Grace May: Hello and welcome to the geopolitical review where I sit down with leading academics, experts and policymakers to explore the forces shaping the world today. Liberal democracy has been the dominant political model in the West for decades, but in recent years it's come under growing pressure from a new movement known as post liberalism. Its supporters argue that liberalism has prioritised the rights of the individual at the expense of community, weakened national identity and contributed to rising social fragmentation, loneliness and political disillusionment. They believe it's time to rethink the relationship between the individual, the state and what they call the common good. But is liberalism really failing or are post-liberals misdiagnosing problems facing modern democracies. And if governments begin defining the common good, who gets to decide what that actually means? To explore these questions, I'm joined by Professor Paul Kelly, a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics and one of Britain's foremost scholars of liberal political thought. His latest book, Against Post-Liberalism, Why Family, Faith and Flag is a Dead End for the Left, offers a defense of liberalism while critically engaging with one of the most influential political debates of our time. We discuss what liberalism and post-liberalism actually mean, why post-liberal ideas are gaining traction across Europe and the United States, the rise of populism, the appeal of faith, family and flag, and whether the pursuit of common good risks sliding into authoritarianism. This project, as always, is supported by the Democratic Security Institute. a nonpartisan think tank focused on issues of democracy, security and freedom. I really hope you enjoy the conversation. Well, hi, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I wanted to start off by asking if you could introduce yourself, who you are, your area of expertise and how you came to to specialise in the area that you have.
Paul Kelly: Hello, Grace. So my name is Professor Paul Kelly. I'm a professor of political theory or political philosophy in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. I have taught political ideas, political theory, and philosophy. The the distinction is not important here, and it's sometimes the same thing. For all of my academic career, so getting on for 40 years. and the book that I have written falls within that. So my background was first as a philosopher, but then I've always taught in government or political science departments where some element of political ideas and political theory has always been central to, you know, how we understand politics and do political science. So I do that bit in the political science department. But my background was a philosopher, so I've always been interested in ideas. And I suppose what brought me to this book, it it's a culmination of many things across a long career. I wouldn't say it's the the full culmination, so I'm not retiring or anything soon, but it brings together ideas from different kinds of political theory, debates and so on, but connected to the world of politics. So I think what attracted me to talking about post liberalism was the way in which things that had been aired in academic debates that I've looked at over quite a long time all of a sudden start to become part of a political movement, particularly in response to the rise of populism. So this is a a more political book than just a theoretical book, but there is a lot of theory and we'll obviously talk about that.
Grace May: So do you believe then kind of your motivations for writing the book are based on what's happening right now or has this been a longer project? I suppose.
Paul Kelly: so both. Okay, so so in a way it's it's a very current book. There are things that I have seen and debates that I see developing and starting to have some traction, which I wanted to sort of comment on, but from an academic point of view. So to look at their philosophical underpinnings and to make some sort of academic rather than narrowly political. criticisms or comments on those ideas. So how things are being put together in order to achieve a political agenda. But the book is also, you know, it has an angle. So it's a defense of a type of political liberalism against a challenge to it from this movement called post-liberalism. So that's the title against post-liberalism. So it is engaged. Now What why have I done that? yes, it's the sort of culmination of many thoughts across my career and its relationship to current political events, UK, but also the US, and we'll come on to that where this debate has become very important. But the but the other thing is. there's a bigger story, bigger intellectual story that I've been working on for a long time. And that has been a defense of some version of what I would call political liberalism. And a long time ago I wrote a book on it and thought that was, you know, that was my statement of that thing, and I would move on to something else. And then seeing, you know, debates and critiques continuing. I've become more interested in criticizing the criticisms. So that's really where this book fits in as a theoretical enterprise. So here is a movement that's challenging political liberalism, which I'm happy to talk more about, but I've been committed to for quite a long time as a sort of philosophical theoretical agenda for politics. And I wanted to try and understand why, well, not why my argument didn't work and convince them of. you know, that, but actually to try and look at the criticisms of it and then provide a sort of critique of them. And that's obviously where political post-liberalism became a target because of course it wants to dispense with that worldview, that conception of politics and how we should theorize and engage with it and replace it with something else. So that was then okay Where do we differ? What's the fundamentals of that? And how do I critique that? And then there are some other projects for the future which look at different challenges to political liberalism beyond post-liberalism, or maybe whether they are versions of post-liberalism. So there's a book I'm working on at the moment about conservatism, which is again semi-political. But it draws on precisely this bigger story about what are the challenges to political liberalism.
Grace May: Okay, amazing. I just start to delve into the book, but from a more broad perspective, this is quite a large theoretical question, of course, but your book against post liberalism, in defense somewhat of political liberalism, could you just explain, I suppose, broadly what both of those things are, and how they
Paul Kelly: Yeah.
Grace May: differ, I suppose, key characteristics of liberalism and post liberalism?
Paul Kelly: Yeah. So so let
Grace May: sits.
Paul Kelly: let me s let me start with with liberalism, and then narrow it to what I've called political liberalism, and then I'll say something about where post liberalism fits into that. So liberalism is is a tradition of thinking about politics and the state, which has about 300 years of tradition. You can go back to all sorts of thinkers in the past in Britain, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, possibly even John Milton if you wanted to do that. obviously in France you've got Constant, you've got a whole lot of important nineteenth century thinkers, de Topfu and so on. Germany too, von Humboldt and and arguably how you read him, Hegel. So there's a big tradition of liberalism. And what it looks at is thinking about the principles, the rules, the values that underpin a way of thinking about state power and political power, and how it should be used and how it is legitimate. Now, of course, that is a very broad account, and within that you have lots of traditions. Subtraditions of utilitarians like John Stuart Mill, who think that the point of political power is to maximize the greatest happiness of the greatest number. You have people like Locke, Kant in a slightly different way in Germany, looking at individual rights as the basis of politics and what things states cannot do without violating rights. Perhaps in the US context, that's Sort of built into the discourse around the United States Constitution and the way in which you structure a system of government that protects the life, liberty, and happiness of individuals. Okay, so that's narrowed it a bit further. Now, in the 20th century, liberalism has become much more contested, partly because The extension throughout the eighteenth into the nineteenth, early twentieth century has linked the ideas of political liberty, which is what liberalism is about, with democracy, without with extending the franchise, with bringing more people into actively controlling and determining how political power is used. So we get to the present where liberalism is effectively liberal democracy. As well as that political story, there's a philosophical story. So if you're justifying political authority in terms of individual rights or individual well-being, you're using concepts like the individual, the primacy of the individual over communal goods, over nation. Over religious commitments and so on. So you start to see a philosophical separation between the claims of the individual and other kinds of authority claims, whether those are moral, religious, political, national, familial, gendered, and so on. So liberalism is also this world which identifies something about the human person as having. Some you know political, moral significance and irreducibility, and basing political authority ultimately on that. Now, there's a whole variety of ways in which you can develop that, but it's precisely that claim of individualism, where it fits into the story, which is what the post-liberals are most concerned with. Because what they see. Is this idea of individualism as a sort of social atomization, breaking up political entities, communities, nations, states into these discrete individuals who have their own authority and independence of the state, which limits what states can do. Now that might be a good thing as a bulwark against. Very sort of regressive nationalisms or fascism or something like that. But it also becomes problematic when you're trying to think of a political agenda, say, concerning the common good, transferring power and authority from some individuals to others. So the post-liberals look at this liberal story as being one that denies the idea of. Communal or group solidarity and the ability for groups to pursue benign as well as possibly other kinds of political agendas in their own right, without that being just a combination of individuals aggregating their judgments. So post-liberals are really concerned with the broader philosophical story that liberalism draws on and the what they see as the dangers of its atomistic individualism.
