Power to the people
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Welcome to the LSE events podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences. Good evening, everyone. Very happy to welcome you all to the LSE for this hybrid event.

My name is Armina Ishkanian and I'm the Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity Program and Professor in the Department of Social Policy at LSE. I'm very pleased to be here to welcome Dr. Danny Swirskandarajah, Joe Swinson and Lisa John to both our online audience and our audience here in the Hong Kong Theatre today.

Danny Sriskanadarajah is Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation and Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE. He has previously led Oxfam GB, Civicus, the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Commonwealth Foundation and held positions at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

He is a trustee of the Guise and St. Thomas's Foundation and has previously been a trustee of the Bering Foundation, Comic Relief, Disasters Emergency Committee and Praxis Community Projects. Welcome Danny. Great to have you here. As Director of Partners for a New Economy since 2020, LSE alumni Joe Swinson, our second speaker,

leads a philanthropic grant-making fund seeking to catalyze transformational change in our economy so that it values and benefits nature and all people. She is also a visiting professor at Cranfield University, and previously Jo was leader of the Liberal Democrats and a member of Parliament for 12 years. Welcome back, Jo. To LSE.

Lisa John is Executive Director of the Atlantic Institute. She has a background in human rights, international development and social justice with over 25 years of experience working for grassroots national and global networks.

She has designed and coordinated programs, campaigns, and advocacy initiatives aimed at empowering communities, holding governments accountable, and advancing sustainable development. Welcome Lisa. At today's event, our panel will discuss Power to the People, the new book by Dhanis Raskindarajah. They will present a range of inspiring ideas for how we can reclaim our power and change the world.

This event is being recorded and will hopefully be made available as a podcast subject to no technical difficulties. As usual, there will be an opportunity for you to put your questions to our speakers. For our online audience, you can submit your questions via the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen. Please let us know your name and affiliation.

For those of you who are here in the theatre, I will let you know when we will open the floor for questions. If you can raise your hand and then when I indicate, you can pose your question. In the same way the online audience provide their name and affiliation, I will also ask you to provide the same information before posing your question. I will try to ensure a range of questions from both our online audience and our audience here in the theatre.

But now I'm delighted to hand over to Dhanushka Sikandarajan, who will be the first speaker. Thank you very much, Amina, and thank you all for braving the stormy conditions outside to be here this evening, if you're here in person. I'm delighted to be doing this event here at the LSE.

in part because the book, Power to the People, began its journey while I was a visiting fellow in the spring of 2023 at the International Inequalities Institute here at the LSE. And so it's wonderful to be back with amongst the fantastic colleagues from the III to talk about the finished product. And Amina, I'm incredibly grateful to you

for agreeing to chair this session. Amina is one of the handful of people who I shared an early draft of the book with and she got back to me having read it and I was delighted that someone as busy as Amina had found the time to not just read but give me comments.

She started her comments by saying, your book made me laugh while I was on the tube reading it on the way home. And I'm thinking like, well, the book isn't full of comedy. So I wonder why she laughed. And she said this because there's a bit in the book that refers to the title, Power to the People, which is the same, I'm told, I don't know the program, as a 1970s sitcom in the UK called Citizen Smith. In

in which the main character, who's a revolutionary complete with a beret, walks around Tooting in South London, occasionally shouting, "Power to the people!" And Amina said it made her laugh out loud, because I live very close to Tooting these days in South London, and I try to avoid walking around my neighbourhood shouting, "Power to the people!"

But in some ways, I only have one job this evening, which is to shout power to the people, to you, all here and online. And the reason I want to do that is very simple. I think we're living in a moment of human history where the ways that we've chosen to organise our politics and our economics are incredibly dangerous.

And the only sustainable way of redressing the incredible injustices that we're seeing around us is to restore power to the people.

that what we were told would be the end of history, that we have devised a political system, democracy, that will take grip and be the best way of organizing our politics through a representative or electoral democracy, and that we've arrived through a form of economic organization, capitalism, which would be the most efficient way of humans organizing our economic life. We were told...

that this was it, this was as good as it's going to get and this would be the pinnacle of human creativity. But here we are in the early 21st century and I think we're beset with a range of problems and what I'd like to do in these minutes that I have with you is to talk a little bit about the problems and simply convince you that we can be and must be hopeful

that just as we've created a political and economic system that's so deeply dangerous, we as humans can recreate new systems, evolve fundamentally new ways of organizing our politics and economics to be much more sustainable, to be fairer, to be more equitable. And I want to do that by telling you about two things.

The book, if you do happen to read it, is not particularly analytical. I'm very nervous speaking at a university because the book is intended for a lay audience and it's full of facts and figures, but in many ways it's full of stories. And I'd like to just share two of them or two places that I hope illustrate the point I'm trying to make, that our current ways of organizing our politics and economics is broken, but economic.

equally that we can reimagine ways of doing both in far more interesting sustainable ways. One is a place that's four and a half thousand miles away in Johannesburg in South Africa and the other is a place

I think about 200 meters that way. The first is Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, and the other is the Golden Lion tea shop just on the Strand opposite the Royal Courts of Justice.

Constitutional Hill in many ways is the place where I started thinking about writing this book. I was at the time Secretary General of CIVICUS, the same organization that Lisa John was also leading. It was 2018 and I was asked to come and address an event organized by the elders, the amazing organization co-founded by Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu and many others.

It was July 17th, 2018, the very day that Nelson Mandela would have turned 100. And the elders had organized a fabulous event

at Constitutional Hill to celebrate what would have been the centenary of his birth. And I found myself standing at Constitutional Hill, which remains one of my favorite places in South Africa. And we used to live in Johannesburg. And for those of you who don't know it, it's a hill that sort of sits on top of the ridge, the Rand, with amazing views across the high felt and the sort of urban heart of Johannesburg.

But it's also a sad place because it was on that site that for the previous century or so stood several prisons, including the very high profile prison in which political prisoners had been kept for protesting against the apartheid system. And those political prisoners include

First incarceration in Johannesburg, you might remember, for burning the passbook that he thought was deeply unjust, but it also was where Joe Slovo, Bram Fisher, and of course several times Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. It was also where the women's prison held Winnie Mandela for many years. And so

For most South Africans, Constitution Hill represented in many ways the saddest, the ugliest face of the apartheid regime and how brutal it was in trying to crush the democratic spirit. But after 1994, when South Africa transitioned to democracy, arguably the most remarkable peaceful transition of power from this deep, heinous system of apartheid into a democracy,

South Africa's leaders decided to convert Constitutional Hill into a site that celebrates democracy. So Constitutional Hill today is home to South Africa's highest court where judges sit to protect the fabulous constitution that democratic South Africa has.

But they also decided to preserve bits of the prison, particularly several of the stairwells of the old prison that remain in place and in the heart of one burns the flame of democracy, an eternal flame of democracy that reminds South African and all of us, I hope, about the spirit of citizens coming together to overthrow even the darkest, most heinous of regimes. And so...

