Phillip Blond: ‘We live in a post-liberal world’

Alice Wright | Issue 1 | Comment, Magazine

From the Archive

The political philosopher ponders policy, populism and the changed landscape of European politics

Many people say there is a lack of ideology in the main political parties, and that think tanks don’t have the connections they once did. Why is this? Ideology hasn’t caught up with the new realities. Broadly speaking, since Mrs Thatcher we’ve been governed by economic and social liberalism. As a governing approach, that has failed to secure people both economically and culturally. Whether you are left or right wing, you’re still governed by liberals. Often now you are governed by both economic and social liberalism together, whereas previously the left was socially liberal and the right was economically liberal. Now they have essentially unified.

What is interesting about European populism, about Brexit, about Donald Trump, is that standard parties don’t recognise this new reality. That’s why the connections between ideologically founded organisations and political parties are somewhat severed – because ideologically formed organisations are mostly of the past. They are all liberal. The world we are in, I’d argue, is post-liberal, but we don’t yet have post-liberal policies to address the needs of those that liberalism left behind.

You touched briefly on lobbying. What are think tanks’ relationships with lobbying? The difference between lobbying and what think tanks do is that lobbyists take direction from those that pay them and think tanks generally don’t. They say, “You …

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