Grace May: So you've touched on a few of them there the criticisms that post-liberal thinkers
Paul Kelly: Yeah, yeah.
Grace May: have on liberalism, particularly that the atomization and this kind of primacy of the individual over communities and society as a whole. I suppose, what do you think the strongest criticisms are? is that what you would say the strongest criticism is? And to what extent do you accept that those criticisms are founded, I suppose?
Paul Kelly: so I you know, I've I've tried to approach my discussion of post-liberalism fairly and therefore to take seriously what are genuine challenges to the liberal tradition. And, you know, possibly their response to me would be: well, I just narrow my conception of liberalism to such a thing that it misses the challenges that they raise. But actually, liberalism, you know. is is is still more problematic than I would suggest. But I suppose I suppose let me let me let me try and simplify the contrast. So I have presented a conception of liberalism as a political doctrine. And I suppose what the post-liberals argue is that it's more than that. And that's where its fundamental challenge is. The trouble with liberalism in the post-liberals' view is that its liberation of the individual starts to appear everywhere. And that's where it challenges group identity, solidarity, and so on. But I suppose most importantly for the post-liberals is that it's liberated a sort of economic ideology, what we might call neoliberalism. which places the claims of individuals as consumers and producers, owners of private property and wealth above absolutely everything. And then that is the bit that they see as desiccating and fragmenting political societies, where some forms of social institution and culture The post-liberals would argue is actually essential for the economy. You know, you can't have an economy without secure property rights, without law of contract, without some degree of education, so that when you go to the store and buy something, somebody can count and you know give you back the appropriate change. So there's a lot of social elements to the economy. And what post-liberals argue. Is that a completely sort of individualistic neoliberalism not only ignores that but actually undermines it? So that's one of their major arguments, is that this kind of liberalism in the long run is self-undermining. And that's the political challenge that they make about liberalism. It actually undermines social order and brings about challenges even to liberal values.
Grace May: So in retaliation then, and this is obviously part of the heading of your book, is that their toolkit, I suppose, of things that they then use to try and reestablish what they see as obviously the correct worldview is family, and flag. I wondered if you
Paul Kelly: Yeah.
Grace May: could expand a bit on those concepts, how they utilise it and... perhaps some contemporary examples, because I'm thinking specifically of JD Vance's new book, where he is his spiritual journey of Catholicism, which culminated
Paul Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Grace May: in him having a spat with the Pope. But he obviously argues that we should return to this sort of family faith. So if you could just expand a bit on those three things.
Paul Kelly: So this is the the you're you're right, this is the sort of core of of my critique of post-liberalism. but the faith family and flag in the title was actually selected because it became a sort of political slogan. a political slogan in the UK under Blue Labour, which is also in the news at the moment, as it's central to the British Labour Party's reconfiguration of what it stands for. And it's deliberate echoing of this sort of anti-liberal egalitarian tradition, but also the way you're right, it's been picked up in the United States by Explicitly post-liberal politicians, and and J.D. Vance has identified himself as a post-liberal or post-liberal adjacent, I think was the word, the phrasing he used,
Grace May: you
Paul Kelly: and linked himself to some quite important, although difficult, thinkers. Okay, so so there's a there's a there's a signal of a political agenda here. because otherwise you could read it as if. Paul Kelly thinks that family, faith, or you know, major religious, ethical commitments, patriotism are not important.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: And I don't think that. I think nobody thinks that some version of those things aren't important for political societies, for community cohesion, for human significance and meaning. So so why have I picked on this? Well, I think I've Probably already hinted at you know part of the problem with a political agenda that focuses on faith, family, and flag is its particular. So if you are JD Vance, you might take your account of family and the issues that go with that from other commitments you have, like your faith commitment or your national community. And then you've raised the the interesting point that he's had a go at the Pope.
Grace May: Mm.
Paul Kelly: So the Pope is also a Catholic, obviously. and the Pope has views about faith, family, and the place of political community, and they differ. So the important point about these broad conceptions of the good, when they're brought in as specific policy agendas. is that they overdetermine things. In other words, they give a sense of greater clarity than actually goes with those things. You know, I think family is good, but I always remember someone telling me, you know, he thought family was the best way of bringing up children. Because all the others are just terrible. It's like, you know, Churchill's view of democracy. It's the best we've got. But it also fails. It fails in many ways. And that's why we regulate it. You know, we don't have, you know, the United States famously didn't allow polygamous families, and Mormons had to go to Utah.
Grace May: Mm.
Paul Kelly: Why? we now have single sex families or single-gendered families. and some people think, well, that can't be right, because family is about man and a woman, but is it? Now, obviously, if you have a sacramental view of family within the context of certain church values, maybe yes, there's a there's a sort of natural configuration of family which is traditional and we've always had it. But even that is open to challenge. And of course, many other things that we look to family to do, like bring up children, can be done very well. By whoever is committed to doing it, just as it can be done very badly, but that can be, you know, in in traditional families. They can be sites of oppression and domination and pain and suffering and fragmentation. So my point is to just be careful about bringing in those things as if they're simple answers to complex social relations. The same can be said about faith. Faith can be A way of finding fulfillment and meaning for locating possibly universal values. Think of the way that Catholicism, since at least the Second World War, has been very committed to the idea of human rights. Other religions too. But not all religions, and not all things that claim to be religions, are also recognized as religions by other religious people. So it's also a site of contest. you know, even amongst Catholics, there's disputes. We have this with the ultra-tradition traditionalists, you know, the other day getting ticked off by the Pope for not being proper Catholics anymore. you know, these again are sites of contest and sites of value, and those things become problematic. Flag, flag is kind of you know, a stand-in for political communities, patriotism, loving your country, again can be great. Depends what your country does, you know. So
Grace May: Yeah.
Paul Kelly: that's really the point. It it's it simply opens up a can of of of worms and contestation, which fuels politics. It doesn't solve it.
Grace May: I suppose what I've been thinking about is, particularly when it comes to family, faith and flag and contemporary post-liberal or post-liberal adjacent politicians or thinkers, is this kind of nostalgia to return to this good time where everything made sense, everything was conventional, even Make America Great Again has that kind of nostalgic ring. How much is it this desire or need to return to the way things were before? because they think that we've gone too far in the other direction. And how does that work with social change? is it possible that we would even be able to return to these conventional forms of family, for example? How does post-liberalism fit in with social change, social transformation?