Here I was, Secretary General of CIVICUS, an international alliance there to strengthen citizen action around the world on what would have been the 100th birthday of this incredible freedom leader. And I looked around in 2018 and I thought, well, is there much to celebrate or what is there to celebrate? And when I looked around, things weren't looking good for democracy. And in many ways, things have gotten worse.

When you look at civic freedoms, the fundamental freedoms that each of us should have in a democratic system to assemble peacefully, to organize, to associate, almost everywhere in the world, those conditions for citizens to organize and mobilize are getting worse, not better. The civicus monitor that Lisa and others have been producing in recent years is

plots for every country in the world how robust those civic freedoms are. And if you've read the Civics Monitor for the last decade or so,

Things are getting worse. Only 3% of humans live in a country which is considered to be open in terms of those civic freedoms. That in 100 or so countries, governments have passed some form of regulation or legislation that restricts the ability of citizens to organize, that makes life of non-governmental organizations, of civil society organizations, more difficult by introducing regulations

or cumbersome reporting requirements, particularly for those who dare speak truth to power. In dozens of countries, citizens who dare speak out in protest of environmental issues

who talk about corruption are being imprisoned or in some cases executed by state authorities or by the actors trying to collude with political power. So everywhere we look, we see that civic freedoms are under threat. Meanwhile, if we look at the political institutions around

that are being celebrated or that were being celebrated in South Africa at that moment in Constitution Hill, things look pretty bad. If you take apathy today, 2024 was supposed to be the year of elections that some two billion of us were going to the ballot box. It was supposed to be the festival of democracy around the world.

And yet, when I look back on the year that was, I worry. I worry about high levels of voter apathy. In South Africa, in that general election in May last year, some 40% of people chose not to vote, nine percentage points more than the previous national election in one of the youngest democracies in the world. In this country in July, 19 million of us

chose not to vote. In India, record numbers of young people chose not to register for the general election that was held in 2024. So when it comes to apathy, we're seeing high levels of concern. When it comes to trust, there too, there are some really worrying indicators. In this country, for example, last year, a survey showed that some two-thirds of us think that our elected officials...

act in their self-interest, in their own interest. Ten times more than the percentage of us who think they act in the national interest. And that figure, a poll done by the Gallup organization for decades in this country and elsewhere, has been getting worse.

and worse over the last few decades. And so when it comes to trust in the system, similarly if you look at a poll that asks people in many countries what the proportion of people who think that the state is run for the benefit of all

In Italy, it falls from 88% in 2002 down to 30% in 2019. In Germany, from 86% to 48%. The UK, from 66% to 44%. The US, from 65% to 46%. And these are just two data points of a system of democracy in which people are losing faith. And one more data point, which is around...

how attractive in that environment non-democratic alternatives are looking. In surveys conducted by the Open Society Foundation in 2023 across 30 countries, only 57% of 18 to 35-year-olds think that democracy is preferable to other forms of government. 42% were supportive of military rule

and more than a third thought a strong leader who did not hold elections or consult Parliament was a good way to run the country. So whether you look at apathy, trust, or non-democratic alternatives, I think we are in some trouble.

The second place I want to talk to you about is the Golden Lion Tea Shop, which for those of you who don't know it, is the site of Britain's longest running tea shop. This is a country that has taken a herb or plant grown in China, industrialized and globalized its production,

and such that I think 100 million cups of tea are drunk in this country every day, making us the second biggest consumers of tea per capita, only behind the Irish. And if you go to the Golden Lion tea shop, which has been there since the late 1700s, you learn a fascinating story about how our economy works. When that shop was opened by Thomas Twining in the late 1700s, a pound of tea leaves, pound weight of tea leaves,

cost in today's terms some 500 pounds sterling. Tea was a luxury commodity that was prized and was only drunk by the elites.

And yet in the 300 years or so between then and today, we've seen through a whole range of economic processes the democratization of tea such that if you go down to my local supermarket, you can pick up a pound of tea leaves in beautiful tea bags for probably less than two pounds sterling these days.

So how is it that this commodity goes from a rare thing that only the elites can afford to something that's being drunk at 100 million cups a day in a country? Well, we know the story. It's partly around colonialization, the taking of the crop, moving it to places like Sri Lanka or Ceylon, where I was born,

plantation economies that increased the scale of production, colonial exploitation, the movement of laborers in Sri Lanka. Tea today is still picked by people who are descendants of indentured laborers brought by colonists to Ceylon from southern India to pick that tea.

It's about globalization and global trade that humans have created amazing ways in which we can take crops grown in India and in Sri Lanka and Uganda and Kenya and take them to far-flung parts of the world at what we think are dirt cheap prices. But then this remarkable story of human ingenuity also has a dark underbelly. Only 1 to 4 percent of the price each of us pays

for what we think is a cheap commodity, actually goes to the people who pick that tea, the people who do the backbreaking work day in, day out, to pick the young leaves that arrive into our tea leaves. The vast majority of the proceeds go to whom?

to supermarkets, to the owners of tea companies, which most of the world's biggest tea companies are not owned by entrepreneurs like Thomas Twining. They're owned by venture capitalists and hedge funds that know that there's a profit to be made from industrialised tea.

And of course, that ingenious globalization that's created transport links also has a cost because it's the price that's enacted on the planet of moving goods and people and all the other things we move on a daily basis through fossil fuel burning vehicles and ships is wreaking havoc on our planet. And so...

On the one hand, you've got a remarkable manifestation of human ingenuity, but also a deeply unfair, unjust system which is keeping a lot of people in poverty, in modern slavery-like conditions. But it's of course benefiting some people. Who does it benefit? Well, we've designed a way of organizing our economy that is creating eye-watering levels of inequality.

Just last week, as the world's elites gathered in Davos in Switzerland, you will have seen, I hope, several reports that just give us a glimpse of how incredibly unequal the world is today. That Oxfam, for example, produced its annual inequality report that showed, once again, that a tiny number of men, all men, own more wealth

than the poorest half of the world's population. When Oxfam first started producing that report in 2014, there was 85 of the world's billionaires own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world's population. But every year that report is produced, that number gets smaller and smaller as the richest on that list get richer and richer.

And so we've created a global system through which extraction, economic extraction, happens at eye-watering rates. So if you look at these two places and what they represent, Constitution Hill,

On the one hand, a story of how people power can change political systems and overthrow injustice and create an inspiring story of democracy. But at a time now when all of those things that people in South Africa and elsewhere have fought hard for feel incredibly fragile,

And similarly with tea, a remarkable journey of an example of how wonderful the economy can be in creating these amazing goods and services, but also how unsustainable and unequal it is. The two together...

