well, you know, might suggest the public has a different opinion of who is a fit and proper person,
to use your phrase in general, than, uh, the corporate world or the academic world or whatever, whatever it may be.
But it is very thought provoking with, um, putting in it. Um, I mean, just on on the excellent climate change question.
I mean, I think, uh, as you said it, I thought, yes,
we should have discussed the fact that if we're talking about the future prospects of democracy, um.
Actually in the UK and in any individual country, but certainly globally.
Um, the uh, shifts brought about by climate change, be it, you know, what is what.
Might happen to particular countries, but also what that might mean for flows of people around the world, um, is going to be hugely significant.
But also you can see this in the UK a bit.
There was a political consensus on how to handle climate change in a way.
Uh, you know, a few years ago, Theresa may did not think I'd mention her once, let alone twice this evening.
But Theresa may, uh, introduced net zero target into law.
Um, the Conservative Party is clearly moving in a more sceptical direction, not on the existence of,
uh, manmade climate change, but on, uh, the best ways in which to mitigate it.
Um, and I suspect that will only be more the case as more people experience what, uh, you know, the proponents of, uh, climate mitigation would,
would accept what are, you know, serious costs to be borne by people who are not necessarily at the,
uh, hard end of of the impacts of global climate change.
So, you know, it's something I think about a lot. And I think we're all going to be thinking about a lot in the years to come.
So I wonder with these questions will actually link Sonya in this idea of a tyranny of the majority and minorities not,
uh, being ignored, and also issues that where perhaps it's not in people's self-interest to support change.
Um, do you think there is an issue there? Um, so I guess the first thing I'll say is I'm quite sceptical of limits on, um, democracy because,
you know, I very much do think it's sort of the best of best of a bunch of bad systems.
But the idea, like, who's, who's going to put those limits on who's going to do the fit and proper person says, yeah, this is what democracy is.
It's messy. And, you know, people are going to disagree with you.
And yeah, that there are there are limits to it and there are breaks within the system.
But, um, I find the idea quite chilling, actually,
that some people know best and they get to decide and it shouldn't be left up to, um, democratic systems.
And I think that's probably true with climate change as well, actually. I mean, I don't think the world is taking enough action on it.
Nowhere close. But I mean, I'm sorry you've got to, but the public have to change their minds on it or the public can.
And that's actually, I don't think the public key issue really, when you look at polling,
certainly in the UK on, on climate change, um, the issue is actually a lack of political, um, action.
And it's very, very difficult to coordinate international action.
So, um, but, but, you know, you've got to take the public with you, like, you just have to.
And if you can't convince, I'm sorry. Um, now that gets in pose, you be what?
Everyone else. Um, on the question about minorities, it's interesting.
I probably turn it on its head because I actually think that we're in a position in the UK where in some debates,
we've had this extraordinary situation where minorities are saying we've got this minority view, like on sex and gender.
If you don't agree with us, sorry, you're we're shutting you out of the debate.
And that has happened. It's an elite minority. Um, people with the majority view like me.
Women have lost their jobs for holding that view.
So I would bring it back actually to viewpoint diversity and the fact that actually there's going to be lots of different characteristics out there,
lots of protected characteristics in the language of the Equality Act in terms of age, gender, race,
sexuality, etc. we've all got to be able to talk to each other, and we've all got to be able to respect that.
We've got different views and, you know, not think that because somebody differs from you slightly on one issue or has a strongly held view slightly,
or, you know, on one issue that kind of hateful and should be excluded from the democratic realm.
So I think that's a much bigger risk actually. The minorities not getting hurt at the moment.
I just want to add one quick thing on this, because I think it's in common of all of this. I we're we're on the stage here.
We could talk about how the world should be and, and I've said this before,
but I think the most dangerous words in English language are, I'm from Oxford University and I'm here to tell you what to do.
But, um, democracy is not just about listening to those of us who happen to be on a podium on a given day.