Paul Kelly: So so if if we look at the US arguments and debates, of course, many of those turn on what they see as liberal capture of the Constitution and relentless progressivism. So liberals stroke progressives are the target of the of the post liberals, particularly the way in which they've used the constitution to transform political society. So, you know, the big things certainly for Catholic post-liberals in the United States have been Roe versus Wade and the campaign to overturn it, which is which is a kind of interesting thing because, you know, if if you think about the idea of the constitutional right to abortion, you know, that wasn't a political decision, that was a judge made decision.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: Which then discovers a right which can be exercised against political power. Now, you know, in the UK, we have permissive and liberal abortion laws, but they were parliamentary decided. And the point about that difference is that a parliament can make the law, it can change it. So it's not impossible for Parliament two to overturn the protection of women's rights to reproductive freedom, or to To you know to narrow them or broaden them. But it doesn't require anybody to think they were wrong. It doesn't tell Catholics that your commitment to unborn life as being on a par with the rights of normal children, it doesn't tell you you're wrong. But if you make the argument in terms of a right that's in the concept, then you are wrong. There's only one answer. When you make it a right. The others are all wrong. So it creates a sort of political challenge, which led ultimately to the overturning of Roe versus Wade. But it's made these things much more contested in American politics, whereby the liberals were seen as, in a sense, moving beyond and ahead of ordinary people's moral views. and changing society by this sort of elite mechanism of judicial change. And you see that also with Obergeffel and the recognition of same-sex marriage. You see lots of other areas where the constitutionalization of politics in the United States has made that a very peculiar political target. Whereas in the UK, Blue Labour is much more interested in the political economy side of critiquing neoliberalism. So you've got a very different story coming out of the same broad tradition, which is partly shaped by the distinctive politics of both places, and in the US case, by this idea of constitutionalization and the progress of change. Now, one last bit on that. Of course, the point the post-liberals make is that this isn't just, you know, the last stage of recognizing equality of rights for women. This is part of a genuine progressive agenda which is going to do away with all of the sort of current features of our collective morality, whether that's religious, whether that's just. You know, the small C conservative way in which we've looked at things. Everything is constantly up for change. So the debate is going to be about the pace of change. Are there values that are unchangeable? So,
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: as well as human rights, some other values maybe which are true. Of course, religions tend to make those sorts of claims. Or are there is it is everything open? And therefore, everything is simply a kind of politics and manipulation, which some will see as good and some will see as bad. And I suppose that's the fundamental challenge that underpins the post-liberal critique of US constitutionalism, that this is just relentless, and there's no point at which you can say, hang on, these are red lines, this is non-negotiable. You know, if if if not abortion. then marriage, then, you know, whatever. Everything is up for for grabs. So then lastly, just to come back to can you go back to a world? Well of course It's kind of presupposes that there was a received world in which everybody shared a whole lot of values. And of course, that's the challenge that you know, the liberal critique says, you know, wasn't the case. Yeah, it was racist. I mean, the US has that very distinctive history. But everywhere else, you know, we were not you know, sort of inclusive, acknowledged societies, you know, we were fragmented. You know, family was for women. And the space where women did stuff, actually they didn't. And if you look back to the Industrial Revolution, women worked in mines and factories, you know, read Elizabeth Gaskell and you know Dickens. The famil the family was never this sort of 1940s thing where mum sat at home, cooked lovely meals, father worked in a a decent job, and you had four children. So, you know, your last point about you know, can you go back to this? There isn't a this, there was never a this to go back to. So that sort of nostalgia is always a present political creation. And I suppose that's what I'm challenging with the face, family, and flag. Good values, but the idea there's a one model of that, no, there there isn't. And therefore, how would you go back to it? What would that even mean?
Grace May: Yeah, so this kind of conceptualization of this 1940s housewife with four kids
Paul Kelly: Yeah.
Grace May: is like a propagated ideal, I suppose, currently. But we've touched on this concept a few times of what the common good is. And can you expand on what that means in the post-liberal thought and who... who is defining that? Maybe that's the argument we're having, you know. The Pope says that this is the common good, but JD Barnes, know,
Paul Kelly: Yeah. Yeah.
Grace May: second in command of Catholicism apparently,
Paul Kelly: Yeah, yeah.
Grace May: thinks that the common good should be this. So what is the common good? How do they define it? And who actually defines what the common good is?
Paul Kelly: Well, I I think that that is the sort of core of the debate. So the common good, w one way of thinking about the common good, which takes you way back into sort of classical Western thinking, is this idea that somehow humans find fulfillment or meaning through common endeavor. So the ultimate goods that makes that make our lives go well are collective. Common or relational. And I think there's some truth in that. Okay. I do think that religions carry that, but lots of other sort of political movements do, even quite radical ones. Of course, the problem then is: well, the question you've asked, you know, what is the common good? Well, you know, some of the the The post-liberals would say, well, it's simply a way of po of doing politics, which constantly looks at a way of refreshing political communities as a common project. So
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: maybe democracy is a vehicle through which we constantly look at, review the common good. But at the same time, going back to our previous conversation. You know, there are those who think that there's red lines in the common good. The common good is a sort of objective list of those things which make our lives go well, some of which make our lives go well even if we don't happen to agree with them, which might be to do with social status, it might be to do with sexual expression, it might be to do with types of relationship and so on, which are Off the agenda of the common good. So the problem of the common good then is precisely how you reconcile this sort of open, inclusive, collective project, who does this and how, with those who say, but the good bit is important in the common good, and the good is non negotiable. And of course, that's very much at the forefront of many of Vance's friends, the the US post-liberals, who have a sort of objective list of the common good, which kind of rules out something. So not only does it challenge the point I was making about the constitutionalization of new rights, but it also rules out progressive reforms under any form. you know, possibly even looking at overturning the Civil Rights Act, looking at overturning the Equal Rights Amendment, you know, and and so on, so that you know who decides is really, really important. And I suppose that's where my political liberalism comes in. So the challenge of political liberalism is to look at at a slightly higher level the way in which you organize political power in a political community, a state, for example, such that. Those changes don't simply reflect majority opinion or going back to John Stuart Mill, the way in which minorities can become effective legislative majorities through capturing bits of the state. And then they legislate for what is in our interest when they are a small portion of the we that is the political community. So it That's the challenge, and that I think is is really where liberalism as a political agenda comes in, not as some broad philosophical account of the only thing that is important is the atomized individual. It's how we control political power such that we can then make decisions democratically, politically, about common life, the common good, rather than rejecting the common.
Grace May: Yeah, so if if post liberal thinkers or if we take if we take the case of the United States, for example, that the common good will be defined by the political elites, and maybe even Donald Trump.
Paul Kelly: Hmm. Yeah, J D Vance, yeah. Yeah.
Grace May: But if it's defined by them and the political elites, how easy is it then to descend into this sort of authoritative style of governance where now you can't descend against the state. If you have an abortion, then you could be arrested and put in prison. If you're a doctor that performers weren't, then that's a criminal offense. Things like this, and perhaps with what we've seen with ICE in the United States as well, how... easy then is it for post-liberalism to descend into authoritarianism?
Paul Kelly: Well, I I I I think it is a it's a slippery slope. So I suppose my criticism of post liberals is it it is it is too easy. but that's not to say that they're all authoritarian autocrats, but some are.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: and if you think about the American context, very important thinker, Adrian Vermuler, who's a professor at Harvard. I mean, he's an authoritarian. He thinks that it is the state's task and the group that captures and controls state power to determine the common good and to set that in stone through legislation and the exercise of power. his point is also, well, that's actually what the Liberals did in the 60s and 70s, so we're just doing that again. But his point is that's that's the task. It's not about whether or not this is the will of the people. this is this has a democratic mandate. He doesn't think that matters. You know, for for for Mueller and for many of these people, 50 million Elvis fans can be just wrong. You know,
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: numbers are not important here. So the question is about how power is exercised. And his point is that, you know. It's exercised by those who are motivated by the common good, who control the levers of power, and they give the common good to the people. And
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: if the people don't like it, well, they don't actually like being ruled anyway. You know, so why should we be bothered about that? So that's the danger. the trouble with it is that view can involve an awful lot of coercion. And as we see with the ICE case, where you know we're talking about who's in and who's not, who can be part of our political community, that can that coercion can be the most brutal, violent, random violence exercised by the state against people who the state says actually aren't really part of the people. So it doesn't really matter. You know, we kind of, you know, they shouldn't be here. So if they get shot, it's kind of neither here nor there. So you see how that bit of state power Can be very, very problematic, which is why, you know, the alternative has to be some way of regulating who can exercise violent state power against people and against their fundamental rights. And here, you know, those rights cannot just be those rights which are decided by a A faction exercising executive power within the constitution, they have to be broader than that. And that's why we talk about human rights and so on as being, you know, they're they're there, you know, you can still be shot if you've got human rights. So they're not a brilliant protection against violence, but they are there as a sort of check on reason. Not anything goes. And that's the the sort of liberal challenge to authoritarianism, where, you know, the imposing of the common good really does open up all manner of of of of of possibilities. You know, who decides who is that elective group? Who determines the common good? You know, maybe the Pope isn't the one to do that. Is Donald
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: Trump? Is Andy Burnham? You know, Marine Le Pen in France. You know, these then you come back to why would you give such major powers to people who are just individuals themselves, but who are able to exercise institutional power and possibly violence?
