Event: London Symposium 2012: Public Opinion and the Future of Europe

Five years ago this March, triumphant Western leaders celebrated the European Union’s 50th birthday party with a toast to the procurement of “liberty and prosperity” beyond even the “most optimistic dreams” of its founding fathers. Half a decade later, the neo-liberal growth model that seemingly epitomised Western economic authority after the Cold War has all but collapsed. Meanwhile, the European project is now characterised by economic and democratic deficits that highlight fundamental and seemingly perilous contradictions in the Union’s governing philosophy: monetary integration v. fiscal discord; technocratic elite v. democratic will; economic solution v. political requirement.

On 15th March at the British Academy in London, we held the YouGov-Cambridge Symposium on ‘Public Opinion, Economic Governance and the Future of Europe’, which examined how both experts and the public view the same key questions of ‘what kind of capitalism will enable us to recover and prosper after the crash’, and ‘What kind of Euro-governance should we covet and fear between Balkanisation and Federalisation’?

Scroll down for video and blog highlights….

PROGRAMME:

#YGC2012

9am: Registration

9.20am: Opening Remarks

9.30am: In conversation with Jim O’Neill, Chairman, Goldman Sachs Asset Management

Chair: Justin Webb, Presenter, BBC

Session title: Is 21st Century Europe destined to be a ‘hobbled giant’ of the world economy? (more here)

10.00am: Sir Roger Carr, Chairman, Centrica and President, CBI:

Chair: Justin Webb, BBC Presenter

Session title: Will Coalition plans for shareholder empowerment make any difference to either corporate excess or economic growth? (more here)

10.30am: Coffee

10.45am: ‘Responsible’ v. ‘popular’ capitalism: Whose agenda, do the public understand it, and can it provide the growth we need to prosper? (more here)

Chair: Peter Kellner, President, YouGov

Panel:
Lord Wood, Shadow Cabinet Minister without Portfolio
Polly Toynbee, Columnist, The Guardian
Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK
Andrew Gamble, Professor, POLIS Department, Cambridge

11.45am: Coffee

12pm: Rt Hon Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Conservative MP for Horsham

Chair: John Humphrys, Presenter, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme (more here)

12:30 pm: Rt Hon Alistair Darling, Labour MP for Edinburgh South West; former Chancellor of the Exchequer

Chair: John Humphrys, Presenter, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme

Session title: The “Futures” of Europe (more here)

1.15pm: Lunch

2.00pm: Presentation on the YouGov-Cambridge Euro-study

By Dr Joel Faulkner Rogers, Director, YouGov-Cambridge, and Sean Kirwan, Senior Research Fellow, YouGov-Cambridge

2.15pm: What future for the Euro? 

Chair: Dr Linda Yueh, Economics Editor, Bloomberg TV & Fellow in Economics, Oxford University

Panel:
Lord Brian Griffiths , Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs International
Bernard Jenkin, Conservative MP for Harwich & North Essex; Chairman, Public Administration Select Committee
Georges Ugeux, Chairman & CEO, Galileo Global Advisors LLC
Louise Cooper, Senior Markets Analyst, BGC

3.15pm: Coffee

3.30pm: Sir Win Bischoff, Chairman, Lloyds Banking Group plc:

Session title: To what extent does Too Big To Fail generate systemic risk, distort competition and undermine public trust in the fairness of the economy (more here)

4:00pm: Coffee

4.30pm: Is democratic federalisation the answer to Europe’s crisis (more here)

Chair: Adam Boulton, Sky News Presenter

Panel:
Baroness Neville-Jones, Special Representative to Business on Cyber Security
Lord Glasman, Labour peer and co-editor of “The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox
John Redwood MP, Conservative MP for Wokingham, and Leader of the Conservative Policy Group on Economic Competitiveness
Alex Ellis, Director of Strategy, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Declan Ganley, Chairman and CEO, Ganley Group of Companies

5.30pm: Closing remarks from Stephan Shakespeare, Co-Founder & CEO, YouGov plc

5.45pm: Drinks

6.30pm: Dinner (by separate invitation only). After dinner speaker – Tom Bower, Author & Investigative Journalist

END PROGRAMME