Remarks to: City, University of London, launching the Finsbury Institute ahead of the Poly Crisis Interrogated Conference, on Thursday, 23 May 2024, by The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of London

President, Dean, honoured guests,

A very good morning to you all. As the Rector of City University of London, it gives me great pleasure to help launch the Finsbury Institute today, and its inaugural Poly Crisis Interrogated Conference.

When I was a kid, my dad always told me anyone could become president. Now that I’m an adult, I realise he was right … and it gives me nightmares!

Your President probably has nightmares too, about anyone becoming Lord Mayor and Rector. This 695th Lord Mayor’s theme is Connect To Prosper, celebrating the many Knowledge Miles of our Square Mile, the world’s coffee house. As I remind everyone we constitute the world’s oldest democratic workers’ and resident’s cooperative.

Thus, we hope that the launch of Finsbury Institute is a landmark event in the life of our City of London. It will link research and policy, ideas and action, the best university thinking to practice. Starting life here in the School of Policy and Global Affairs, the Finsbury Institute will bring together insights from Economics, International Politics, History, Sociology, and Criminology to study and act on the major challenges of our time – local, national and global.

This year, Connect To Prosper is tackling every single one of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals – the challenges that our client, modestly, The World, set us a decade ago. We are hosting 100 online Knowledge Miles lectures.

The ambition is to establish a City University-wide think tank that provides holistic thinking from all disciplines. This Poly Crisis Interrogated Conference is an important beginning, plunging straight into the multiple crises afflicting our world today. Years ago, the acronym VUCA was popular, the world was plagued with VUCA, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Today we speak of information, misinformation, and disinformation – or poly crises. Indeed, so much is happening, everything all at once, that it sometimes feels like we are in a film, perhaps Everything Everywhere All At Once, or a disaster movie. I am not going to enumerate such crises now, partly because I don’t want to cry this early in the day.

Remember when Halloween was the scariest night of the year? Now it’s Election night that’s the most terrifying.

But this Institute is here to help us figure out the road ahead. And to do so we need to encourage the art of Disagreeing Agreeably. Disagreeing Agreeably has been one of my guiding principles this year. At the core lies the concept of tolerance, but behind tolerance lies doubt. Addressing the Bishops & Archbishops earlier this year, I reminded them that the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote to have faith, one must also have doubt. To have tolerance of other ideas and viewpoints, one must also have doubt – to accept the possibility that you are wrong, and the other person is right.

Doubt is also essential for scientific progress: it opens the mind to new theories, new discoveries and new solutions. The spirit of “I am not too sure, but I’m listening” runs through all our Connect To Prosper initiatives… By embracing tolerance and doubt, we progress through disagreeing agreeably. And from doubt springs hope.

This conference launches a think tank for our times, rooted in the university, here in the heart of London, linking research and action to better understand and navigate our greatest challenges.

The Finsbury Institute needs to:

• build a community – of diverse thinkers;
• deliver valuable work – of the highest quality;
• change systems – to improve society;
• expand our frontiers – through thoughtful research.

When we consider the challenges facing the UK, it is clear that the country needs to do better in future, in the fields of investment, people and the spread of knowledge. We need people with the necessary skills and education. But the share of the population with higher secondary qualifications is well below the OECD average. And often, the level of collaboration between vocational and further education, business and local government is minimal.

We need to call the right shots and know where to invest our limited resources. Investment is stymied by the difficulty of getting anything built in Britain. We need to put in place the links and connections which generate productivity.

Although the UK has world-leading research universities, it often struggles to spread the knowledge they generate to companies. And we need to ensure we have the right speed of adaptation, innovation and regulation. My hope is that this Institute tackles misinformation & disinformation in a wide variety of fields by sowing doubt about science policy, governance, or taxation while keeping an eye on contributing to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

It is our hope that the Finsbury Institute will work closely with the City of London in the coming years, and further strengthen the links between the City Corporation and the university. We wish you all a very successful Poly Crisis Interrogated Conference today and tomorrow, and look forward to seeing the results of your work in the future.

With all these crises, we need solutions – and the solutions are there to be found. So let’s approach the crises and the challenges with confidence and optimism – as I always say, pessimism is for better times. Thank you.