Grace May: So as you mentioned with Marine Le Pen, perhaps the AFD in Germany, and then obviously, JD Vance and Donald Trump in the United States, but also across, we seem to have seen this rise in the far right in Europe and the rise of populism. Why do you think there has been a rise in far right, I mean, this is huge question. Why do you think there's been a rise in far right populism in Europe and the United States? We have seen this, I suppose, populist agenda in support of national identity. This is what it means to be British. And if you don't fit this very specific mold of what that means, then we no longer want you here. If there is that rise in national identity, for example, how does liberalism respond to that? How do you maintain liberal principles at the same time where there's seems to be rising support for nationalism or particularly right-wing nationalism? It's a huge question.
Paul Kelly: Hmm. That that's a very good question. I I I think I think the most important thing is you don't give up. And I I think one of the worries for those of us who are on the sort of liberal egalitarian wing is that a lot of progressive politics has kind of conceded the debate to the populists. So I think the
Grace May: Just
Paul Kelly: first thing, you know, I suppose going back to why did I write the book is because I think someone's got to carry on saying. You know, look, there's another way of doing things. We had some other ways of thinking about power. But going back to your main point, I mean, it's it's very easy to build complex structures around the forces that have given rise to populism. But I think one of the big things that populism does is it just results it it it's the result of disenchantment with politics, partly through. I think the rapidity of social change and the inability of states under neoliberalism to accommodate that difference. So, you know, people feel jobs are going. Well, jobs have kind of always gone in advanced economies, but it's been accelerated. And then you have the economic effects of telling people that globalization is. you know, makes them in aggregate better off. but if you've seen your job collapse and you've seen your town eviscerated because the employer's gone, you kind of think, yeah, I'm not really bothered about, you know, the aggregate. I'm kind of looking at my world. So there's the rapidity of social change. universities get a lot of criticism, you know, opening up opportunities. you know, first to women going to university, then to, you know, many more people going to and and then moving. you know, the new economy is a much more mobile one, even in domestic economies. you know, people come and people go and they follow work and the ties of smallish communities are fragmented, sometimes for the good. You know, I I'm one of those who benefited from this. And I don't look back with regret that I'm not in the small town in the southeast of England where I grew up, where my destiny could really have been determined, and I'd have worked in a factory, and that would have been that. So, you know, there's there's a plus side, but there's a a bigger picture downside, and that feeds into populism, people feeling that you know the pace of change is the challenge, and that allows political entrepreneurs, usually those on the right, to give you quick answers. Yeah, you know, it's it's it used to be the left that would say this. Yes, it's the nasty capitalists that do it who are doing this to you. Yeah, possibly they are, but not in a simple way anymore. Or it's because, you know, the state and the capitalists who are at the heart of the state want cheap labor. And we'll just bring in immigration and you see the change of the society around you, people look different. That's taking your work, that's taking your so you build up a lot of suspicion and hostility that goes with the pace of change, which is itself destabilizing. So once you've got that general destabilization, you then have parti political entrepreneurs and who'll do things like say, yes, it's all immigrants' fault. Yes, it's all foreigners, Chinese have taken all our jobs, according to J.D. Vance. In the UK, it's you know, the Indian subcontinent has come and taken all of our jobs. or it's the political class that allowed that to happen. So then you get an anti-elite critique. The trouble is it's all people like me, you know, late middle-aged white male professors talking about these values. Which are remote from you know, the experience of these people. And they think, you know, we don't know anything. Look, I've got all these books. Who has books like that in the house? You know, I'm I'm not normal. So the
Grace May: Thanks
Paul Kelly: elites, you know, university professors aren't actually, and they are very elite, you know, and we're privileged. So, you know,
Grace May: establishment.
Paul Kelly: we we are the establishment. Yes, we are the we are the props of the establishment. And the populist argument is also then. know, the liberals, me, others like me, we are the ones who are providing the ideological props for this political elite who are then not paying attention to the real issues facing ordinary people confronted by the rapidity of social change. Part of that story I wholly agree with. The the sort of conspiracy element that it's all, you know. People like me who are doing this for their own interest because they hated their upbringing and their small towns and so on. That's the bit that's just bogus. You
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: know, opportunity brings with it change, but equalising opportunity was not a bad thing. You know, if you go back to the 1960s and look at the expansion of the university system in the UK, the first big change was a rapid influx of women. And they were all from the same social class as the men who went to university, but they were the sisters of the boys who got in. And the sisters, traditionally, apart from very small numbers, had not had that as an opportunity. You didn't go to university. That wasn't for women. You know,
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: you'd be in the workforce for a brief time and then you can't become a mother or get married or something. So you see social change like that, which is good, but of course, it does bring. You know, it it it does have complexity to it.
Grace May: So if
Paul Kelly: And then the beneficiaries of that are the ones who resent it now. Sorry, carry on.
Grace May: Yeah, that's very true. Well, not necessarily resent it so much as have called the by-election in Clacton so that they can fight the establishment of the
Paul Kelly: Yeah. Hmm. Yes.
Grace May: bin. So if we're arguing that post-liberalism is not the alternative to
Paul Kelly: Mm.
Grace May: the flaws of liberalism, then, but at the same time, we're seeing this rise in the far right, rise in... anti-establishment thinking and anti-university as well seems to be coming in as well. If liberalism is to survive, what does it need to do? How are we going to survive the far right?
Paul Kelly: Yeah. I I think I think so liberalism faces a major problem. and I think this is why, you know, I've I and I see this with young people when I teach them. They're all kind of sympathetic to the long-term agenda and the values, but there's something about liberalism, you know, it's for old people like me, you know, it's a bit stayed, it's not exciting. And exciting politics is street politics, it's transformative, it's Campaigning, it's doing very important things against you know climate crisis and so on. But it's big stuff. It's it's politics is about finding meaning and purpose. Now, the populists and the post-liberals also play on that. You know, they say that you know the trouble with liberalism is all boring and it's all about consuming and it's all about you know getting on and and so on. Politics is more is more important than. Need kind of fulfillment from that. So I think liberalism has to address that. It does appear to be boring in terms of its technical discussions about constituting political power, drawing up constitutions, legislating, and so on. But those things are important, right? They're just different. You know, I always think, you know, if you want meaning, you know. learn a musical instrument, start a garage band, listen to Beethoven, you know, fall in love. You know, there's lots of things that give personal meaning to an individual. Politics shouldn't really be that, except
Grace May: Hmm.
