Why Are Young People Abandoning the Political Centre? (Your Radical Questions with Adrian Wooldridge)
4/20/202627 min
Amol puts your Radical questions to Adrian Wooldridge, a Bloomberg columnist and author of ‘Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism’. They discuss individualism and society, a decline in support for the centre ground, the potential dangers of nostalgia, and how the political centre could engage young people.
GET IN TOUCH
* WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480
* Email: radical@bbc.co.uk
Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday.
Amol Rajan presents the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 and hosts University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was the BBC’s media editor and the editor of The Independent newspaper.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Rufus Gray and Oscar Pearson. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davies. Technical production was by Jonny Baker. The editor is Sam Bonham.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAmol Rajan· Host0:00
Hello and welcome to Your Radical Questions. This is where I put your questions to one of our magnificent radical guests. He's, look, he's shuffling in his chair. He's so nervous about having to take these questions. It's your chance to engage very directly with the supremely smart and interesting and influential people that we have on this podcast, and ask them about their ideas for the future. And joining me today, and I very much hope you heard the main episode with him last Thursday, is Adrian Wooldridge. He's a writer at Bloomberg. He's a, I think they call you, is it a global business columnist?
Adrian Wooldridge· Guest0:29
Yes.
Amol Rajan· Host0:30
That's the pompous title, is it?
Adrian Wooldridge· Guest0:31
Correct. Yes.
Amol Rajan· Host0:31
But you write about absolutely everything, basically.
Adrian Wooldridge· Guest0:32
Correct.
Amol Rajan· Host0:33
Um, writer of many, many, many books, including The Aristocracy of Talent, and most recently, Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism. And basically, Adrian is trying to make a pretty trenchant defense of not just liberalism, but the idea of centrism, not as a form of equivocation, but as an active attempt to basically fix some of the big problems in the world while staying true to liberal principles. And, um, I strongly recommend the book, but I strongly recommend that, um, podcast as a primer. I mean, the danger with podcasts, Adrian, is that people listen to the podcast and think they don't need to read the book. But in your case, they should definitely read the book, shouldn't they?
Adrian Wooldridge· Guest1:08
Uh, absolutely.
Amol Rajan· Host1:09
There we go. Look, we've got the easy questions out, uh, to begin with. This is our first question. It's from a friend of the podcast, a former guest on this podcast, a political theorist and a teacher of critical theory, a young academic called Louisa Munch. Louisa, it's fantastic to hear from you. She has sent us this voice note.
Louisa Munch1:27
Hi, Adrian. Hi, Amol. Louisa