Downstream: Is Liberalism Finally Waking Up to the Crises it has Caused? w/ Adrian Wooldridge
Novara Media
Novara Media
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2026
⏱️ 88 minutes
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Summary
Liberalism, in one form or another, has been the pervading political ideology of the past 200 years. It has become so pervasive, as an ideology, that it lays claim to the middle ground and common sense itself. But liberalism is a set of dogmas and doctrines like any other political ideology, and unfathomable horrors as well as huge advances have been made in its name.
Today on Downstream, the ideas we call liberal or centrist are up for scrutiny, as Aaron Bastani interviews Adrian Wooldridge. Wooldridge is a liberal insider, having been a journalist at the Economist magazine for thirty years. His new book, Centrists of the World Unite! The Lost Genius of Liberalism is an account of his own sense that liberalism in 2026 is in a state of crisis. It must reinvent itself, he argues, or die.
So what exactly is liberalism, where did it come from, and how can we characterise it today? What was the historical relationship between liberalism and slavery? Why are liberals always so reluctant to acknowledge this aspect of their history? In times of crisis, do liberals always defect to the fascist far-right? And what must centrists do today, if they want their ideas to organise the 21st century?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We live in a moment of crisis. |
| 0:10.0 | Cliche I know it's true. |
| 0:12.0 | Ecological crisis, climate change, automation, AI, inequality, shifting geopolitics. |
| 0:20.0 | What the hell is going on in Iran right now. |
| 0:22.9 | But maybe the biggest crisis of all is the crisis of liberalism, the prevailing set of ideas |
| 0:27.9 | ruling the economy and society for my entire lifetime, basically, and its inability to |
| 0:34.1 | come up with solutions to all the challenges that basically everyone agrees on. |
| 0:39.6 | That crisis of liberalism fundamentally means that we can't actually step beyond the problems. |
| 0:44.6 | We can't be propositional about where we go next. |
| 0:47.5 | And the last people to admit the crisis of liberalism, it turns out, are generally liberals. |
| 0:52.7 | They're never to blame for anything. |
| 0:54.8 | They'll point at the left and say, well, when you apologize the cultural revolution and |
| 0:58.6 | chairman Mao, but they're unable to talk about the defects of their own ideology hundreds |
| 1:04.8 | of years ago or even this year. And that's a problem. Somebody is trying to change that, though. |
| 1:10.4 | They're not all that way. |
| 1:11.7 | Adrian Waldridge worked at The Economist magazine for over 30 years. |
| 1:16.1 | He's written a new book, Centrist of the World Unite, The Lost Genius of Liberalism. |
| 1:21.5 | And despite the title, don't hold it against him, it's one of the best critiques I've actually seen of modern liberalism. |
| 1:29.5 | I agree with some of the stuff in here and I disagree on stuff elsewhere, but I'm kind of surprised. |
| 1:36.3 | If we're going to solve the problems that basically everyone agrees on in the 21st century, |
| 1:41.3 | we have to start with acknowledging where we've gone wrong. And liberals, |
| 1:46.2 | your front of the queue. Adrian Wildridge, it's a pleasure to have you on downstream. |
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