Battle of Valmy 1792, which embedded the revolutionary idea of citizens' armies; painted by Emile-Jean-Horace Vernet, 1826

I took part a few days ago in the University of Birmingham’s Vice-Chancellor’s “Great Debate”, which asked the question: “Does the rise of individualism mean the end of democracy?”

The thinking behind the question was this. Democracy has been seen as the guarantor of individual liberty and expression. However, have these freedoms now undone democracy itself?  Politics seems to be increasingly polarising and common ground is hard to find.  How can we build a new consensus and avoid the damaging “culture wars” that have characterised politics in the US and in parts of Europe in recent years? 

Public debate is increasingly mediated through fragmented fora and misinformation or disinformation; public policy and even political leadership increasingly focus on individual, emotional responses rather than objective, rational and truthful discourse. Is the collapse of faith in democratic institutions and the rise of “populism” the consequence of a deep hyper-individualism?  Has the Covid-19 pandemic magnified these tendencies, or does it point to new forms of collective sentiment that might re-energise democracy?

In my own opening statement, I said broadly this. My experience in the eighties and nineties of reporting the great cultural changes occurring in family life, education and developments such as multiculturalism and trans-nationalism made me realise that British and western society was fragmenting into self-defined groups fighting for power over each other.

The very idea of the nation was being deliberately denigrated, and educationists were refusing to transmit it to the next generation. Groups demanded rights based on their subjective view of themselves in the world. The concepts of duty and obligation to others, which knit people into a culture that everyone feels they equally share and which defines their civic identity, was being eroded.

Governments tried to please all these groups. This was clearly impossible, but politicians lied about how everything was always getting better. So not surprisingly, between the groups wanting to destroy the nation and those who lost all trust that the political class would ever represent their interests, the very idea of representative democracy now finds itself in  crisis.

My fellow debaters were Dominic Grieve QC, former Attorney-General; Lyndsey Stonebridge, professor of humanities and human rights, University of Birmingham; Peter Jukes, author and screenwriter; and Nick Timothy, former political advisor to Theresa May and now Daily Telegraph columnist. The debate was introduced by Professor Sir David Eastwood, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, University of Birmingham, and was moderated by Ritula Shah, presenter of BBC Radio’s The World Tonight.

You can watch the debate here:

Recent posts

Premium subscribers can read my most recent exclusive post, on magical thinking in enfeebled America, by clicking here.

And you can read my most recent post that’s available to everyone, on why no-one should be surprised at the increasing violence being used against the police , if you click here.

One more thing…

This is how my website works.

It has two subscription levels: my free service and the premium service.

Anyone can sign up to the free service on this website. You can of course unsubscribe at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” at the foot of each email.

Everyone on the free list will receive the full text of pieces I write for outlets such as the Jewish News Syndicate and the Jewish Chronicle, as well as other posts and links to my broadcasting work.

But why not subscribe to my premium service? For that you’ll also receive pieces that I write specially for my premium subscribers. Those articles will not be published elsewhere. They’ll arrive in your inbox as soon as I have written them.

There is a monthly fee of $6.99 for the premium service, or $70 for an annual subscription. Although the fee is charged in US dollars, you can sign up with any credit card. Just click on the “subscribe now” button below to see the available options for subscribing either to the premium or the free service.

A note on subscriptions

If you purchase a subscription to my site, you will be authorising a payment to my company Dirah Associates. In the past, that is the name that may have appeared on your credit card statement. In future, though, the charge should appear instead as Melanie Phillips.

And thank you for following my work.