I would argue, are deeply unsustainable. At some point, the political system cannot sustain itself because at what point do we think that levels of trust will... How low does trust have to be before something breaks? How high does inequality have to be before the social fabric starts to rip apart? The solution, I would argue, and why I remain hopeful, is about people power.

that if we restore people to the heart of our political and economic systems, we can both address the sort of injustices and inequalities within both of these systems, but also create far more sustainable systems and institutions. And so I'm going to close by talking a bit about

what are the sorts of things that I think need to happen and perhaps dangle some ideas of things that might seem rather harebrained or odd for me to raise, but I hope they give you an example of how we might reimagine them. So let's take representative democracy. In many parts of the world, we've come to assume that the best form of organising our democratic life is through electing officials every few years through elections, people like Jo for 12 years when she was in Parliament.

That might be a key pillar of the way that we organize society, but I would argue that there are other ways in which we might want to augment electoral democracy. Much more deliberative systems of decision making, I would argue,

would be far better to add to our current political system. So let's take citizens' assemblies. In many parts of the world, we've seen very successful examples of how citizens' assemblies have been used for groups of citizens selected randomly to come together to consider thorny, difficult issues that society is grappling with, whether that's a

in Ireland or climate change in France, these deliberative mechanisms have been shown to be far better at coming to a sort of democratic level

decision in a more inclusive way and I would argue that we could we would do well in electoral democracies to hardwire or integrate in a permanent basis deliberative mechanisms like citizens assemblies. In this country this government was elected on a manifesto to get rid of or fundamentally reform the House of Lords. I think they should do that and I think they should replace it with what might be called a house of the people

Why not take an unelected second chamber? I mean, why on earth do we even have an unelected second chamber in a so-called modern democracy? Why wouldn't we replace that with a chamber selected by sortition? Again, of citizens selected randomly who could come and serve, let's say, for two years or three years,

and be paid a salary to perform maybe not exactly the same functions that the current upper house performs, but maybe when the lower house encounters an issue that it feels unbearable

will be better dealt with in a more deliberative mechanism, it asks the House of the People to consider and recommend a decision or a way forward. Assisted dying was a recent example, which I know was a difficult decision for many members of the Commons to deal with. So...

I think there are creative ways in which we can hardwire more participatory, more deliberative forms of democracy back into the way that our democratic institutions work. Similarly with our economic institutions,

I don't see why we have to assume that the current ways in which we organize our economy, shareholder first capitalism, short-term capitalism, is necessarily the best way of organizing. There are, throughout human history, amazing examples in which more cooperative, mutualized ways of organizing our economy have thrived. And indeed, even today in the UK, some 3%

of gross domestic product is accounted for by cooperatives of one form or another. You know the co-op shop that is up and down the high street in this country, but there are many other cooperatives and mutuals that already contribute economic activity and value to our society. Why wouldn't we make that the norm in terms of how we organize our economic life? And Jo Swinson, when she was a minister,

ushered in a fantastic mechanism, which is the idea of employee-owned associations, that when founders of businesses want to sell up, instead of selling to private equity or putting it up onto an IPO and selling it to shareholders, why not sell it back to the employees? So that employees who are working hard to produce that value have a share of the...

of the profit that's created. And so wherever we look, I think there are models in which we can organize our economic life in more sensible and more sustainable ways. And finally, something that we're working on at the New Economics Foundation alongside colleagues at the LSE is this notion of extreme wealth.

So we've come to assume that actually it's an integral and a part of capitalism that one can accumulate as much as one can. That of course, in order to support and nurture entrepreneurialism, there should be no limits on how much you can earn or accumulate. That principle is at the heart of why we're seeing such high levels of inequality, particularly when it comes to wealth.

And we're working at the moment on this idea of creating an extreme wealth line, just as we have an extreme poverty line below which we say no one in any society should have to live. Why can't we as a society agree that once you have a thousand times or ten thousand times poverty,

average household wealth, that above that line it's actually harmful to society for anyone to have that much wealth. And policymakers are given a choice as to how they deal with extreme wealth.

So these are just three ideas, having a house of the people, having a fundamentally more cooperative economy or a notion of extreme wealth above which we can't have or we shouldn't have levels of accumulation, that I think are the sorts of things we should be thinking about if we are to rescue the political system and the economic system from the dangers, from the storms that we're already starting to see. Thank you very much. APPLAUSE

Thank you very much, Dani. Hi, I'm interrupting this event to tell you about another awesome LSE podcast that we think you'd enjoy. LSE IQ asks social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. Like, why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Or, can we afford the super rich? Come check us out. Just search for LSE IQ wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, back to the event. Lots of food for thought, but before we get into the discussion, I'd like to invite Jo to share her reflections on your book.

Well, I was absolutely delighted, Danny, to be asked to come and be here for your event this evening to discuss some of the fabulous ideas in this really important book that you have put together. I think it's really interesting sometimes as a former politician observing what's going on in the political sphere.

and I had the rather strange experience last year of a general election being called and for the first time in my adult life I was not suddenly into candidate mode of like, "This is the starting gun, go, go, go!" And it was deeply weird that I heard it on the news and I was like,

Where am I going to? So obviously I did decide I was going to take some leave from work and head out on the campaign trail. And I went to different parts of the country. And so I was really intrigued by listening to people on the doorsteps. Perhaps also with that degree of slightly more objectivity, not being a candidate myself. And I mean, people are really pissed off.

That was my takeaway, and that was from Eastbourne to Harpden in Scotland. People are really pissed off. And we knew that people were pissed off with the Conservatives because of Partygate and the disastrous mini-budget and everything else. But people were also, in Scotland, really pissed off with the SNP. One of the best ways to crystallise that was some of the questions that we ask on the doorstep, and one of them is, who do you usually vote for?

And another one is, is there anyone you would definitely not be voting for?

And the number of people who gave me the same answer to those two questions. I usually vote for the SNP. Anyone you'd definitely not be voting for? The SNP. So that was an absolute shift away from support for the SNP. And of course we saw Labour win a landslide majority in the House of Commons. Unprecedented almost level of support in terms of MPs. But

But on 34% of the vote and, you know, six months on from the election, incredibly unpopular. So there just isn't enthusiasm within our democracy and within our political system. And I think it's dangerous. I think this situation that we're in, it's being exploited, obviously, by those on the kind of populist right. And it's also not unique to the UK. I mean, the fact is people have got a right to be pissed off. They've got a reason for being pissed off because a lot is not working for them as it should.

Now, that doesn't mean that the answer is Brexit or Bolsonaro or Trump. These are not solutions to the problem. But it's understandable that people reach for something which is not what they currently have when what they currently have isn't working.

And so, I mean, I definitely agree that part of this is about reimagining our democracy. I think there's some really interesting ideas that you bring forward. I think also part of it is about economics, as you recognize too in your book, because our economies have stopped working for us. The basic truth is that people are finding it harder.

