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Centrists of the World Unite!: The Lost Genius of Liberalism
From the acclaimed author of The Aristocracy of Talent: the history, enduring genius and vital importance today of liberalism
We live in an age of populist leaders are setting the agenda, autocracies are on the march, and the liberal establishment is a bewildered blob, devoid of new ideas or fresh solutions. Having once powered progress in the form of democracy, mass welfare and defeating totalitarianism, liberals have the power to save the world again – but only if they rediscover the lost genius of their creed.
Guiding us skilfully and entertainingly through the intellectual, cultural and political histories of liberalism, this book lays out a centrist agenda for today’s problems. It reminds us of the dynamism and fixed principles that have shaped the successes of liberalism and warns us against splitting into sub-groups that fail to grapple with the common good. Wooldridge proposes that, as well as reviving social mobility, liberals today need to be much more critical of big business – particularly if it makes money by manipulating choices and spreading misinformation – and rethink the laissez-faire approach to immigration, social disorder, and substance abuse.
A powerful call to action, Centrists of the World Unite! shows us how liberals of all parties and none can come together in defending the values of liberal civilization from enemies without and within.
We live in an age of populist leaders are setting the agenda, autocracies are on the march, and the liberal establishment is a bewildered blob, devoid of new ideas or fresh solutions. Having once powered progress in the form of democracy, mass welfare and defeating totalitarianism, liberals have the power to save the world again – but only if they rediscover the lost genius of their creed.
Guiding us skilfully and entertainingly through the intellectual, cultural and political histories of liberalism, this book lays out a centrist agenda for today’s problems. It reminds us of the dynamism and fixed principles that have shaped the successes of liberalism and warns us against splitting into sub-groups that fail to grapple with the common good. Wooldridge proposes that, as well as reviving social mobility, liberals today need to be much more critical of big business – particularly if it makes money by manipulating choices and spreading misinformation – and rethink the laissez-faire approach to immigration, social disorder, and substance abuse.
A powerful call to action, Centrists of the World Unite! shows us how liberals of all parties and none can come together in defending the values of liberal civilization from enemies without and within.
399 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 12, 2026
About the author
Adrian Wooldridge
26 books77 followersAdrian Wooldridge (born November 11, 1959) is the Management Editor and, since 1 April 2017, the 'Bagehot' columnist for The Economist newspaper. He was formerly the 'Schumpeter' columnist. Until July 2009 he was The Economist's Washington Bureau Chief and the 'Lexington' columnist.
Wooldridge was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied modern history, and was awarded a fellowship at All Souls College, also at Oxford University, where he received a doctorate in philosophy in 1985. From 1984 to 1985 he was also a Harkness Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley.
Wooldridge was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied modern history, and was awarded a fellowship at All Souls College, also at Oxford University, where he received a doctorate in philosophy in 1985. From 1984 to 1985 he was also a Harkness Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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May 4, 2026In 1944 the historian Herbert Butterfield lamented that ‘whatever it may have done to our history’ the Whiggish version of it had ‘had a wonderful effect on English politics’. A decade earlier Butterfield had published his great critique The Whig Interpretation of History (1931), which delineated and criticised both a prevalent approach to British history that lauded the role of Whigs in extending constitutional liberties, and a more general tendency in the writing of history which was overly simplistic, one-sided, and present-minded. What we have here, in Centrists of the World Unite!, is perhaps best described as a kind of Whig history. Liberalism, we are told, was born, saved the world, then corrupted, and must now be re-energised to save the world again.
This would certainly be a noble task; the world really does need saving. Britain, we often hear, is ‘broken’, facing what Adam Tooze has described as a ‘polycrisis’ – climate, population, industrial, democratic – and now war. Institutional trust is at an all-time low. Adrian Wooldridge is quite correct when he states that neoliberalism has failed as a governing philosophy. To rescue us from political extremes Wooldridge asks: ‘How can we bring liberalism back to life from its current coma?’
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Emily Jones is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Manchester.
This would certainly be a noble task; the world really does need saving. Britain, we often hear, is ‘broken’, facing what Adam Tooze has described as a ‘polycrisis’ – climate, population, industrial, democratic – and now war. Institutional trust is at an all-time low. Adrian Wooldridge is quite correct when he states that neoliberalism has failed as a governing philosophy. To rescue us from political extremes Wooldridge asks: ‘How can we bring liberalism back to life from its current coma?’
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Emily Jones is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Manchester.
