Has The Left Already Won Britain?

About this episode

The episode discusses the political views of young Britons and the implications for classical liberalism in a changing political landscape.

In this episode of the IEA Podcast, Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Dr Kristian Niemietz to launch a new series on the IEA Insider Substack: Millennial Liberalism. The series, inspired by the IEA’s 1985 anthology The New Right Enlightenment, brings together young classical liberals to share how they came to their ideas in a generation overwhelmingly hostile to free markets. Kristian explains why liberals of any era have interesting origin stories worth telling, while their left-wing peers rarely do, because being left-wing at a young age has become the default rather than a deliberate choice. The conversation digs into the polling that defines the moment. More than one in three young Britons hold a positive view of communism, two-thirds back BLM, and around half favour reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. Kristian argues this is not boomer slop from the right wing press but the sincere answers of millions of young people, and he dispels the comforting myth that this generation will grow out of it. The data shows older millennials in their early 40s already think indistinguishably from teenagers, meaning the traditional rightward drift with age has…

People in this episode

Host: Callum Price

Guest: Dr Kristian Niemietz

Topics covered

• Millennial Liberalism
• free markets
• polling data
• youth political views
• left-right political spectrum
• cancel culture
• NIMBYism

Keywords

• political views
• young Britons
• classical liberalism
• communism
• reparations
• cancel culture
• NIMBYism
• polling data
• Millennial Liberalism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: IEA Insider Substack, Institute of Economic Affairs, BLM, The New Right Enlightenment

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