We've particularly seen that with the cost of living crisis. We saw that, and it was really interesting, the way that so many parts of the world have been so jealous of America's economy in the last couple of years, and it's kind of amazing kind of headline figures, and yet people in America were not feeling it. They were still absolutely furious, and they, like people in other countries around the world...

this year or last year in the big year of elections, voted in droves against the ruling party because they were not feeling it. Whatever that headline figure was saying about this is a great economy, it was not filtering through to people's lives. And I think that disconnect has become much more evident

We see the concentrations of corporate power. We see, as Danny outlines, those issues of the rich getting richer. And people kind of get that it's not working.

And it's not working for people, it's certainly not working for the planet either. You know, hottest year on record in 2024, I think 10 of the hottest years on record are in the last decade. So, you know, we're pretty clear on where we're standing. And indeed, climate is not even the only or even the worst example of ecological boundaries that we are crashing through. There is, you know, nine different planetary boundaries set out by Professor Johan Rockström, and we are exceeding seven of them at the moment.

So, you know, whether it's the fires in LA or the floods in Valencia or whatever the untold disasters are still to come in countries right around the world, nowhere is safe. This is being felt now. This is not like this is a future generations problem, right? This is a problem for us right now. In fact, there was an event recently where somebody said that they'd been talking about future generations and they ended up having a discussion about whether they should be talking about that in the plural sense.

or whether they should be talking about future generation. And, you know, it's a really, really interesting... Yeah, slightly depressing, admittedly, but really interesting when you delve into the science, which, you know, often doesn't actually get the headlines that it should get. So we've got an economy that is actually driving environmental destruction. It is also extractive of people.

And so it's just flawed, it's just not working. And I say that in London School of Economics, and it's great that there's some work being done by Larry Kramer to help set up new institutes to really start to understand answers to these questions. Why has current economics not got better answers to what should our economic system look like if it isn't working for us now?

And at Partners for a New Economy, we're funding some really interesting work that is trying to bring forward optimistic and hopeful solutions. One of whom is Kate Raworth, who wrote Donut Economics, which, for those of you that aren't familiar with it, is actually quite a simple concept. So you take a kind of inner foundation of what people need in order to have good lives, and that's your social foundations, which is like the middle ring of a donut.

And then the outer ring of the doughnut is your planet boundaries. What are the limits of what the planet can sustain? And the goal of your economy isn't endless GDP growth that might not be connected to whether people's lives are getting better.

The goal of your economy is to land within that donut zone. You meet people's needs within the limits of what the planet can sustain, and that should be the problem that economics is trying to solve. And indeed, Donut Economics Action Lab are doing this with dozens of regional and local governments around the world. So there's some really great examples where people are putting this into practice, and they absolutely need to be lifted up. I think...

The imagination is one of the things that you've mentioned, Danny, which is it's really a responsibility that we all have to be able to imagine something better because we kind of come into the world and we think that things are the way they are and that they have to be that way.

but they don't have to be that way you know our economy doesn't need to be that way we have made it we have made decisions about how that will be structured what are the rules what are the institutions we collectively can choose to make that different the same with our political institutions we can choose to make them and remake them in a different way that will work for us in a new in a new reality new new circumstances

And in order to do that, it is about people coming together. Because probably the biggest barrier to this change is power. And that's why the title of your book is so important. Power to the people. There are big vested in corporate power and political power can be interwoven. And I

And, you know, when you think about the power that the tech companies have over all of our lives, what they know about all of us, I mean, there's quite an element of that that's frankly terrifying about how that could be misused. So it is important for people to have

that collective power with one another because that is the only way to be able to respond to those vested interests of power, these oligarchies where you have those concentrations of power in a very small number of hands.

And I think that citizenry is the way to do it. But if I look in my local area, even just in my local area, my little corner of South East London, right, there is so much to be hopeful about because that's where you see it being real. It's people's everyday lives and they're engaging. And whether it's the mutual aid group that was set up in 2020 during the pandemic, the donation hub, which kind of serves social and environmental objectives by people bringing things that they no longer need and use to make sure that they can be repurposed for others.

And I know that that is mirrored in communities right across the country, whether it's the environmental project, Street Trees for Living, that in the last decade has basically helped to plant thousands of urban trees, which obviously make the area look more pleasant and enjoyable, but also in terms of climate change and how to deal with extreme heat in a world which is warming.

is going to be hugely important for years and years and years to come. Just so many examples. And that's where it gets real. And so I think we can think about how we make a start on this. And I love the way that your book encourages us to just do something. And so just to close, I was speaking to Danny earlier and I said, look, what's resonated with people about your book? What is it that people have been saying to you? And he said, at every event I go to, somebody asks me,

Why am I so hopeful? Why are you so hopeful? And I think that is really interesting because when I was reading Danny's book, one of the phrases that jumped out at me was he said, I am defiantly hopeful.

Defiantly hopeful. And I love that. Because it's not hope with a kind of Pollyanna kind of approach to the world. But it is hope that is determined, that is absolutely not prepared to just take a rubbish system and say, well, we're just stuck with it. And he also says, you know, you need to stop accepting things you were told cannot change.

and start organising to change the things you shouldn't accept. And I think that is such good advice for all of us. There is an opportunity for people to reclaim power. It does take organising. It does take every single person to do the bit that they can. And I hope and I believe that your book will be inspiring many people to do just that. Thank you for writing it.

Thank you, Joe. That was great. The Atlantic Fellows knows Kate Rea as well. She gave one of our keynote talks a couple of years ago, so thank you for also bringing that. And our final speaker, discussant, is Lisa John. Lisa? Thank you.

Hi everyone. It's really great to be here and particularly I think with lots of people coming in despite the weather and everything else. I was actually supposed to be in Thailand last year. Thankfully the Indian government sent my passport back. I mean last week, sorry. And I told Danny, even if I have to get off a plane and come here straight from the airport, I'm still going to be at this event and speak to this book.

It's great to see lots of familiar faces from different parts of my life, I think, here. I mean, really wonderful to be part of this gathering here. I want to say that, you know, I've had the opportunity to read Danny's book twice. Once before it was published, I was one of the peer reviewers, and that was kind of mid-last year, and then once again in advance of this event.

The words Starlink Project and Elon Musk have taken a kind of a new connotation in just six months. And I think the amazing thing about the book and what Danny conveys is in a world where on a daily basis you're being told how your efforts for change are impossible, there is still reason to hope, you know, like you've said as well, Joe. So...

I want to lean into the aspects of the book that really spoke to me in terms of

The reason to hope, but how you do that and what the call to action really is, as many of my campaigning friends here know, that's kind of where I'm going to go. And just to give you some context, I've lived in different parts of the world. I'm just four months old in the UK, so I want to give a shout out to the people online because for most of my life, I've been the online audience while there are events in London, so it's great to have people join us virtually as well.

