Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is still being discussed in parliament. But beyond proposals for a law change, how should we tackle one of the great debates of our time: should we set up a system of assisted death and profound questions it raises about everything from whether adults have a right to assistance to end their own life to what safeguards and protections should exist between individuals and the state when death is offered as a medical option by health professionals.

Philosopher and bestselling author of Material Girls Kathleen Stock will lead a discussion raising themes in her forthcoming book Do Not Go Gentle, arguing that we should reaffirm life, rather than death and collectively, we should rage against the dying of the light.

The issue throws up many moral dilemmas worth discussing: Is the status quo a ‘cruel mess,’ to quote campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen? Is assisted death for those with a terminal illness, or suffering chronic pain or extreme mental distress, a progressive and compassionate choice as its supporters argue? Does it give a person more “freedom” or “control” over their lives, allow dignity in dying as it were? How should we square a patient’s freedom of choice with existing frameworks of medical ethics? Will having the right to take control of your death by asking a doctor to kill you, really have broader sinister outcomes for the vulnerable, the elderly, the disabled, the suicidally depressed as its opponents warn? Is it ever possible to guard effectively against situations in which people are coerced to die, either by family members or by a state that is too often incapable of providing adequate palliative care? Or are such slippery slope arguments just a form of emotive scaremongering? How should we all approach our own or loved ones’ terminal illness and death?

SPEAKERS Dr Az Hakeem consultant psychiatrist and medical director, Psyche Clinic; author, Trans and Detrans

Sonia Sodha columnist and broadcaster

Dr Kathleen Stock columnist, UnHerd; co-director, The Lesbian Project; author, Do Not Go Gentle: The Case Against Assisted Death

Professor Kevin Yuill emeritus professor of history, University of Sunderland; author, Assisted Suicide: the liberal, humanist case against legalization

The implosion of the two traditional major parties and the widespread success of Reform (and, to a lesser extent, the Greens) have been widely described as historic, a shifting of the tectonic plates of British politics. But what does last Thursday’s vote mean for the present and future?

The Academy of Ideas team got together in the wake of Keir Starmer’s ‘speech of a lifetime’ to share their post-election thoughts in a wide-ranging discussion.

They also look ahead to two events:

The Academy 2026, the Ideas Matter annual residential weekend of lectures and discussions, which this year is titled ‘Hollow Leviathan: the state against the demos’, on 22 & 23 August.

The Academy 2026

The Battle of Ideas festival, the UK’s premier festival of discussion and debate, in London on 17 & 18 October.

Battle of Ideas festival

Ahead of the elections to the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 7 May, Alastair Donald and Rob Lyons talked to Dean Thomson, author of Scotland Undone: Nationalism, Dogma, and Decline in the Devolution Era. In a wide-ranging discussion, topics included:

• Thoughts on what will happen in the election, including the fall and rise of the SNP, the Reform UK insurgency, the decline of Labour and Conservatives
• The much-forgotten 'double out' voters who want to leave the UK and voted to leave the EU
• How devolution came about and how the SNP went from opponents to claiming it as their own
• The rise of the 'lanyard class' in Scotland
• The prospects for the future - do we need a more federal UK?