Join us for the Cumberland Lodge Debate:

Challenges for Democracy in the Digital Age

This year's Cumberland Lodge Debate, at Goodenough College, London, explores the new challenges facing democracy in today's digital age, drawing on insights from Lord Howell's book, Look Where We're Going: Escaping the Prism of Past Politics.

As our opening panellist, Lord Howell will explore the challenges facing democracy in our 'network world' of digital technology, with Asian powers gaining dominance, capitalism taking on new forms, and the vocabulary of past politics losing much of its relevance.

He will draw on four decades of experience as a member of successive British governments, including Margaret Thatcher's first cabinet in the early 1980s, to look at how we reached the present impasse and political turmoil in the UK, and how we might carve out a post-Brexit and post-Western politics in the digital age.

In his book, Lord Howell outlines reforms that cut across the old Left-Right lines of politics. He calls for a new kind of external diplomacy, to help secure the future prosperity and security of the UK internationally, and he champions the opportunities of the Commonwealth network.

This debate examines these ideas from different perspectives, and focuses on the digital dimension of the transformations required to safeguard our democracy and develop a new sense of national direction and purpose amidst the rapidly changing world order.

Format

The Cumberland Lodge Debate will take place in the Large Common Room at Goodenough College in Holborn, on Thursday 7 November 2019 at 6pm. It will be chaired by our Chair of Trustees, Baroness Prashar of Runnymede.

Lord Howell will open the event by introducing key themes from his book. He will be joined with Dr Katharine Dommett (Senior Lecturer in the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield) and Marnie Howlett (a representative of Goodenough College and PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science).

The panel discussion will be followed by questions from the audience, and a reception.

Please aim to be seated by 5.50pm. Details of how to find Goodenough College can be found here.