So I want to start by saying that even if you do nothing but read the first 10 pages, which is the preface of the book, you still gain a lot. I've known Danny for 12 years and I know more about him from those 10 pages than all the conversations we've had. What I loved about

the way the book begins, is that it starts with his story and who he is and where he comes from and where he gets the foundation for the community action and the trust that he has in organizing. And I think some of the...

points of information that really stay with me are, of course, his journey as a 10-year-old from Kalai Nagar in Sri Lanka to the outskirts of Sydney. I also figured out then that we were born in the same year. The fact that his dad, when they moved to Sydney, I mean, one of the first things he did was actually sign up

to the local chapter of the Labour Party. That his mum, much later in life, she's a plant scientist, is an active champion of arwas.org's work. That's her favourite, you know, kind of go-to non-profit. And I think ultimately the fact that most of his childhood and youth has really been about, you know, exercising agency and...

and working for community in different forms. So really incredible to hear how his family, even after moving to Australia, had really dedicated themselves. He said, most of my weekends were really about giving back to community, so mobilizing parliamentarians,

the media, fundraising for people back home who were being affected by the civil war in Sri Lanka. He even wrote a letter to the Dalai Lama and received a response back. That was amazing. So I think for me, the fundamental aspect of this book is that it isn't

just an intellectual framework of how things need to happen. It's really rooted in the heart of why we're part of change and we believe in change and we keep showing up and keep aspiring for more. Like, you know, Danny and Joe, the reimagining democracy and the economy was my favorite section. But what I really loved was the breakdown of

how a dialogue for decision making happens. And referendum is like a bad word, especially probably in the UK and people have like trauma around it. But I think he explains how

the process of consensus building is really driven by the framework. So in the example from France on the climate, you know, the Citizens Convention on Climate, the fact that there were 150 members representing different demographics in France who came up with 149 proposals for what France could do on climate, that's nearly one proposal per person. And that really talks about the power of co-creation

As part of my previous role as civicist, we did a lot of work with the UN in terms of rethinking the global governance structures. And a citizens assembly of the UN is actually one of the most powerful proposals that is currently being discussed. I think the idea that people across our walks of life

need to have greater space in how decisions are made, but in a non-binary way. And I think while it seems like a far reach to have that happen,

In government, I think Danny breaks it down really well and talks about how this is perfectly possible. And we actually have the tools and the agency and the space we need to engage in these conversations. A very simple place to start is actually at home and in our organization. So even in our workplace, the way that we actually foster

collaboration and discussion and debate around key decisions, I think we don't have to all be politicians in order to enable that, right? There are different spaces of our life where we can do that.

So just coming to the bright spots or rather the call to action, I think it's very much about finding new ways to talk to each other, to engage with each other, to move out of, you know, the word, the Oxford English Dictionary word for 2024 was polarization. So to move out of that polarization.

there's one side against the other and the more we can navigate that, I think it's the better for us in all aspects of our life. So I just want to end by going back to the Civicus Monitor. I didn't know either that the Civicus Monitor actually came out of a conversation in 2013 and 2014. So it was interesting. That was one more new thing for me.

But I do want to say that...

Things have improved. I know we're all in a space right now where we're just hearing all the news on the global kind of leadership shifts. But if you look at the report for last year, there is only 3.1% of the world that lives in open context, which is places where you can fully exercise your freedoms. But the year before that, in 2023, when I was presenting the Civics Monitor, it was just 2%. So a number of countries have actually moved

On the scale, in fact, this year, nine countries have been downgraded, but nine countries have been upgraded. And out of that, four countries which are from the global south have moved from the narrowed to the open scale. That has never happened before in the six years that I was in Civics. So countries like Bangladesh, Botswana, Trinidad and Tobago, Liberia, these are all countries which have actually improved and had improvements.

demonstrated improvements in how citizens exercise their freedoms. And therefore, I think it's really important that one narrative of one superpower doesn't kind of cloud our understanding of what's happening in the world. There's a lot more nuance. And that nuance is at the hyper-local, sub-national, and the national levels that don't hit the global media headlines. So there's always reason to hope. So I'm just going to stop there and

Thank you, Dani, for re-inspiring me as well in this journey. Thank you very much, Lisa, for those remarks. And I didn't know that the word of the year last year was polarization, but I'm not surprised. So I can now open the floor.

to the audience for questions, both here in the theater and also online. If you are online, kindly type short questions into the Q&A box and we will try to answer as many as possible.

and please include your name and affiliation. For those members of the audience who are in the room, kindly raise your hand and I will select questions in rounds and I think there's a mic, right? Great. Okay, so one and two. - Hi, my name's Jonas Decker. I'm a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University. Can you guys hear me by the way? - No, don't you? - Oh, maybe like this?

Better? OK. Yes, sorry, my name's Jonas Tekker. I'm a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University. My question's about regulation. Of course, a lot of what you've said kind of resonates with the debate about how much regulation should we have, should we have more direct involvement of politicians in making policy for complex problems. So I just wanted to know what your thoughts on that debate are. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Inam. I'm from Bangladesh. I'm an Atlantic Fellow and I also work for Oxfam. My question is particularly to Danny, but any of you can also pick up. It's about limits of solidarity. People not being homogenous and in moments of revolution,

right after it when the unity breaks because everybody has different agenda, all of them good, but it's about prioritization. It's like I want to get my tea in an affordable price, but I also want the workers to get a good salary and both of them not always can happen at the same time without like totally dismantling the system.

And I want your reflection on that because that's what we are suffering every day. Thank you. And I'll take one more question and then the next round. So, the lady there. Hi, my name is Willeke van Hijn from the Resource Alliance. And maybe a tiny side note, Lisa and Danny, I have to say hi from Ingrid Swinot, also a CEO of Civicus.

My question is around the 3.5% movement. Erica Chenoweth analyzed all the movements across the globe from 1900 onwards, and when you can organize 3.5% of the population, change always happens.

Why is it that we can't get ourselves organized? Why is it that we can't collaborate as civil society together because we easily connect and reach out to 3.5% movement? Why is it that we are not solid there, to your point? And is it really coming from the north? Or is actually more of those movements and chains coming from the global majority?

Thank you. So I'm going to turn to the speakers. I'll start with you, Danny, and then invite Joe and Lisa if they want to comment, and then we'll take further round of questions. Please. Thank you. Lots of very diverse questions. So on regulation, which is a topic that we at the New Economics Foundation, where I currently work, think a lot about...

My first reaction is to sort of challenge the notion of regulation as it's not necessarily used by you, but by people in public discourse. Just this week in the UK, we've been hearing how the government is going to cut red tape and regulation in service of unleashing economic growth. But the moment you ask any business leader what

What regulation do you want to cut? They struggle to tell you what it is, right? It's because we've been led to believe that somehow society is crippled by over-regulation, when if you flip it and say, actually, these are protections that are in place to protect people, to protect the environment, to protect against pollution, and so on. And so I do think that we need to sort of reframe the debate to be both about sort of

this idea that we owe it to each other to protect each other and protect the most vulnerable and not in this sort of slavish pursuit of economic growth for all sakes, as Joe said. Which I suppose relates to the notion of solidarity.

