Centrists of the world unite!

About this episode

Nick Cohen and Adrian Wooldridge discuss the challenges facing liberalism and the themes of Adrian's new book.

Centrists of the World, Unite! The world needs the path of Liberalism out of today's madness Nick Cohen and Adrian Wooldridge discuss Adrian's book " Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism ." They discuss how liberal institutions and ideologies have become corrupted across multiple domains - from "Woke" identitarianism on the left to neoliberal capitalism and global managerialism. Adrian identifies three main liberal overreaches: left liberals pushing extreme social policies, neoliberals promoting unfettered markets, and globalists supporting unmanaged immigration and multinational institutions. They discuss how these failures created conditions for authoritarian populism, with examples like Trump and Brexit, though Adrian argues these represent bad solutions to real problems rather than legitimate alternatives. They also talk about how tech companies pose a civilisational threat to liberal values by manipulating preferences and fracturing attention, and concluded with optimism about liberalism's historical pattern of revival after apparent deaths, suggesting current incremental adjustments by politicians like Sir Keir Starmer could lead to a new liberal…

People in this episode

Host: Nick Cohen

Guest: Adrian Wooldridge

Topics covered

• liberalism
• political commentary
• authoritarian populism
• neoliberalism
• social policies
• technology and society

Keywords

• liberalism
• centrism
• politics
• social policies
• neoliberalism
• authoritarianism
• technology
• globalism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bloomberg Opinion

Books & works: Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism

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