This weekend (28/29 Oct) sees journalists and pundits flooding to debates at the Battle of Ideas at London’s Royal College of Art. The Times is one of the event’s sponsors. Join the debate anyone? The weekend calls itself a freethinking festival and it attracts some serious people to step up on to its many platforms. Steve Hewlett, Michael Mansfield, Mark Easton and Ray Snoddy are among the names billed as lining up to debate ‘ideas’. The great and the good seem happy to lend the event their support.

And what self-respecting opinion-former wouldn’t want to take to the platform at something marketed as the Battle of Ideas?

So who’s behind this media-friendly talkfest? Why the Institute of Ideas – “an agenda-setting organisation committed to forging a public space where ideas can be contested without constraint.” What’s not to like? The ‘Institute’ bit sounds serious and independent, like an academic institute. But the ‘ideas’ bit, well that sounds engaging and fun!

But the ‘Institute’ is not a think-tank like Demos (charitable company, accounts published online) or Chatham House (charity, ditto). It is not academic. It is not public sector. It is not a charity. Far from being independent, it is dependent on whoever is stumping up the cash. The ‘Institute’ is in the corporate advocacy business. Nothing wrong with that. Except normally, its polite to tell people.

The ‘Institute’ is registered as the Academy of Ideas Ltd, company secretary, Claire Regina Fox. It turned over a modest £227,000 last year. Claire doesn’t seem to like being the company secretary of a small corporate advocacy business so instead she sells herself as director of the ‘Institute’ of Ideas.

Claire’s also a media commentator who has moved into the space vacated by Julie Burchill. Her portfolio of opinions ranges from defending Gary Glitter’s right to download child pornography, to cheerleading for tobacco, to condemning healthy eating advice for kids.

Claire was co-publisher of the discredited LM (Living Marxism) magazine, which imploded when it committed a libel of truly stunning proportions against my former colleagues at ITN. Yes, “free speech” collided with that knotty old “telling lies” problem.

The Times sponsors the Battle of Ideas, but The Times doesn’t allow companies who advertise on its comment pages to dictate a free leader column. Advertisers are left in no doubt that they cannot influence the editorial content of the paper.

“Free speech is allowed!” says the blurb for the Battle of Ideas. But representatives of sponsoring companies and organizations show up as debate panellists throughout the weekend. Presumably they are exercising the ancient “free speech” right of cold, hard cash?

And what of the debates themselves? How “free thinking” are they? Take one on climate change. It is ‘produced’ by the Future Cities Project. The Project website proclaims that “environmentalism is driving down social aspirations.” The project’s ‘director’, Austin Williams, picked the panel, and he’s on it too. The first article on Austin’s reading list to accompany the debate mocks “climate change doom-mongers.” Like the Government’s Chief Scientist, Sir David King perhaps? Williams himself adds a sarcastic self-penned piece reviewing a conference on renewable energy.

Another debate purporting to be about children’s TV links to an article smearing campaigners against junk-food advertising, describing them as “Taliban-esque.”

It’s a twisted old battlefield, the battle of ideas.

I’m sure Fox isn’t part of a weird, cultish conspiracy to feed the opinion factory by twisting and reframing debates. I can’t believe for a second that she flaunts her ultra-conservatism to tout for cash from public affairs departments in big corporations who like what they hear. But as Claire herself admits: “There is intense suspicion in relation to corporations…This perception needs to be tackled.” And where better than the Battle of Ideas?

Fox’s ‘festival’ and her ‘Institute’ blur many boundaries that would be better clearer.

You would think an event stage-managed by an attention-hungry contrarian who could suck the publicity from a stone, would be a bit more forthcoming about admitting its agenda. At least pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, who are one of the event’s main sponsors, are honest about what they want from stumping up cash, an event that “prompts people to rethink their assumptions.” A good place to start would be with the Battle of Ideas.