April 18, 2026
This book, published next week in the US as The Revolutionary Center, is one of the most insightful and important books on contemporary politics and culture in years. If only it was required reading for everyone. Please read it.
May 3, 2026
I recommend this for any student of liberal thought/philosophy but it's not what I would call a perfect text. His analyses of liberalism in the UK and EU contexts are superb especially when he gets going about EU bureaucrats, but I kept seeing a blind spot whenever he reached across the Atlantic to offer his perspective on the American institution -- namely, the uniquely American racial zeitgeist. Repeatedly flattening critiques of meritocracy and the like into surface-level takes about identity politics ("punctuality is racism" is indeed ridiculous btw) rather than actually tackling the subject of systemic disparities that lead people to conclude that meritocracy masks racism, is a disappointing way to manuever in a book I was hoping would present a "middle path" for addressing the issue.
I also noticed that when it comes to references to American thinkers, Du Bois and Douglass receive only cursory mentions, when in order to understand American liberalism, one must spend a little more time on how Black-American culture and history -- both the cultivation of and opposition to -- grew to form a major pillar of our collective American identity. Douglass is as much the classical liberal architect as any other, and I definitely wanted more of a dive into the way he held the American state to its own liberty documents.
I'm certainly not asking for anyone to be an expert on all things British AND American history, but there is an internal logic that is evident when he discusses the British side of the house (British class divides) that he ends up projecting onto the US. There is no 1:1 transfer here. In the British model, minority experiences are akin to bugs in software that are patched up (or have the potential to be) via reforms of liberal institution. In the American model, slavery and its racist aftereffects have had such an undeniable impact in shaping *our* flavor of liberalism (across education, justice system, the literal lines that dictate our voting representation, etc) that any US-centric internal logic must address the Black American experience, the economic downfall of the White Working Class Male, and the neglect by liberal elitists as equal tenents, and not treat any one of these as a subset of the other. Otherwise you're not quite capturing the root causes of current populist rage on both sides of the aisle. It's an excruciatingly difficult balancing act and in all fairness to Woolridge, I see hardly anyone knocking it out of the park in the US either (see: the constant arguments especially on the left over whether to prioritize class or race).
I typed a lot of words in disagreement but I still think overall, I agree with about 80% of what Woolridge presents as needed alternatives. Overall, the book was definitely a needed mental hug of sorts for me as I'm heavily concerned about where both angry left and right populism is taking us in the future.
I also noticed that when it comes to references to American thinkers, Du Bois and Douglass receive only cursory mentions, when in order to understand American liberalism, one must spend a little more time on how Black-American culture and history -- both the cultivation of and opposition to -- grew to form a major pillar of our collective American identity. Douglass is as much the classical liberal architect as any other, and I definitely wanted more of a dive into the way he held the American state to its own liberty documents.
I'm certainly not asking for anyone to be an expert on all things British AND American history, but there is an internal logic that is evident when he discusses the British side of the house (British class divides) that he ends up projecting onto the US. There is no 1:1 transfer here. In the British model, minority experiences are akin to bugs in software that are patched up (or have the potential to be) via reforms of liberal institution. In the American model, slavery and its racist aftereffects have had such an undeniable impact in shaping *our* flavor of liberalism (across education, justice system, the literal lines that dictate our voting representation, etc) that any US-centric internal logic must address the Black American experience, the economic downfall of the White Working Class Male, and the neglect by liberal elitists as equal tenents, and not treat any one of these as a subset of the other. Otherwise you're not quite capturing the root causes of current populist rage on both sides of the aisle. It's an excruciatingly difficult balancing act and in all fairness to Woolridge, I see hardly anyone knocking it out of the park in the US either (see: the constant arguments especially on the left over whether to prioritize class or race).
I typed a lot of words in disagreement but I still think overall, I agree with about 80% of what Woolridge presents as needed alternatives. Overall, the book was definitely a needed mental hug of sorts for me as I'm heavily concerned about where both angry left and right populism is taking us in the future.
May 10, 2026
A really interesting defence of liberalism. Adrian Wooldridge immediately scored points with me by defining the liberalism that he is discussing. It is often incorrectly used as another word for left-wing or "progressive" but that is not what he is talking about. He is unafraid to criticise liberalism .. in fact a lot of his criticisms of the more left wing elements of modern liberalism remind me of left wing 'post liberal' thinkers like Adrian Pabst and Jonathan Rutherford. But he is equally critical of the authoritarian modern right. And he is criticising modern liberalism to save it, not destroy it. His arguments about education and immigration controls will challenge some people but they are well worth engaging with.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews