Current Focus

Thematically, we organise the Ditchley programme under our four core themes of Geopolitics, Democracy, Technology, and Energy & Climate. However, we do not set out to cover everything under these headings, but instead select specific complex challenges that we judge will make the most difference to the resilience and renewal of democratic states and societies. There is often overlap between our themes and many discussions take place in the liminal and thorny spaces between them. 

Our approach is pragmatic and realistic, without naive expectations of simple breakthroughs, and we often return to the same issues year on year. Our programme is organised around a series of action-orientated questions that focus on how democracies can navigate the issues of the day, rather than a quest for analytical agreement on a particular subject.

In Geopolitics then we are thinking about how the transatlantic alliance can be sustained and strengthened for the long term, in the context of the Trump Administration’s radical challenge to the status quo. Necessarily related to this, we will also be considering how Europeans can strengthen and pay for the security and deterrence they need. 

We will also be looking to the Indo-Pacific to consider how democracies might develop common approaches on China, and how the democracies might build a new offer to the Global South to compete with China. We will continue to consider how the momentous changes in the Middle East might be channelled towards positive outcomes rather than cyclical violence. 

A key part of our work on Democracy recently has been an expanded programme of events to examine how the media can best evolve as an essential safeguard of democracy. These conversations will feed into our annual media conference and continue beyond it. Education and how it needs to evolve to strengthen democratic societies, states and alliances in a time of rapid geopolitical, technological and environmental changes is an ongoing conversation, as well as how democracies can win back public belief in the competence and competitiveness of the state, to underpin their credibility and licence to govern.

In Technology, AI and its fast-growing role in democracy and society is woven through all of our discussions. To underpin AI, we are considering how to increase well-regulated data access across democracies. There is also a particular focus on how the UK can deliver on its potential to be a major player on AI, biology, and quantum technologies. And in keeping with our transatlantic roots, we have been thinking through how Europeans and Americans increase investment and cooperation on strategic technologies, as well as how we align transatlantic technology policies towards China.    

In Energy & Climate, our driving questions are: how can essential climate action be combined with the delivery of affordable and reliable energy to serve prosperity in a politically acceptable manner? And how can ever-more-urgent climate action be taken forward without US federal leadership and in the context of tense geopolitical competition? For the UK, we are asking how energy and climate policy and finance can contribute to strengthening democracy and economic flourishing domestically, and how the UK can best find its place in a global energy transition. Overlaying this is the pressing question of how states and economies adapt to a world increasingly shaped by a changing climate and ecological stress and learn from one another.