I remain hopeful for a couple of reasons. As Lisa said, the reason I'm here is because of the brutal civil war in Sri Lanka, which ripped that country apart for 30 or so years. And there was a sort of deep ethno-political conflict between the two major ethnic communities in that country.

And on the face of it, you'd think, ah, this is a typical ethnic conflict where people hate each other because of language, religion, or heritage. But my PhD, amongst many other research studies, suggests that actually, if you look at how...

ethno-political conflict evolved in a place like Sri Lanka, you see how it was weaponized by certain elites and certain actors in society who used the power of hate and politicized it to sort of their own political and economic benefit. And, you know, if you look at both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities throughout the sort of period before the civil war, they were both equally unequal

if you will. And you had elites in both that were trying to weaponize sort of ethnic identity for political pursuit. And in some ways it feels like we're experiencing that but at the global level at the moment where everything, whether it's the way the social media algorithm or the way that sort of political leaders are behaving, it's back to this sort of

very dangerous weaponization of... Which is also why it's such a struggle to push back on that, and I suspect why you're asking that question. One small other reason why I think I remain hopeful is that there's lots of polling evidence that suggests that young people in particular do feel a sense of solidarity that transcends borders.

So there was some polling last year that showed that the single... When asked, do you feel like you're a citizen of your own country or a citizen of the world...

Significant proportions, particularly of younger people in some of the biggest countries in the world, India and China included, say they feel increasingly like citizens of the world because they recognize that we are in this together. The idea of dividing the world into nation states and somehow sort of treating each of these as little isolated islands that can go about their own ways,

doesn't work so well for them. And so in an era, again, if we're going back into a period of history where we're retreating into our nation state, where there'll be protectionist policies once again, I do think that there is a latent sense of solidarity that we can tap into to push back against some of what we have. Now, I didn't quite understand that question. Were you saying that when you have 3.5%,

of people rallying behind an issue. Well, the fact that we don't know yet in this room is quite scary. It is being analysed that any kind of movement from 1991 onwards, from across the globe, two things that create success. One is non-violence and the second part is you get 3.5% of the population. That's a message of hope.

Okay, that well, nothing more to add.

Yes, I look forward to reading that. Another reason for hoping. Interesting. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you. I want to ask Jo and Lisa if they wanted to comment on anything. I just wanted to share a story from when I was in government. I was a minister in the business department and we were undertaking something in the coalition government called the Red Tape Challenge.

And the plan of this was to look in detail at every regulation everywhere to try and root out all those pointless and ridiculous and frivolous regulations that were holding business back. And I mean it was absolutely comical to try to sort of see the unfolding of that because the thing is when you look at regulations, like most of them are there for a pretty good reason, right?

And, you know, some of the stuff that we then had fights about in the coalition was about, like, product safety and, like, whether or not, like, children's pyjamas should be, like, safe from fire or not, you know? And you sort of sit there thinking, I cannot believe, like, this is the stuff that you think is what the problem is in our economy. And, you know, the same... So many governments have done the, you know, for every new regulation created, one has to be got rid of. And, you know, civil servants have to, you know...

go around in circles trying to make the impact assessments add up. Yes, okay, absolutely, look to see if regulation has got over-honorous in some cases, and there's definitely a case for it moving with the times.

But, you know, I think this move to deregulation is really, really misguided. I mean, if anything, you know, what's problematic for businesses in this country is if they've got a different set of regulations here and they're also exporting to other markets, like in Europe, where they've got a different set of regulations. Like, multiple different types of regulation are harder to deal with, and that's why having, you know, some common standards just makes good sense. And...

And I just would also say, those that think that there's a kind of free market where there's no regulation,

Nobody, no economist actually argues for that, right? Because they all accept that you have to have, you know, property rights or you need to have like weights and measures that assume that people are going to get this. If you're selling 100 grams of something that is actually 100 grams that you're selling, you know. So I think that it's a kind of over-egged area. And when you actually challenge people on it, they're not good. The 3.5%, I always think is an interesting thing.

I mean, I kind of believe it on the basis that I see this research behind it. And then there's part of me that goes, but what if like three and a half percent of people are organizing in a totally opposite direction? Because my experience as a politician is, of course, that lots of people get in touch with you about things, but it's often quite contradictory because, you know, people have different views.

But I think there is a kernel of truth where there is a very committed core of people who then, and I think part of this is a definition of who's active. So how active do you have to be to be in that 3.5%? Because I think you need for social change to happen, you need people at the vanguard agitating for it, making a noise about it.

But you also need consent from a much larger group of people. It needs to be seen as sensible, as common sense, as something which should be able to happen. It's harder in a polarised society, so I think research on how that operates is, if your issue becomes polarised, that becomes very, very difficult.

And then the other thing I would say is it also takes time. So I think perhaps sometimes in our 24/7 media world, we sort of expect successes and wins really quickly. I mean, it's definitely a problem in philanthropy where it's like, oh, three year grant cycle. Yeah, you're gonna change everything then. An example I often give is,

My husband works for Transparency International and they've done excellent advocacy work on economic crime and so on, and for many years weren't actually making progress with it, weren't getting the results from a political system. And sadly, when Russia invaded Ukraine,

all of a sudden there was a desire within government and an economic crime bill was passed within a couple of months with that work that had been done for many years, setting it out, making sure it was ready. So, you know, I think sometimes it's an issue of timescale. If you think even about the suffragettes, you know, women got the vote in 2018. Well, actually, some women got the vote in... Sorry, not 2018, sorry, 1918. Some women got the vote in 1918, but others had to wait until 1928. I mean, 10 years is quite...

quite a long time to wait and they were campaigning and working the whole time so I think yeah it's useful research that reminds us that it works when you get people having solidarity and pressing together we also just need to make sure that we're realistic that

many changes that are worth fighting for don't happen overnight. There are setbacks, there are absolutely backlashes where you will take two steps forward and then there'll be one step back but you need to keep going forward in the same direction and recognise that it's not a totally linear path. Thank you.

Lisa? - Sure, thank you. So I'm not going to repeat anything that's been said and I really lean into those points in terms of really the arc of change being quite long and our ability to see all those pieces come together is important.

I think just on the point of the critical mass that it takes to shift something, having just come off the continent that has seen the largest number of regime changes, that's the African continent in the last year. There's a lot more that goes into, I think, what you're saying, how do you build solidarity forward?

