Defining the modern United Kingdom: conference concept

The resounding Conservative victory in December’s election marks an end to one chapter in the Brexit story and the opening of a new one with a new set of opportunities and risks. On the one hand the Government has the biggest Conservative majority, 80, since 1987, and therefore an opportunity for strong leadership that previous governments have lacked. Behind the parliamentary figures the country remains divided and these divisions intensify beyond England, with the election also a major victory for Scottish nationalism.

At the heart of the division is the question of what kind of country the modern United Kingdom should be, both in terms of national policies and the relationship between London – as a global city and financial and technology hub – and the regions and other countries of the Union. How does the Union itself need to evolve to survive? What changes should we seek in the UK’s constitutional settlement and in the layers and respective responsibilities of national, regional and local government? How do we make democracy more representative and inclusive? What do we need to do to address regional inequality? How can we mitigate the centralising effects of the modern hub-based economy and the new geography of jobs? How do we make globalisation work for every part of the UK? Or are we going to be consciously moving away from globalisation?

Through a matrix of geography, language, law and culture, the UK has always been a country torn between its deep ties, markets and interests in continental Europe and the lure of the open seas and new possibilities. This fundamental fact of history will not change but, now shortly to be outside the EU, we must decide how far our interests are served by a shift towards closer alignment with the United States, politically and economically, or whether remaining close to Europe’s regulatory model is essential. In looking to the United States, two more facts are inescapable and complicate our choices. First, President Trump’s leadership is taking the US away from the rules-based order and norms of behaviour and towards great power politics on which we are unlikely to be consulted. Second, the increasingly strategic competition between the US and China promises to test to the limit and beyond the UK’s ability to tread a middle course between the two superpowers to its own economic advantage.

An increasing number of people in the UK see these questions as entirely secondary to the challenge of climate change, demanding a more fundamental reappraisal of the UK as an industrial country and the ways in which we define growth and success. Others are more concerned with the re-rooting of life in a local context and willing to pay an economic price for that. Finally there is a minority that sees the solution to everything – from economic success to containment of climate change – in riding the wave of the technological revolution.

What are the opportunities and risks for the UK’s new course? What advantages do we have? What structural weaknesses in our economy and our capabilities as a country do we need to address? What level of ambition of impact on the world can we sustain? What do we need to avoid at all costs? On the second day of the conference we will split into three working groups to explore these questions in more detail, as outlined in the attached Terms of Reference.