In The Impact of Labour, Maurice Cowling wrote that politics in the 1920s was ‘fifty or sixty people’ in tension with one another. The Battle of Ideas, which packed out Church House for a weekend in October, is like that but for political contrarians: everyone who is anyone in British counter-suggestibility is here, and they all know each other.
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Global Progress Action was in London at the end of last month, filling Methodist Central Hall with politicians and think tankers of broadly defined ‘progressive’ politics from around the world. On the day, there was airport-style security, and everyone you didn’t recognise was the former prime minister of Sweden. Morgan McSweeney floated about on a protective cloud of staff as Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ played softly through the speakers.
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