And I think where it leans back into Danny's book is really are we giving ourselves time to learn and iterate? And he brings up these really good examples of the Montgomery boycott and the Tunisian revolt. So if this was an exam for Danny's book, I'd be like getting ears, right? So, and I think I love that because what, I think the power of the book is also that

everything we see has a very long precedent and has a long journey after. It's really about where we are in that trajectory and the contribution that we're making that we need to connect to. And in fact, I think from the years that I've had in Civicus, which was during the pandemic, I think the two things that really stood out for me is that there is actually a lot of solidarity and collaboration. The scale at which civil society responded

when the pandemic happened, there was no other sector that could match that. Even in India, which is where I come from, civil society was able to reach more people in communities than the entire government machinery. And that was true of a lot of other countries as well, including the UK and Italy and others and the US.

The other is we brought out a report called the rise of anti-right groups. On the rise of anti-right groups, this was way back in 2018. And I think the forces of backlash are so sophisticated and so complex now that I think for every step

you take forward, there are kind of five steps backward. But that doesn't mean we're losing, right? I think there's another quote in Danny's book from President Obama, in fact, saying that the stronger the backlash is, it's evidence of the success civil society actually is having. And it's really...

a reflection of what we're doing well. So I do think actually there is ample evidence. There's an annual state of civil society report that Civicus brings out as well, which is for the last 13 years, all the successes that civil society has achieved. But there certainly, I think we're,

we're confronted with a very strong narrative about not working, about our efforts not working, conversation not working, dialogue not working, to the extent I think where we tend to kind of really underplay our own victories and our own strengths. - Thank you, Lisa. I've got one, two, three, but I'm going to take the online questions first because Peter, you need a microphone, okay.

So the first online question is from Carter, who is an incoming student to LSE's School of Public Policy, who has asked, I was wondering if you could go more into depth on how you envision the House of the People functioning, and how would you recommend approaching such a change?

The second question is from Lailaina, who is an activist from Madagascar with a particular focus on democracy, who has asked, how do you see the role of the media in organizing and inspiring people to stay hopeful amidst the disruption of the political system, which can be very corrupt?

And the final question from online is from Jeffrey Pian who has asked, "Is GDP an appropriate indicator of social and economic progress? If not, what does the panel recommend could replace it?" Great questions. Okay. Danny, I'll start with you again. Yeah, maybe I'll stick to the House of People and let Joe and Lisa do the others.

I don't have all of the answers. I know some people who do have some fantastic answers. One of them is the Sortition Foundation, which is a charity that works to promote this idea of an upper house in this country that is composed of citizens. But let me just be clear about, like I said earlier, rather flippantly, how extraordinary that in this country that claims to be one of the oldest democracies in the world, we have an entirely unelected upper house.

It's worse than that, right? It's 700 odd people. I've even lost count how many there are now.

Our former party officials or party donors, how can we live with a democratic system that puts all of those people with incredible power in terms of legislative power in the upper house and the party that gets elected to government on the mandate that it will somehow reform the House of Lords is struggling even to get rid of the remaining 91 hereditary peers that are in

what is the world's second largest legislative chamber behind the People's National Assembly and the People's Republic of China. I mean, you couldn't make up a less democratic example of a legislature. How we transition, I think, is one, make that point.

that how is it that we continue to live with this sort of hypocrisy. Second, look at all the evidence out there about how wonderful citizens' assemblies can be and often are in terms of resolving thorny or difficult societal issues. You know, there was a citizens' assembly done at the UCL soon after the Brexit referendum, which I thought was quite indicative of the sorts of things that can happen, which is...

100 people or so who were given many weeks to consider the evidence of what Brexit may or may not mean came to a very different conclusion to the referendum. But it's not the conclusion that I was interested in. It's the idea that more people, even those who disagreed with the conclusion, supported the conclusion that was reached. The deliberative mechanism allowed for greater buy-in. And ultimately, that's the true test of a democracy. It's not just the idea that the majority wins.

but that the minority who may have lost out are happy to tolerate the fact that the majority wins. And I think we're finding ourselves across many parts of the world in a system where it's that consensus that's fraying. So it's both the quality of the decision-making, but also the consensus underpinning it that we need to have. And the House of People may not be the magic bullet, but it would certainly help restore some trust and engagement in British politics that we so desperately need.

Thank you. So, mindful of time and to get another round of questions, Jo, maybe I can ask you to talk about the GDP question and then Lisa, the role of the media question. Sure. Absolutely. So, I mean, I think Geoffrey's asked a really good question. My short answer is that GDP is not an appropriate indicator of social and economic progress. Sometimes it might be correlated, but it's certainly...

not going to tell you everything that you need to know and we treat it as if it is right i mean it's it's a it's a useful figure for some calculations but it's not the right proxy for progress

I think one of the interesting things here is we're a bit obsessed with having one figure and there's lots of different indicators that you can have. Some people say you should just go for asking people about their life satisfaction and have everything should be in the answer to that question. Obviously that doesn't necessarily tend to factor in longer term thinking as we are often quite short termist. We might not get the environment properly represented.

I mean, really, I think you need to be measuring the thing that you care about, right? So I think you need to have a process with people where you ask them what matters to them. It's exactly what Wales did when they were bringing in their future generations legislation. They had a big national debate, asked people what was going to be important to them, and identified...

Issues that mattered and then you can develop specific indicators for those and in some circumstances you might then want to use some health indicators, but also alongside some education indicators and you know, what about the participation of young people in this particular event? I think the idea that we can sum everything up into one figure is actually probably not accurate.

That said, I think there are probably some, and I just want to give an example, which can tell you a lot of things in one figure. So Catherine Trebek, who also used to be at Oxfam and has done lots of amazing work on this agenda, she particularly argues for the indicator of the number of girls who cycle to school.

Because that, as an indicator, tells you something about education and how many children are in education. And if it's girls in education, then that's normally a good sign that that's pretty universal. So you've got an education system that is functioning, that is open to both boys and girls.

They're going to school, so that tells you also something about the economy that they're able to go to school, that it's accessible. And actually it tells you something about the safety of cycling, access to some basic mobility, safety of getting there in transport mode. Now it doesn't tell you everything, but it starts to...

to pay a much richer picture of people's everyday lives and there's other indicators that you could develop like that which we perhaps might find tell us a bit more than the the dry figure of GDP which as America shows us can go up and people can still be very unhappy thank you Lisa do you want to have anything so just to say in terms of the role of the media there are two kind of

ways or realities in a way. Being a journalist is probably the most dangerous profession in the world today, and specifically in countries like Mexico, for instance. But a lot of countries, they're the first voice of challenging the government. They're the fact finders. They're the people who shape public opinion and are the ones who face the brunt of the backlash as well. But on the other hand, I think in terms of

the industrial complex of the media, I think that's where you also see the perversion of public debate. So, you know, the way that elections are represented, the way that politics is represented in a kind of a headlines-driven, sensational way that's...

actually aimed at minimizing real understanding and dialogue and discussion. I think that's again, you know, a huge risk for whatever we're talking about in terms of power to the people. So it's really striking the balance between where we get our information and

But also, I think, really standing up to defend the rights of those who are being punished or penalized for having an opinion and for being able to channel an opinion as well. And I think it's still a very difficult balance, just from the places I've lived in, for instance. In Kenya, it's really the social media and citizens' voice through social media, which is...

there on their governance system the media is the one shining light and in india it's completely privatized so i mean there's really nothing much you can say right now that's going to fly if if you're not you know pro-government so it is nuanced but i i think in our role or in the context of this conversation again appreciating that a lot of individuals are

putting a lot at risk to still kind of honor the mission of the media which is to bring factual information and bring evidence and experience into the public debate. Thank you. So many of these topics are like you can just have so much conversation. Okay, I'm going to take another round of questions. So the lady in the blue there and then I have the gentleman there and the lady here and then if I have time I'll take another round. Yes, please.

