Football fans, farmers and failed pledges

The Academy of Ideas team look at the gender wars and the Green backlash on the latest Podcast of Ideas.

Welcome back to the Podcast of Ideas, where the team at the Academy of Ideas discuss the big political and cultural issues of the day. This week, we’re joined by: Claire Fox, director of the Academy of Ideas; Geoff Kidder, director of membership and events; Rob Lyons, science and technology director at the Academy of Ideas; Jacob Reynolds, associate fellow and Ella Whelan, co-convenor of the Battle of Ideas festival.

Prime Minister’s Questions is often a mid-week performance of point scoring and clippable moments for Twitter. But this week’s sparring match between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer caused greater controversy than usual, after Sunak quipped that Starmer’s U-turn on what a woman is is only ‘99 per cent’ of a change of heart. In response, Starmer reminded Sunak that Esther Ghey, mother of murdered teen Brianna, was in attendance, saying ‘of all the weeks to say that, when Brianna's mother is in this chamber. Shame’. While Esther wasn’t actually there at that point, the exchange has continued to invoke debate, with Sunak now being criticised for refusing to apologise for his comments.

The ability to discuss gender ideology is not only in question in the House of Commons, but on football grounds, too. Newcastle United fan Linzi Smith has been banned from attending games after the club deemed her comments on social media about trans women a ‘hate crime’. In an interview filmed with the Free Speech Union, Smith details how she was spied on by the club - including walking her dog - and has since mounted a campaign for free speech in football. Is it becoming impossible to talk about gender issues without risking serious ramifications - from job losses to online shaming, and even the tickets to your favourite football club?

In a year of elections, it’s clear that Green issues will dominate a lot of discussion. Across European nations, in the Netherlands, Belgium, Romania, Poland, France, Germany, Greece and Ireland, farmers are taking to city streets to dump manure, block roads and protest what they see as attacks on agriculture. EU directives on everything from animal husbandry to nitrate levels are crippling farming life, making it both too expensive and too onerous to work in agriculture. This all comes when concerns about food security are back on the agenda, with the war in Ukraine and disruption in global shipping proving how unstable global trade can be. In the UK, the news of Labour scrapping its £28 billion pledge for green investment is perhaps proof to some that the confidence of environmentalist policymaking might not match with reality. But with many European elites using the Green agenda in an attempt to bolster their authority, how successful can populist protests be in changing the conversation about environmentalist policy?

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