Paul Kelly: at you know, at the extreme, you know, when you're confronting existential threats, I suppose like Ukraine, Russia, you know, then the state Fighting for a people is the thing. But but beyond that, it ought to be about civility, living with difference and diversity, and finding other means of human flourishing and human fulfillment that don't involve or involve as little coercion and domination of others. So that's the first bit. The second bit, of course, is, you know, in our economies, that's actually quite hard for most people. So I also think, and this is part of my critique of faith, family, and flag in favor of some version of liberal egalitarianism, is you need to think about states and a redistributive function of states which allows people to access opportunities, not to have their future determined by their identity or where they grew up or the society they fit in. And I think without that, you can see why dissatisfaction in you know, in in closed communities, communities without hope, without opportunity grows. You've got to give something there. It isn't necessarily taking people out. Hey, come to university, it's brilliant. You'll be in a great big city, it'll be lovely. It's also about giving things back and ensuring. That those who don't access some opportunities are not seen as losers. So I, you know, I come from quite a big family. not all of my brothers and sisters went to university or even stayed on in school a long time. That doesn't make them losers. That just makes them different. And that, you know, the state should be able to ensure to some degree that people can be like me or be like them. Or be like some other differences that I don't know, without that being, you know, in a sense, succeeding or failing. Succeeding or failing in life, you know, shouldn't be that sort of relationship. So liberals have to think about mechanisms and policies and so on, which which allow liberty, which allow equality of opportunity and flourishing. But which also protect those who do other things, who make other choices, who add other values to themselves and their lives. And that's the discourse that we just don't hear enough from, you know, on the political center left, even the political left. You know, we we see the discourse being shaped by the populist one. the threats to community rather than the positive challenges that politics requires us to face in order to build a more inclusive, egalitarian but valuable order. And that's that's what I think. And that's really kind of hard. You know, that's
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: where hard policy choices come in. That's where, you know, you know, real work needs to be done. My colleagues in the social sciences contribute a lot there. it doesn't quite capture the imagination like let's overthrow capitalism and everything will be brilliant, or let's, you know, let's get rid of all the foreigners and and it'll be fine. You know,
Grace May: Yeah.
Paul Kelly: that, you know, that's the danger that those easy answers, one they're never easy, also capture the sort of dynamism and excitement of politics.
Grace May: Yeah, this reminds me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with one of my former professors who said when things work, it tends to be boring. Nobody is really interested in
Paul Kelly: Yeah.
Grace May: the good stuff that works. So I'll just wrap up with the last few questions then. You may have already answered this one as well, but I wondered if you had any other contributions. What do you think the biggest misconception of liberalism is? Would you say it's the fact that it seems boring? Is it the privacy of the individual? Is it something else?
Paul Kelly: I so I think I think the the the biggest, the easiest argument against it is that it's just focused on individuals as abstract, atomistic, independent, and it doesn't take care take account of relationships. Actually, I think politically it is that point about being boring.
Grace May: in the
Paul Kelly: It's the sort of technocratic elite politics that doesn't seem to include everybody and it doesn't have the excitement that goes with other things. So It it's both of those things, but I think, you know, the the philosophical, theoretical agenda is the one about individualism, the practical one is that we all look kind of dull and
Grace May: And what would you say is the biggest misconception about post-liberalism?
Paul Kelly: Well I think I think the the the the the biggest misconception of post liberalism is that it offers us an exciting, open, dynamic politics of the common good. but as I said earlier and as we discussed, I think the risk there is who's common good, who decides, you know, and and and the authoritarianism that potentially goes with that. So, you know, it it it does offer something that does appeal. But I think there's a lot masked there. and I think you know, you see that when you think hard about the intermediate associations that they put so much emphasis on, they want to regulate those quite closely, right? They have very, very, you know, particular views about how families should be done. you know, rather than supporting families and having, you know, you know. very generous, I don't know, you know, maternity, paternity stroke support. You know, if you're interested in family, those those would be kind of no brainers, surely. Yeah, anyway. So it's those things. Yeah.
Grace May: You'd think. And if they're, what would you say is the one strongest reason why liberalism should be defended? What's the strongest reason you have why liberalism over anything else?
Paul Kelly: Okay, so so I think, you know, I I think the challenge that liberalism forces us to confront is how we decide who decides what over others. So how we distribute power and exercise it over others. And I think if we abandon that very specific political discourse, because liberalism's boring, liberalism is complicated too, individualistic. We will suddenly find ourselves in a world where we need to recreate it. I
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: think that's the important point about liberalism. It is kind of why, you know, in my own academic career, I kind of keep coming back to it. It's it it's a sort of smallish, boring, but quite precious achievement that can offer us some important ways of thinking about our political. Predicament, which save us from some otherwise terrible mistakes. And it's constantly recovering that truth, which I think is both important. And, you know, until we've really thought about a new way of organizing politics beyond states or nations or whatever, I think we we're going to carry on having to think through that way of understanding.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: politics as separate from the good and the ways in which we find personal meaning.
Grace May: And my last question that I always like to ask people is do you have any book recommendations at all?
Paul Kelly: so so I've got a couple of odd ones, which may seem odd. Okay, so I so I always tell students this. I think the most important political book is Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, because
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: it kind of raises so many different issues, and it even presents a conception of liberalism which Thucydides thinks is a mistake, and then you look at what happens.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: Another book, you know, which is possibly appropriate given the post-liberal's, you know, interest in or coming out of Catholicism is Saint Augustine's City of God against the pagans, which is massive and kind of insane that somebody in four hundred AD could write eleven hundred eleven hundred word books like that thick. It's about everything. But within it it has this important separation between the city of God and the city of man. And underpinning that precisely is Augustine's view that politics is not about human redemption. He has views about what is, but that's not the task of the state. And I
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: think there's something hugely significant in that from that kind of person for how we should think about the limitations and constraints of politics. And then, you know, the classics of modern political theory. John Rawls gets a lot of criticism, but I think he's probably the most interesting political thinker, certainly of my life. and the book I would recommend there is not his his major work, Theory of Justice, which I think is just brilliant, but it's his kind of final summary of all he thought, which is Justice as Fairness, a restate. So it's still a hard read. He's not a very accessible writer, but you know, if you come to him after you've read Augustine, then it's really easy. But that
Grace May: Bye.
Paul Kelly: that would be that would be the b the three books, I think I would say. and may
Grace May: Okay,
Paul Kelly: end up here.
Grace May: Yeah. Well, perfect. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been super interesting to speak to you.
Paul Kelly: Thank you very much for the invitation.
Grace May: Thank you. See you later.
Paul Kelly: Hello, Grace. So my name is Professor Paul Kelly. I'm a professor of political theory or political philosophy in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. I have taught political ideas, political theory, and philosophy. The the distinction is not important here, and it's sometimes the same thing. For all of my academic career, so getting on for 40 years. and the book that I have written falls within that. So my background was first as a philosopher, but then I've always taught in government or political science departments where some element of political ideas and political theory has always been central to, you know, how we understand politics and do political science. So I do that bit in the political science department. But my background was a philosopher, so I've always been interested in ideas. And I suppose what brought me to this book, it it's a culmination of many things across a long career. I wouldn't say it's the the full culmination, so I'm not retiring or anything soon, but it brings together ideas from different kinds of political theory, debates and so on, but connected to the world of politics. So I think what attracted me to talking about post liberalism was the way in which things that had been aired in academic debates that I've looked at over quite a long time all of a sudden start to become part of a political movement, particularly in response to the rise of populism. So this is a a more political book than just a theoretical book, but there is a lot of theory and we'll obviously talk about that.
Grace May: So do you believe then kind of your motivations for writing the book are based on what's happening right now or has this been a longer project? I suppose.