Hello, thank you for your speeches and your responses. I wanted to ask, I think one of the most indispensable ways that power will return to the people is if the power that

the corporate sector and the business have is addressed and then a lobbying power is curtailed. And I guess my question is, I'm trying to approach this in a realistic way, how can ordinary people organize and mobilize in a way that effectively challenges this power that these people, these inherently have because of how much wealth they have? Yeah. - Okay. - Thank you. - Thank you so much.

Thank you. My name is Duncan Exley. One of the pieces of data that keeps coming across my desk shows that civil society organisations, among their staff, have a more marked under-representation of people from working class and lower middle class backgrounds than do both the private sector and public sector.

So I was wondering, is it possible, and if so, how to prevent civil society power becoming upper middle class power? Thank you. And then the lady here in the second row. Right there. Thank you.

- Hi, I was literally fleeing the fires in LA two weeks ago and I am also in London because I'm fleeing what's going on in my country. And you talk about a fire, it's Marks season fire. We know after a week that the worst case scenario, the Trump administration is probably what's gonna happen. And I wanna commend Dr. Danny because the story that you described in the country you fled

It feels to me in many ways on a macro level that this is what is happening in the United States. We have very powerful people who are fueled by very powerful wealthy businessmen who are grifting the United States electorate and we have a Democratic Party whose opposition is incapable

first of all doing what you said, Ms. Vincent listening to the electorate. We have very few politicians. We have Senator Murphy in Connecticut who has recognized that we did not listen to the people. And if we don't listen,

What we're saying is just blah, blah, blah. And we had powerful people. And now, basically, as an American, all I can say is I'm really sorry to the rest of the world because I have a strong sense of how disastrous this is going to be on so many levels beginning with climate change.

And so I'm here to say we are in the United States trying to find how do we get out of this? Because if you combine the people who did not vote, who are a lot of younger people who are disgusted with democratic policies on Gaza and climate change, et cetera, and a candidate who...

would have so many different campaign stops with Liz Cheney, but never once with somebody like Bernie Sanders, who would be speaking more of a just economic message, which we now know a lot of the electorate really wanted to hear. So I'm here to say I'm sorry, and I'm also here to say, do you have any of those?

Okay, thank you. So we've got questions around corporate power. Any advice? Can we keep the responses brief so we can take one more quick round? Danny. Yeah, I mean, in terms of corporate power...

I find it very inspiring the examples of how citizens are sort of mobilizing, whether that's through consumer power, so consumer boycotts of brands that are exploiting the environment or damaging the environment. Pensions power. Have a look at a campaign called Make My Money Matter, which is

using our own pensions and deciding how and where they're invested so that they're invested in ethical enterprises. And similarly, look at ShareAction, which is a fabulous institution that's using the power of shareholders to change corporate behavior. And so I think there are really good practical examples in which we can build on consumer power or pension holder power. I think the gentleman's point about...

the sort of diversity and inclusion within civil society is critical, right? We're not going to be effective or even taken seriously unless we are as diverse as the communities we claim to be serving. And in many parts of organized civil society, there is, I think, a challenge around being truly reflective. And your point about class, I think, is well made and relevant here in the UK and many other parts of the world. And then I think, too, the final question

I do worry that part of the challenge that we're seeing, not just in the US, but in many other democracies, is that the sort of...

Those who are simply trying to tinker with a fundamentally broken economic system are finding that people aren't interested for all those reasons you were saying, Jo, earlier about being on the election cabinet. We do need... I mean, if you buy my thesis, I think we need a fundamental rethink about both economics and politics. And if the answer by mainstream political parties is a little bit more of the same in a deeply unequal world that's on fire...

People are seeing through that. Absolutely. Mindful of the time, if you have responses, I can turn to you. If not, Al can take. I mean, I just like...

I mean, this is a massive challenge, right? How to create the political response that can win while also delivering the radical change that is actually needed to our existing economic system and how we organize society. And I don't see where it's been done successfully.

And I think it's genuinely very hard because the coalition, if you like, that the Democrats are trying to build in America includes all those people who are actually very much up for radical change and their critique would be is that the Democrats weren't talking about that but then they also have their donor base that is much more happy with the way the system is. I mean, I

I think at the moment there is not in all circles enough of a willingness to embrace that things do need to change quite significantly and that includes on the kind of centre left and

And so for all that it's very easy to criticise the politicians who are in that situation, I can see, you know, from my time door knocking and engaging, and indeed even the response to Rachel Reeves, you know, raising taxes to try to invest in public services and how the bond markets are responding. So there's actually quite a...

a kind of connection between what constraints politicians are operating under. And it's not an easy thing to work through, but what I would just say is the one thing I think we need to hold in mind is the need to build broader tents, right?

broader alliances where you're not going to agree 100% with everybody else but it doesn't mean that you say that that person is beyond the pale. We need to have broader alliances if we're going to be able to create the power in order to deliver the change that is

undoubtedly necessary and that you argue for so eloquently. So perhaps just a little bit of grace and understanding for others who are also trying their best to make change. And I think the kind of polarisation that we are used to in many of our social media interactions is probably not helping that mode of engaging with others. And dealing with people face-to-face where you don't agree entirely is probably one of the best ways

antidote to the best things that we can actually do to actually come together. Let's take more questions. Actually, we are down to the last couple of minutes, so I'm afraid and I know events ask us to end on time. So, you're going to be signing books outside, so if I could ask anyone whose questions I didn't get to to please approach Danny and ask your questions then.

We are at the end of this great discussion and it's been a pleasure listening to all the speakers and Danny, particularly your book, you know, sharing your findings. And yes, I did laugh on the tube thinking about you as citizens for Skanderraja running through South London. So...

Please buy the book, which I think is fabulous. And these are discussions that we are going to return to and to think about.

It has been a great pleasure to have had the opportunity to listen to all of you and I want to thank all three speakers, Danny, Joe and Lisa for your presentations. We're really grateful that you could find the time in your busy schedules to be with us. And I would also like to thank everyone in the in-person and online audience for being here today.

And, you know, it is, it is, these are important questions. And I think, you know, we are in a period of challenge and holding the space and having these discussions is very important. So thank you again.

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