London Thinks – The UK: Looking Inwards or Reaching Outwards?

This is a unique event in which two distinguished speakers: Charles Clarke – outspoken politician, former Education – and Home – Secretary and author of the highly regarded The ‘Too Difficult’ Box: The Big Issues Politicians Can’t Crack, and Simon Anholt – visionary, international policy advisor and recipient of the Nobels Colloquia Prize for Economics, whose Berlin 2014 TED talk went viral, will address the fundamental challenge facing humanity today: who’s looking after the world?

In a world which is changing increasingly rapidly – technologically, economically, socially and politically – it is tempting to take refuge in the past and in an insular mindset. It’s a widespread feeling which political forces like UKIP trade on upon across the world. But the truth is that the problems people worry about, like migration, international conflict, economic crisis and climate change which are particularly hot topics, are all international in nature and require well-constructed international approaches, not just clinging to our security blankets.

But at the moment our international institutions – the UN, EU, NATO and so forth – aren’t stepping in to offer real solutions. They were designed half a century ago and need to be adapted to modern needs. That’s the challenge for the UK, which has the potential to make a bigger contribution than almost anyone else to finding the solutions we all need.

Against such a background, as Simon Anholt writes, the old habit of nation-states behaving as competing tribes looks like a fatal error. Competition is a powerful and productive habit, of course, but the time has surely come when collaboration and cooperation must take precedence. How can we achieve this huge cultural change, which is nothing less than a revolution in governance?

The discussion will be chaired by Helen Lewis, Deputy Editor of the New Statesman.