Paul Kelly: so both. Okay, so so in a way it's it's a very current book. There are things that I have seen and debates that I see developing and starting to have some traction, which I wanted to sort of comment on, but from an academic point of view. So to look at their philosophical underpinnings and to make some sort of academic rather than narrowly political. criticisms or comments on those ideas. So how things are being put together in order to achieve a political agenda. But the book is also, you know, it has an angle. So it's a defense of a type of political liberalism against a challenge to it from this movement called post-liberalism. So that's the title against post-liberalism. So it is engaged. Now What why have I done that? yes, it's the sort of culmination of many thoughts across my career and its relationship to current political events, UK, but also the US, and we'll come on to that where this debate has become very important. But the but the other thing is. there's a bigger story, bigger intellectual story that I've been working on for a long time. And that has been a defense of some version of what I would call political liberalism. And a long time ago I wrote a book on it and thought that was, you know, that was my statement of that thing, and I would move on to something else. And then seeing, you know, debates and critiques continuing. I've become more interested in criticizing the criticisms. So that's really where this book fits in as a theoretical enterprise. So here is a movement that's challenging political liberalism, which I'm happy to talk more about, but I've been committed to for quite a long time as a sort of philosophical theoretical agenda for politics. And I wanted to try and understand why, well, not why my argument didn't work and convince them of. you know, that, but actually to try and look at the criticisms of it and then provide a sort of critique of them. And that's obviously where political post-liberalism became a target because of course it wants to dispense with that worldview, that conception of politics and how we should theorize and engage with it and replace it with something else. So that was then okay Where do we differ? What's the fundamentals of that? And how do I critique that? And then there are some other projects for the future which look at different challenges to political liberalism beyond post-liberalism, or maybe whether they are versions of post-liberalism. So there's a book I'm working on at the moment about conservatism, which is again semi-political. But it draws on precisely this bigger story about what are the challenges to political liberalism.
Grace May: Okay, amazing. I just start to delve into the book, but from a more broad perspective, this is quite a large theoretical question, of course, but your book against post liberalism, in defense somewhat of political liberalism, could you just explain, I suppose, broadly what both of those things are, and how they
Paul Kelly: Yeah.
Grace May: differ, I suppose, key characteristics of liberalism and post liberalism?
Paul Kelly: Yeah. So so let
Grace May: sits.
Paul Kelly: let me s let me start with with liberalism, and then narrow it to what I've called political liberalism, and then I'll say something about where post liberalism fits into that. So liberalism is is a tradition of thinking about politics and the state, which has about 300 years of tradition. You can go back to all sorts of thinkers in the past in Britain, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, possibly even John Milton if you wanted to do that. obviously in France you've got Constant, you've got a whole lot of important nineteenth century thinkers, de Topfu and so on. Germany too, von Humboldt and and arguably how you read him, Hegel. So there's a big tradition of liberalism. And what it looks at is thinking about the principles, the rules, the values that underpin a way of thinking about state power and political power, and how it should be used and how it is legitimate. Now, of course, that is a very broad account, and within that you have lots of traditions. Subtraditions of utilitarians like John Stuart Mill, who think that the point of political power is to maximize the greatest happiness of the greatest number. You have people like Locke, Kant in a slightly different way in Germany, looking at individual rights as the basis of politics and what things states cannot do without violating rights. Perhaps in the US context, that's Sort of built into the discourse around the United States Constitution and the way in which you structure a system of government that protects the life, liberty, and happiness of individuals. Okay, so that's narrowed it a bit further. Now, in the 20th century, liberalism has become much more contested, partly because The extension throughout the eighteenth into the nineteenth, early twentieth century has linked the ideas of political liberty, which is what liberalism is about, with democracy, without with extending the franchise, with bringing more people into actively controlling and determining how political power is used. So we get to the present where liberalism is effectively liberal democracy. As well as that political story, there's a philosophical story. So if you're justifying political authority in terms of individual rights or individual well-being, you're using concepts like the individual, the primacy of the individual over communal goods, over nation. Over religious commitments and so on. So you start to see a philosophical separation between the claims of the individual and other kinds of authority claims, whether those are moral, religious, political, national, familial, gendered, and so on. So liberalism is also this world which identifies something about the human person as having. Some you know political, moral significance and irreducibility, and basing political authority ultimately on that. Now, there's a whole variety of ways in which you can develop that, but it's precisely that claim of individualism, where it fits into the story, which is what the post-liberals are most concerned with. Because what they see. Is this idea of individualism as a sort of social atomization, breaking up political entities, communities, nations, states into these discrete individuals who have their own authority and independence of the state, which limits what states can do. Now that might be a good thing as a bulwark against. Very sort of regressive nationalisms or fascism or something like that. But it also becomes problematic when you're trying to think of a political agenda, say, concerning the common good, transferring power and authority from some individuals to others. So the post-liberals look at this liberal story as being one that denies the idea of. Communal or group solidarity and the ability for groups to pursue benign as well as possibly other kinds of political agendas in their own right, without that being just a combination of individuals aggregating their judgments. So post-liberals are really concerned with the broader philosophical story that liberalism draws on and the what they see as the dangers of its atomistic individualism.
Grace May: So you've touched on a few of them there the criticisms that post-liberal thinkers
Paul Kelly: Yeah, yeah.
Grace May: have on liberalism, particularly that the atomization and this kind of primacy of the individual over communities and society as a whole. I suppose, what do you think the strongest criticisms are? is that what you would say the strongest criticism is? And to what extent do you accept that those criticisms are founded, I suppose?
Paul Kelly: so I you know, I've I've tried to approach my discussion of post-liberalism fairly and therefore to take seriously what are genuine challenges to the liberal tradition. And, you know, possibly their response to me would be: well, I just narrow my conception of liberalism to such a thing that it misses the challenges that they raise. But actually, liberalism, you know. is is is still more problematic than I would suggest. But I suppose I suppose let me let me let me try and simplify the contrast. So I have presented a conception of liberalism as a political doctrine. And I suppose what the post-liberals argue is that it's more than that. And that's where its fundamental challenge is. The trouble with liberalism in the post-liberals' view is that its liberation of the individual starts to appear everywhere. And that's where it challenges group identity, solidarity, and so on. But I suppose most importantly for the post-liberals is that it's liberated a sort of economic ideology, what we might call neoliberalism. which places the claims of individuals as consumers and producers, owners of private property and wealth above absolutely everything. And then that is the bit that they see as desiccating and fragmenting political societies, where some forms of social institution and culture The post-liberals would argue is actually essential for the economy. You know, you can't have an economy without secure property rights, without law of contract, without some degree of education, so that when you go to the store and buy something, somebody can count and you know give you back the appropriate change. So there's a lot of social elements to the economy. And what post-liberals argue. Is that a completely sort of individualistic neoliberalism not only ignores that but actually undermines it? So that's one of their major arguments, is that this kind of liberalism in the long run is self-undermining. And that's the political challenge that they make about liberalism. It actually undermines social order and brings about challenges even to liberal values.
Grace May: So in retaliation then, and this is obviously part of the heading of your book, is that their toolkit, I suppose, of things that they then use to try and reestablish what they see as obviously the correct worldview is family, and flag. I wondered if you
Paul Kelly: Yeah.
Grace May: could expand a bit on those concepts, how they utilise it and... perhaps some contemporary examples, because I'm thinking specifically of JD Vance's new book, where he is his spiritual journey of Catholicism, which culminated
Paul Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Grace May: in him having a spat with the Pope. But he obviously argues that we should return to this sort of family faith. So if you could just expand a bit on those three things.
Paul Kelly: So this is the the you're you're right, this is the sort of core of of my critique of post-liberalism. but the faith family and flag in the title was actually selected because it became a sort of political slogan. a political slogan in the UK under Blue Labour, which is also in the news at the moment, as it's central to the British Labour Party's reconfiguration of what it stands for. And it's deliberate echoing of this sort of anti-liberal egalitarian tradition, but also the way you're right, it's been picked up in the United States by Explicitly post-liberal politicians, and and J.D. Vance has identified himself as a post-liberal or post-liberal adjacent, I think was the word, the phrasing he used,
Grace May: you
Paul Kelly: and linked himself to some quite important, although difficult, thinkers. Okay, so so there's a there's a there's a signal of a political agenda here. because otherwise you could read it as if. Paul Kelly thinks that family, faith, or you know, major religious, ethical commitments, patriotism are not important.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: And I don't think that. I think nobody thinks that some version of those things aren't important for political societies, for community cohesion, for human significance and meaning. So so why have I picked on this? Well, I think I've Probably already hinted at you know part of the problem with a political agenda that focuses on faith, family, and flag is its particular. So if you are JD Vance, you might take your account of family and the issues that go with that from other commitments you have, like your faith commitment or your national community. And then you've raised the the interesting point that he's had a go at the Pope.
