The ‘How The Light Gets In’ festival: Hampstead liberalism distilled

The half hour trudge from Highgate tube station provided me with a fitting lead-up to my recent visit on a Sunday in late September to the ‘How The Light Gets In’ philosophy and music festival, held at Kenwood House on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath. My walk took me through residential London’s Arcadia: a world away from the grimy early-stage-gentrifying south-of-the-river neighbourhood where my millennial status (and admittedly, cheapness) has relegated me. Here the streets are leafy and peaceful, the houses are expansive, differentiated and Edwardian, and the developers of new basements, extensions and kitchens are clearly, going by the presence of their French-accented billboards (INTÉRIEUR) on every tenth house or so, absolutely raking it in. 

Arriving at the festival, I emerged from the entrance tunnel out into the main area. Surrounded by the craggy yet humane physiognomy of the English upper-middle intellectual classes, I felt comforted but also slightly uneasy. The ‘big idea’ of this year’s festival, after all, was to ‘interrogate what an increasingly dangerous future may hold’. We were safe now within our festive circle of wagons, but we all knew that dark forces were swirling outside beyond the heath: in Westminster, Mar-a-Lago, and Moscow.

To learn more about these threats, I went in for my first debate: ‘The Dream of Democracy’, where we had journalist Philip Collins, moral philosopher Susan Neiman, and Conservative politician Nadhim Zawahi discussing various potential threats to democracy including donors, the media, corporations, lobbyists, and the electorate itself. Much of the discussion focused on the funding of political parties; Neiman especially spoke on this subject in a ‘Why the Germans Do it Better’ mould, which the audience approved of. The loudest applause though was predictably reserved for the host’s comment that, in contrast with America, we had managed to get rid of our ‘shameless, dishonest prime minister’, and for vigorous denouncements of Brexit. Most of the opposition to the consensus came, unsurprisingly from Zawahi, who spoke slickly in defence of the right of business to be in the political conversation through lobbying and funding political parties, though curiously he attempted to downplay the implication that they might be getting anything tangible for their money. This caused some rumblings of discontent from the audience, but he brushed this off as effortlessly as he did an attendee’s question about his tax affairs.

Things became more tricky for the other panel members when we got onto the subject of the electorate itself. Collins made positive noises about the concepts of direct democracy and citizens assemblies, but was then regrettably assailed with the question of whether he would support a referendum on the death penalty (a punishment which a large percentage of Brits have been in favour of for many decades). He quickly qualified his support for people power, unironically using the phrase ‘as elites we think’ (which I enjoyed hearing immensely), and saying that citizens assemblies should be more deliberative (i.e. toothless). The panel agreed.

Not having particularly impressed with the panel thus far, my opinion of them was nevertheless slightly elevated by their unimpressed response to an audience question from a ‘fresh grad’ on ‘the ways in which democracy keeps white people in power’ (the response being, what colour is the prime minister?). As the debate concluded, I departed, satisfied at least that my own stereotypes had been confirmed.

After a brief visit to the bookshop tent, where Zawahi had been cornered by a gang of festival-goers who were busily interrogating him from beneath furrowed, critical brows, I moved on to a new tent hosting a debate on longtermism. Here we had Phillip Collins again, philosopher of longtermism Hilary Greaves, Sophie Howe the first ‘Future Generations Commissioner for Wales’, and former supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption debating whether government policy should focus on long term consequences rather than short term goals. Howe talked proudly of her recent legislative achievement of reducing the speed limit in built up areas of Wales to 20mph, which has triggered far and away the largest petition (opposing the measure) ever sent to the Welsh parliament (445,000 signatures at the time of writing, or 14% of the Welsh population). Howe, who admitted to feeling anger at the petitioners for their presumption, was, it is fair to say, on the side of longtermism, as naturally was Greaves. It was left to Sumption to make the case against, describing Collins’ advocacy for bipartisan consensus on subjects like climate change as a ‘cartel against the public’.

Next it was on to the most covetable figure of the festival: Rory Stewart, holding forth like a benevolent, enlightened Khan from the dais in his tent, surrounded by adoring acolytes and with more pressing in from the outside. Enthusiastic applause greeted his admission that his proudest achievement in government had been the introduction of the 5p charge on single-use plastic bags, but with a pleasing consistency with the first debate I’d attended, the loudest roar of approval was reserved for his avowal that he had not been prepared to endorse a no-deal Brexit nor to accept Boris as PM. Like those earlier speakers, Rory also advocated citizens assemblies, though fortunately for him this time no one asked him whether he would get behind the public’s views on the death penalty. I did not make it to his podcasting counterpart Alistair Campbell’s event later that day, but I doubt he attracted the same level of ardour.

I had not paid extra for the ‘Inner Circle programme’, thus lunch was in the relatively plebeian main food tent, though my festival companion noted that even our kebab servers seemed fired up with a rare sense of mission compared to what you’d get outside. While we queued we overheard an impassioned conversation between a mother and daughter (the sort of pair who you imagine have had to make an agreement to not argue about ‘the trans issue’ at family dinners) over cancel culture. The daughter expressed frustration at the panellists at a debate she’d attended earlier for thinking that liberal tolerance of dissenting views was really possible; she felt that the exclusion of dissenters was inevitable unless all deplorables were to be tolerated in their bigoted entirety. This was not the first generation gap on this subject that I had observed at the festival and rather summed up the conflict between liberalism and wokeness.

After lunch I wandered desultorily in and out of a few more debates, but I soon realised that I had had my fill and departed, making the descent back down to Highgate station feeling slightly wistful. I had found many of the concerns of the festival panellists and attendees to be overly focused on questions of political probity and process, often missing the broader reasons why so many people desire radical change and are willing to see the existing rules and conventions violated to get it. For all their commitment to truth, reasoned debate, integrity, and platforming one’s opponents, none of this really matters if the fundamentals of a society are decaying. If only all the world could be Hampstead, if only everyone would act like Rory Stewart, then perhaps everything could be alright, but until then, we need more reckoning with the world as it really is.