Baroness Philippa Stroud details the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference, a November 29th to 1st London event born from her dialogue with Jordan Peterson. Rejecting the "polycrisis" narrative, she champions a hero's journey framework where conflict drives growth, countering World Economic Forum top-down governance via subsidiarity. Featuring over 90 speakers including former Australian Prime Ministers and US congressional delegations, the gathering aims to rebuild Western confidence through foundational liberal democratic and Judeo-Christian stories across science, family, and business, ultimately fostering individual responsibility against globalist isolationism. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, I'm very happy to have you because I will be joining you guys at the ARC Conference in London in about a week and a half or two weeks or so.
And I thought we could just chat for a few minutes about what the conference is all about, sort of how this originally came from the, I think I can say the great mind of Jordan Peterson, what the genesis of all of this was and what the intentions are.
So I'd love to talk to you about British politics, but I think we have to focus on that.
So can you talk about what ARC is, How Jordan got to you and where you want to go with this thing?
So ARK is really a movement of people who are basically saying that we've had enough
of a declinist, permacrisis, polycrisis type way of thinking.
We actually believe that there is a better story, a better way forward and a more hopeful
narrative.
And because we so believe in story, because it shapes who we are and it shapes our direction
of travel as societies, we actually want to come together to develop a better story for
our society.
But actually when I think back to how it all started, I had invited Jordan to come and
do a talk at the think tank that I led in London.
And...
We had a fantastic time with him.
The whole time we were focused on freedom of speech and higher education and how we restored freedom of speech and academic freedom back to our universities.
And at the end of it, he went on his way, did a big tour around Eastern Europe.
And halfway through that tour he rang me and he said, Philippa, everywhere I go, There are people, fantastic leaders, but they're so isolated.
And they're doing amazing work.
What would happen if we brought them all together to do a conference in London?
And I thought, great story.
And at the end of it, he just said to me, Philippa, do you know this chap called Paul Marshall?
And I said, yeah, great friend of mine.
So I pinged an email and said, hey, Jordan, meet Paul.
Paul, meet Jordan.
You're going to love each other.
Next couple of days, Paul rings me and says, you know this conference that you and Jordan are doing?
I have to say, just on a personal note, as you know, I toured with Jordan in 2018 and 19, about 120 shows, I think 20 countries, and what you just described there of all these great people coming up to him after the show, political leaders, politicians, celebrities, thinkers, authors, everyone was like, we've gotta do something.
So I'm so thrilled for this thing, I really can't wait.
But do you find it strange, you mentioned stories, and obviously Jordan has been a great explainer of why stories are important.
You can't just give people policy.
Do you find it odd that the West, which has come up with so much great movie making and books and literature and all of the stuff that our culture is made of, we somehow didn't tell a story to defend ourselves?
Yeah, so the big question we're asking is, what is the better story?
But within that too, it's like, what is the better story for family and the social fabric?
What is the better story for business?
What is the better story for energy and the environment?
So it's asking right across the board, all these, like, what is the better story in all of these different aspects There's so much that we want to platform that I think it's gonna take years two, three, four to platform it all, but it's all going to be framed around that lens of the better story.
And is the plan then, I assume so, but the plan will be, okay, we're gonna come up with sort of specific stories that can lead us to policies, and then we're gonna find the people that might be in the House of Lords or in the United States Congress or elsewhere, and we're gonna try to implement some of this stuff.
Absolutely and what's really exciting too is that we've got at least half the shadow cabinet from Australia coming, three ex-Australian Prime Ministers are coming, we've got two congressional delegations coming from the US, we've got over a hundred different MPs from different parts of the world coming, so we have some people of real influence but we also have 200 business leaders, 200 Another 200 kind of ideas and influences as well.
So, I mean, it's going to be a very rich, rich audience.
Does it also feel to you that the timing is kind of right?
Not just because of what's been happening in the world for the last couple of years, obviously, but really even the events of the last 10 days or so really have the West feeling very shaken.
I mean, I'm seeing obviously the protests that are happening in London, but they're happening here in New York City and other places here as well.
I think one of the One of the questions that we're asking is, where did we lose our confidence and how did we lose our values in the West?
And would these events be happening if we had more confidence in who we are as people, more confidence in our values?
And I think we've got fantastic historians like Neil Ferguson who are going to be joining us.
We're hoping that we will have some extraordinary spokespeople even from Israel who are able to join us that aren't announced yet and obviously for obvious reasons may not be able to join us.
But I think this is a moment for us to really ask ourselves some difficult questions and say actually we've got to strengthen ourselves, we've got to have more courage, we've got to have a better story to tell.