At this year’s Battle of Ideas festival, we’ll be looking at the resurrection of the idea of a ‘national interest’. After decades of globalism, putting the needs of the British people centre stage is becoming a loud demand from voters across the country. That session includes Hilary Salt and Sebastian Moore of the SDP, who are also discussing similar ideas in a separate event in Manchester this weekend – introduced by Hilary below. It will be well worth attending.
How Can We Rebuild a Nation in Britain? takes place on Saturday 10 October at the Pendulum Hotel, Manchester from 4.00pm to 6.00pm. Tickets are free, but please register via Eventbrite.
As British politics more generally has had something of a tilt towards Manchester, thanks to the installation of our new prime minister, Andy Burnham, you may also be interested in our Battle of Ideas festival debates WTF is Manchesterism… and can it save the economy?, From metro mayors to Manchesterism: a devolution revolution? and TikTok Andy and No.10 North: performance over substance?
Tickets for Battle of Ideas festival 2026 – which takes place on Saturday 17 & Sunday 18 October at Church House, Westminster – are available now from the Battle of Ideas tickets page.
HOW CAN WE REBUILD A NATION IN BRITAIN?
Hilary Salt
Last year, we were part of a team that organised the inaugural Battle of Ideas North in Manchester. It was well attended, with lots of audience participation. It’s always interesting to note the difference between Battle of Ideas events in London and those in the North. The latter tend to produce rather more blunt discussions, with most of the contributions coming from ordinary men and women who are not ‘on the Clapham omnibus’ but on the Greater Manchester Bee bus. The discussion can develop very differently to those between the political commentariat and the London metropolitans.
That’s why at the start of that conference, I warned attendees not to come over all faint if the discussion was forthright. We are again inviting straight-talking discussion on Saturday 10 October, when we host a discussion in central Manchester on ‘How Can We Rebuild a Nation in Britain?’ (see below for fuller details).
Often the task of rebuilding is presented in purely materialistic terms. But while building houses and infrastructure, fixing potholes and tackling the cost of living is essential, there’s still a more difficult project: rebuilding communities, re-integrating identity groups, regions, generations and social classes into a single political culture. All of this together is nation-building.
One barrier is that there’s an ahistorical presentist outlook that means people don’t appreciate the ways in which societies have changed fundamentally in the past. This leads to people feeling trapped in the present and unable to imagine themselves as able to do anything to change the future.
We want to tackle these issues by looking at nation-building in the past and the present with Emily Jones and Philip Cunliffe.
Today, amid growing concern about energy costs, broken supply chains, failing defence and industrial capacity, politicians are once again invoking the idea of the nation and the national interest. But what does this mean, and who gets to define the nation and its interests? After decades of decline, is there still a ‘British people’ with the solidarity and sense of common interests needed to assert shared priorities?
Britain has faced such questions before. In 1945, a Labour government set out to build a ‘New Jerusalem’ from the rubble of six years of total war. A century earlier, Disraeli, later mythologised as the founder of One Nation Conservatism, famously described a country divided into ‘two nations’, rich and poor. Both traditions emphasised national unity and obligations across class divisions.
Can these national stories and traditions offer inspiration today, or is it the responsibility of every generation to imagine the nation anew?
Philip Cunliffe and Emily Jones explore the national interest from contemporary and historical perspectives, asking what it might mean for British people to think and act as a nation once again.
Philip Cunliffe is an author, academic and podcaster known for his work in international relations, particularly in the areas of sovereignty, international order, conflict management and global politics. He is an associate professor of International Relations at the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London. He is the author of The National Interest: Politics After Globalization (Polity, 2025) and Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit (Polity, 2023, co-authored with George Hoare, Lee Jones and Peter Ramsay).
Emily Jones is an author and academic at the University of Manchester who has written and reviewed for the Financial Times, New Statesman and History Today, and provided a variety of radio commentary, including for BBC Radio 4, ABC Australia and ORF Austria. Her book, The Disraeli Myth: The Making of a Conservative Tradition, provides an authoritative account of the afterlives of Benjamin Disraeli and the highly significant construction of a socially minded brand of Conservatism following his death in 1881.
How Can We Rebuild a Nation in Britain? takes place on Saturday 10 October at the Pendulum Hotel, Manchester from 4.00pm to 6.00pm. Tickets are free, but please register via Eventbrite.