And I do think that many people in my technocratic part of the world, both in government and in business and in academia,
felt like because we had figured out the answers everybody else said should just go along.
And we're seeing this with the debate on climate change right now, which is that saying, oh, everybody wants to do something about net zero,
and let's not talk about the policies that actually have costs and let's get mad at people for opposing firm has backfired quite quickly.
And we have to be honest with people and treat them like adults rather than pretending we can hide all the bad stuff away.
And that comes back to the point I was making, actually, about politicians being able to have an honest conversation with voters.
I don't think voters feel like they're treated like grownups by a lot of politicians,
because politicians just lie and pretend there aren't any trade offs and pretend things aren't difficult.
I think if politicians were actually to say, look, we've got a lot of really big challenges as a country around the economy,
but also around housing, around universities, around the fact that our birth rate is falling.
And actually, if you think today's fiscal issues are, you know, a problem, just you wait until 51.
I honestly think if politicians would do a bit more honesty and levelling with people,
it might be difficult, but it, you know, it might get some traction.
I also think there's what Tony Blair's call division thing with that.
And I think this is part of the answer to the minority question, which is that when I go around the country and, you know,
during an election campaign or whatever and meet, uh, and to talk to voters about how they're, how they're thinking about politics.
Uh, yeah. Once the swearwords are out, the out the way, they'll talk about Blair or Thatcher and say,
you know, I didn't necessarily, uh, an Americans would say this to me about Trump, actually 20, 20.
I don't necessarily agree with them on anything or many things. But, you know, I know what they I know what they're doing.
And I do think, you know, perhaps if politicians had more of an inclination to or I think it is the politicians
who have the most inclination to sort of lay out a clear sense of direction,
who can often be the most successful in carrying with them the people who disagree with them.
It's called being a leader, I guess. Indeed. So we're out of time.
We could carry on for another four hours, but it's been absolutely fascinating,
and I think we've now got, um, a message from, uh, Irene is going to be joining us from Nairobi, I think.
I certainly am. Well, what a fantastic evening and a just a brilliant discussion.
I can't thank you enough for orchestrating and, uh, giving us the time to be, you know, pushed in our thinking around these various topics.
Certainly, I have really enjoyed it, and we'd love to come back on some of the ones, particularly.
I have a pet peeve around sort of how we can manage social media, particularly for our students.
It's a very challenging world for them to navigate that. And so there's some really interesting, I think, uh,
touch points that you've given us that we can follow up on subsequently with other talks, the whole sort of climate issue.
You know, I've often said it's a real challenge as neuroscientists, you know, to discount pay now for reward later.
It's really hard for humans to do that. And I think we've seen that, you know, writ large in the way that we're not managing the climate crisis.
But so many other fantastic points.
I think, you know, the overriding sort of summit for me is I think it's okay that, you know, we should take, as Ben said, you know,
positivity that we have got to a place where we're having more democratic elections than we've ever had before in our history.
That has to be a good thing. But it is a living, sort of breathing, evolving, organic beast that we're trying to manage here.
And so it's okay that it's been pushed and stressed and tested, and that's part of what we're doing.
We're building democracy on the fly. And and that's what societies do.
Um, and so it's great to, you know,
have this evening where we've been able to reflect a little bit on some of the challenges that it is presenting ourselves.
But I don't think we should ever give up on it. Um, so it just leaves me to remind the audience,
and for those of you who have other people that would like to engage and listen to what we've enjoyed this evening,
there will be a recorded online version of this on the web in a couple of days time.
Please do look out for the columns for our event in Hilary term.
Again, huge thanks to Tim and to David and for Julius for taking this forward.
But on your behalf,
could we please now give a round of applause to the events team who have prepared this evening and orchestrated everything, but of course,
to our moderator, Rachel Sylvester, to Professor Ben Ansel, to Sonia Soda to Henry,
and of course, to the videos with Anne-Marie Slaughter and Simon Johnson.
Thank you so much. And if we could now give a round of applause and that will close out.
It was wonderful.