Grace May: Mm.
Paul Kelly: So the Pope is also a Catholic, obviously. and the Pope has views about faith, family, and the place of political community, and they differ. So the important point about these broad conceptions of the good, when they're brought in as specific policy agendas. is that they overdetermine things. In other words, they give a sense of greater clarity than actually goes with those things. You know, I think family is good, but I always remember someone telling me, you know, he thought family was the best way of bringing up children. Because all the others are just terrible. It's like, you know, Churchill's view of democracy. It's the best we've got. But it also fails. It fails in many ways. And that's why we regulate it. You know, we don't have, you know, the United States famously didn't allow polygamous families, and Mormons had to go to Utah.
Grace May: Mm.
Paul Kelly: Why? we now have single sex families or single-gendered families. and some people think, well, that can't be right, because family is about man and a woman, but is it? Now, obviously, if you have a sacramental view of family within the context of certain church values, maybe yes, there's a there's a sort of natural configuration of family which is traditional and we've always had it. But even that is open to challenge. And of course, many other things that we look to family to do, like bring up children, can be done very well. By whoever is committed to doing it, just as it can be done very badly, but that can be, you know, in in traditional families. They can be sites of oppression and domination and pain and suffering and fragmentation. So my point is to just be careful about bringing in those things as if they're simple answers to complex social relations. The same can be said about faith. Faith can be A way of finding fulfillment and meaning for locating possibly universal values. Think of the way that Catholicism, since at least the Second World War, has been very committed to the idea of human rights. Other religions too. But not all religions, and not all things that claim to be religions, are also recognized as religions by other religious people. So it's also a site of contest. you know, even amongst Catholics, there's disputes. We have this with the ultra-tradition traditionalists, you know, the other day getting ticked off by the Pope for not being proper Catholics anymore. you know, these again are sites of contest and sites of value, and those things become problematic. Flag, flag is kind of you know, a stand-in for political communities, patriotism, loving your country, again can be great. Depends what your country does, you know. So
Grace May: Yeah.
Paul Kelly: that's really the point. It it's it simply opens up a can of of of worms and contestation, which fuels politics. It doesn't solve it.
Grace May: I suppose what I've been thinking about is, particularly when it comes to family, faith and flag and contemporary post-liberal or post-liberal adjacent politicians or thinkers, is this kind of nostalgia to return to this good time where everything made sense, everything was conventional, even Make America Great Again has that kind of nostalgic ring. How much is it this desire or need to return to the way things were before? because they think that we've gone too far in the other direction. And how does that work with social change? is it possible that we would even be able to return to these conventional forms of family, for example? How does post-liberalism fit in with social change, social transformation?
Paul Kelly: So so if if we look at the US arguments and debates, of course, many of those turn on what they see as liberal capture of the Constitution and relentless progressivism. So liberals stroke progressives are the target of the of the post liberals, particularly the way in which they've used the constitution to transform political society. So, you know, the big things certainly for Catholic post-liberals in the United States have been Roe versus Wade and the campaign to overturn it, which is which is a kind of interesting thing because, you know, if if you think about the idea of the constitutional right to abortion, you know, that wasn't a political decision, that was a judge made decision.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: Which then discovers a right which can be exercised against political power. Now, you know, in the UK, we have permissive and liberal abortion laws, but they were parliamentary decided. And the point about that difference is that a parliament can make the law, it can change it. So it's not impossible for Parliament two to overturn the protection of women's rights to reproductive freedom, or to To you know to narrow them or broaden them. But it doesn't require anybody to think they were wrong. It doesn't tell Catholics that your commitment to unborn life as being on a par with the rights of normal children, it doesn't tell you you're wrong. But if you make the argument in terms of a right that's in the concept, then you are wrong. There's only one answer. When you make it a right. The others are all wrong. So it creates a sort of political challenge, which led ultimately to the overturning of Roe versus Wade. But it's made these things much more contested in American politics, whereby the liberals were seen as, in a sense, moving beyond and ahead of ordinary people's moral views. and changing society by this sort of elite mechanism of judicial change. And you see that also with Obergeffel and the recognition of same-sex marriage. You see lots of other areas where the constitutionalization of politics in the United States has made that a very peculiar political target. Whereas in the UK, Blue Labour is much more interested in the political economy side of critiquing neoliberalism. So you've got a very different story coming out of the same broad tradition, which is partly shaped by the distinctive politics of both places, and in the US case, by this idea of constitutionalization and the progress of change. Now, one last bit on that. Of course, the point the post-liberals make is that this isn't just, you know, the last stage of recognizing equality of rights for women. This is part of a genuine progressive agenda which is going to do away with all of the sort of current features of our collective morality, whether that's religious, whether that's just. You know, the small C conservative way in which we've looked at things. Everything is constantly up for change. So the debate is going to be about the pace of change. Are there values that are unchangeable? So,
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: as well as human rights, some other values maybe which are true. Of course, religions tend to make those sorts of claims. Or are there is it is everything open? And therefore, everything is simply a kind of politics and manipulation, which some will see as good and some will see as bad. And I suppose that's the fundamental challenge that underpins the post-liberal critique of US constitutionalism, that this is just relentless, and there's no point at which you can say, hang on, these are red lines, this is non-negotiable. You know, if if if not abortion. then marriage, then, you know, whatever. Everything is up for for grabs. So then lastly, just to come back to can you go back to a world? Well of course It's kind of presupposes that there was a received world in which everybody shared a whole lot of values. And of course, that's the challenge that you know, the liberal critique says, you know, wasn't the case. Yeah, it was racist. I mean, the US has that very distinctive history. But everywhere else, you know, we were not you know, sort of inclusive, acknowledged societies, you know, we were fragmented. You know, family was for women. And the space where women did stuff, actually they didn't. And if you look back to the Industrial Revolution, women worked in mines and factories, you know, read Elizabeth Gaskell and you know Dickens. The famil the family was never this sort of 1940s thing where mum sat at home, cooked lovely meals, father worked in a a decent job, and you had four children. So, you know, your last point about you know, can you go back to this? There isn't a this, there was never a this to go back to. So that sort of nostalgia is always a present political creation. And I suppose that's what I'm challenging with the face, family, and flag. Good values, but the idea there's a one model of that, no, there there isn't. And therefore, how would you go back to it? What would that even mean?
Grace May: Yeah, so this kind of conceptualization of this 1940s housewife with four kids
Paul Kelly: Yeah.
Grace May: is like a propagated ideal, I suppose, currently. But we've touched on this concept a few times of what the common good is. And can you expand on what that means in the post-liberal thought and who... who is defining that? Maybe that's the argument we're having, you know. The Pope says that this is the common good, but JD Barnes, know,
Paul Kelly: Yeah. Yeah.
Grace May: second in command of Catholicism apparently,
Paul Kelly: Yeah, yeah.
Grace May: thinks that the common good should be this. So what is the common good? How do they define it? And who actually defines what the common good is?
