There are evenings when you know, almost from the opening minutes, that you are listening to someone whose ideas will stay with you for a long time. The St George’s House Annual Lecture, delivered this year by Lord Jonathan Sumption, was one of those occasions.
It was a privilege to be there.
Lord Sumption hardly needs an introduction. Historian, barrister, former Justice of the Supreme Court and one of Britain’s most thoughtful public intellectuals, he has spent much of his career exploring the relationship between law, history and democracy. His lecture, Lessons from America, used the current state of American politics not simply as a commentary on the United States, but as a warning to every mature democracy about how fragile democratic culture can become.
His central argument was both elegant and unsettling. Constitutions, laws and institutions matter enormously, but they are not, in themselves, sufficient. Democracies survive because enough people are willing to accept restraint, tolerate disagreement, respect those with whom they profoundly disagree and, above all, place their faith in the legitimacy of the democratic process rather than in always securing the outcome they personally desire. When that shared political culture begins to fracture, even the strongest constitutional safeguards become vulnerable.
As I listened, I realised that although my own career has taken me nowhere near constitutional law, I have spent much of my working life wrestling with remarkably similar questions.
Whether as a teacher, leading national youth organisations, serving as High Sheriff of Oxfordshire, working as a Deputy Lieutenant or now leading Cats Protection, I have repeatedly discovered that rules and constitutions only ever take you so far. The organisations that thrive are rarely those with the thickest manuals or the most elaborate governance structures. They are the ones where people trust one another, where difficult conversations are conducted with respect, where disagreement is seen as healthy rather than threatening and where leaders understand that the process by which decisions are reached is often as important as the decisions themselves.
That has certainly been my experience over the past year. Like many organisations, Cats Protection has had to navigate difficult strategic choices, changing financial realities and robust debate about priorities. Good governance is sometimes uncomfortable. Strong leadership is not about suppressing disagreement; it is about creating an environment where challenge strengthens decisions rather than weakens relationships. I found myself reflecting during Lord Sumption’s lecture that the habits which sustain healthy charities are, in many ways, the same habits that sustain healthy democracies.
One passage, in particular, stayed with me. Lord Sumption argued that democracy depends upon our willingness to regard political opponents as fellow citizens rather than enemies, and that the health of a democracy rests upon citizens caring more about the integrity of the decision-making process than about “winning” every individual argument.
That feels like an increasingly counter-cultural idea.
Too often today, disagreement is interpreted as disloyalty. Social media rewards certainty rather than curiosity, outrage rather than understanding, and performance rather than persuasion. We increasingly inhabit worlds where it is easier to dismiss those who think differently than to engage seriously with why they might have reached different conclusions.
One of the reasons I admired the lecture so much was that Lord Sumption resisted the temptation to reduce today’s challenges to simple tribal narratives. While he was rightly scathing about the authoritarian instincts displayed by Donald Trump and the erosion of constitutional norms in the United States, he also argued that democratic decline has deeper roots, rooted in decades of growing political polarisation and a loss of mutual respect across the political spectrum. Whether one agrees with every aspect of that diagnosis is almost beside the point. Serious thinkers should challenge us to examine our own assumptions, not simply reinforce them.
The part of the lecture that perhaps resonated most strongly with my own experience concerned younger generations. Lord Sumption explored the growing dissatisfaction that many young people feel towards democratic institutions, linking it to economic frustration, declining opportunity and a widespread sense that politics is failing to address the issues that matter most to their future.
That chimed powerfully with what I have seen over more than forty years working with young people.
From classrooms to Scouts, from The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award to Career Ready, and now through many of the organisations with which I remain involved, I have met thousands of young people. They are frequently caricatured as apathetic, yet that has never been my experience. If anything, they care more passionately than many of their elders. They care about fairness, about opportunity, about climate change, about inclusion and about the kind of society they will inherit. What worries many of them is not democracy itself but whether democratic institutions are still capable of responding effectively to the challenges they face.
During my year as High Sheriff, my theme was Hearing the Young Unheard. That phrase was never intended as a slogan. It reflected a conviction, built over decades, that societies flourish when they make a genuine effort to listen before they seek to lead. It is striking that Lord Sumption’s lecture, from a very different perspective, ultimately pointed towards much the same conclusion. Democracy depends upon listening. It depends upon recognising the legitimacy of voices other than our own. It depends upon understanding that compromise is not weakness but one of democracy’s greatest strengths.
I was also reminded of something I have learned repeatedly in public life. Institutions matter, but civil society matters just as much. Schools, charities, faith communities, youth organisations, voluntary groups and countless local associations all provide places where people learn how to disagree constructively, work alongside those who are different from themselves and contribute to something larger than their own immediate interests. Those experiences build the habits that democratic citizenship requires. If we neglect them, we should not be surprised when our politics becomes more brittle and more polarised.
I left St George’s House feeling grateful—not because I agreed with every proposition advanced during the evening, although I found much with which to agree, but because it reminded me how important it is that thoughtful people continue to ask difficult questions about the health of our democracy. We live in an age that rewards certainty and speed. Lord Sumption instead offered history, nuance and careful reasoning.
Perhaps the thought that has stayed with me most is that democracy is not something protected solely by judges, politicians or constitutional lawyers. It is sustained by the countless choices that ordinary citizens make every day: whether to listen or simply to shout, whether to seek understanding before judgement, whether to treat those with different opinions as opponents to be defeated or neighbours with whom we must continue to share a common future.
That seems to me a lesson worth carrying well beyond Windsor.
The text of Lord Sumption’s lecture may be found here.
