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Join the Intelligence2 debate

Join us in the great Intelligence2 debate

Matthew d'Ancona

Wednesday, 12th September 2007

The Spectator’s new partnership with the debating forum

Well, should we? What do you think? If you listen live online to these and other debates, you can vote on the motions. If you can’t join in live, don’t despair: the debates will be kept on our website for you to download and savour whenever you like. There’ll be match reports from the intellectual bear-pit by our best writers in the magazine and online, and the Coffee House team (www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse) will, as usual, be sticking their oar in (or should that be their coffee spoon?).

I hope very much that Spectator readers — a formidable intellectual cohort in my experience — will come in person to future debates, starting with the special colloquium on Iraq on Tuesday 11 December. At this event, chaired by Sky’s Adam Boulton, five possible positions on future strategy in the conflict will be presented by a range of speakers including, in his Intelligence2 debut, the invariably compelling Tony Benn. Save the date now, and we will keep you posted on how to apply to this and to many future debates. Once again, if you can’t come along in person, you can follow the action and cast your vote on the Spectator website.

And, in the spirit of intellectual combat, let me take this opportunity to get something off my chest. To all those doom-meisters, gloom-mongers and misery merchants out there, who claim so confidently that the nation is ‘dumbing down’, thick as two short planks, a confederacy of dunces, I say this: eat my scholar’s gown.

Yes, the state school system may be a national scandal, Jordan is indeed a worryingly successful novelist, and Matthew Arnold probably wouldn’t approve of reality TV. But the success of Intelligence2, like the ever-increasing circulation of The Spectator, shows that you can’t keep a great intellectual nation down.

As the Cassandras wail and the Eeyores grumble, the country is reading, thinking and enjoying cerebration as never before. There are now 250 literary festivals in Britain, a trend which is giving politicians serious pause for thought (maybe the voters aren’t so stupid after all — something we knew all along, but the political class is only now waking up to). Book clubs large and small thrive, in kitchens, restaurants and cyberspace.

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