Paul Kelly: Well, I I think that that is the sort of core of the debate. So the common good, w one way of thinking about the common good, which takes you way back into sort of classical Western thinking, is this idea that somehow humans find fulfillment or meaning through common endeavor. So the ultimate goods that makes that make our lives go well are collective. Common or relational. And I think there's some truth in that. Okay. I do think that religions carry that, but lots of other sort of political movements do, even quite radical ones. Of course, the problem then is: well, the question you've asked, you know, what is the common good? Well, you know, some of the the The post-liberals would say, well, it's simply a way of po of doing politics, which constantly looks at a way of refreshing political communities as a common project. So
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: maybe democracy is a vehicle through which we constantly look at, review the common good. But at the same time, going back to our previous conversation. You know, there are those who think that there's red lines in the common good. The common good is a sort of objective list of those things which make our lives go well, some of which make our lives go well even if we don't happen to agree with them, which might be to do with social status, it might be to do with sexual expression, it might be to do with types of relationship and so on, which are Off the agenda of the common good. So the problem of the common good then is precisely how you reconcile this sort of open, inclusive, collective project, who does this and how, with those who say, but the good bit is important in the common good, and the good is non negotiable. And of course, that's very much at the forefront of many of Vance's friends, the the US post-liberals, who have a sort of objective list of the common good, which kind of rules out something. So not only does it challenge the point I was making about the constitutionalization of new rights, but it also rules out progressive reforms under any form. you know, possibly even looking at overturning the Civil Rights Act, looking at overturning the Equal Rights Amendment, you know, and and so on, so that you know who decides is really, really important. And I suppose that's where my political liberalism comes in. So the challenge of political liberalism is to look at at a slightly higher level the way in which you organize political power in a political community, a state, for example, such that. Those changes don't simply reflect majority opinion or going back to John Stuart Mill, the way in which minorities can become effective legislative majorities through capturing bits of the state. And then they legislate for what is in our interest when they are a small portion of the we that is the political community. So it That's the challenge, and that I think is is really where liberalism as a political agenda comes in, not as some broad philosophical account of the only thing that is important is the atomized individual. It's how we control political power such that we can then make decisions democratically, politically, about common life, the common good, rather than rejecting the common.
Grace May: Yeah, so if if post liberal thinkers or if we take if we take the case of the United States, for example, that the common good will be defined by the political elites, and maybe even Donald Trump.
Paul Kelly: Hmm. Yeah, J D Vance, yeah. Yeah.
Grace May: But if it's defined by them and the political elites, how easy is it then to descend into this sort of authoritative style of governance where now you can't descend against the state. If you have an abortion, then you could be arrested and put in prison. If you're a doctor that performers weren't, then that's a criminal offense. Things like this, and perhaps with what we've seen with ICE in the United States as well, how... easy then is it for post-liberalism to descend into authoritarianism?
Paul Kelly: Well, I I I I think it is a it's a slippery slope. So I suppose my criticism of post liberals is it it is it is too easy. but that's not to say that they're all authoritarian autocrats, but some are.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: and if you think about the American context, very important thinker, Adrian Vermuler, who's a professor at Harvard. I mean, he's an authoritarian. He thinks that it is the state's task and the group that captures and controls state power to determine the common good and to set that in stone through legislation and the exercise of power. his point is also, well, that's actually what the Liberals did in the 60s and 70s, so we're just doing that again. But his point is that's that's the task. It's not about whether or not this is the will of the people. this is this has a democratic mandate. He doesn't think that matters. You know, for for for Mueller and for many of these people, 50 million Elvis fans can be just wrong. You know,
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: numbers are not important here. So the question is about how power is exercised. And his point is that, you know. It's exercised by those who are motivated by the common good, who control the levers of power, and they give the common good to the people. And
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: if the people don't like it, well, they don't actually like being ruled anyway. You know, so why should we be bothered about that? So that's the danger. the trouble with it is that view can involve an awful lot of coercion. And as we see with the ICE case, where you know we're talking about who's in and who's not, who can be part of our political community, that can that coercion can be the most brutal, violent, random violence exercised by the state against people who the state says actually aren't really part of the people. So it doesn't really matter. You know, we kind of, you know, they shouldn't be here. So if they get shot, it's kind of neither here nor there. So you see how that bit of state power Can be very, very problematic, which is why, you know, the alternative has to be some way of regulating who can exercise violent state power against people and against their fundamental rights. And here, you know, those rights cannot just be those rights which are decided by a A faction exercising executive power within the constitution, they have to be broader than that. And that's why we talk about human rights and so on as being, you know, they're they're there, you know, you can still be shot if you've got human rights. So they're not a brilliant protection against violence, but they are there as a sort of check on reason. Not anything goes. And that's the the sort of liberal challenge to authoritarianism, where, you know, the imposing of the common good really does open up all manner of of of of of possibilities. You know, who decides who is that elective group? Who determines the common good? You know, maybe the Pope isn't the one to do that. Is Donald
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: Trump? Is Andy Burnham? You know, Marine Le Pen in France. You know, these then you come back to why would you give such major powers to people who are just individuals themselves, but who are able to exercise institutional power and possibly violence?
Grace May: So as you mentioned with Marine Le Pen, perhaps the AFD in Germany, and then obviously, JD Vance and Donald Trump in the United States, but also across, we seem to have seen this rise in the far right in Europe and the rise of populism. Why do you think there has been a rise in far right, I mean, this is huge question. Why do you think there's been a rise in far right populism in Europe and the United States? We have seen this, I suppose, populist agenda in support of national identity. This is what it means to be British. And if you don't fit this very specific mold of what that means, then we no longer want you here. If there is that rise in national identity, for example, how does liberalism respond to that? How do you maintain liberal principles at the same time where there's seems to be rising support for nationalism or particularly right-wing nationalism? It's a huge question.
Paul Kelly: Hmm. That that's a very good question. I I I think I think the most important thing is you don't give up. And I I think one of the worries for those of us who are on the sort of liberal egalitarian wing is that a lot of progressive politics has kind of conceded the debate to the populists. So I think the
Grace May: Just
Paul Kelly: first thing, you know, I suppose going back to why did I write the book is because I think someone's got to carry on saying. You know, look, there's another way of doing things. We had some other ways of thinking about power. But going back to your main point, I mean, it's it's very easy to build complex structures around the forces that have given rise to populism. But I think one of the big things that populism does is it just results it it it's the result of disenchantment with politics, partly through. I think the rapidity of social change and the inability of states under neoliberalism to accommodate that difference. So, you know, people feel jobs are going. Well, jobs have kind of always gone in advanced economies, but it's been accelerated. And then you have the economic effects of telling people that globalization is. you know, makes them in aggregate better off. but if you've seen your job collapse and you've seen your town eviscerated because the employer's gone, you kind of think, yeah, I'm not really bothered about, you know, the aggregate. I'm kind of looking at my world. So there's the rapidity of social change. universities get a lot of criticism, you know, opening up opportunities. you know, first to women going to university, then to, you know, many more people going to and and then moving. you know, the new economy is a much more mobile one, even in domestic economies. you know, people come and people go and they follow work and the ties of smallish communities are fragmented, sometimes for the good. You know, I I'm one of those who benefited from this. And I don't look back with regret that I'm not in the small town in the southeast of England where I grew up, where my destiny could really have been determined, and I'd have worked in a factory, and that would have been that. So, you know, there's there's a plus side, but there's a a bigger picture downside, and that feeds into populism, people feeling that you know the pace of change is the challenge, and that allows political entrepreneurs, usually those on the right, to give you quick answers. Yeah, you know, it's it's it used to be the left that would say this. Yes, it's the nasty capitalists that do it who are doing this to you. Yeah, possibly they are, but not in a simple way anymore. Or it's because, you know, the state and the capitalists who are at the heart of the state want cheap labor. And we'll just bring in immigration and you see the change of the society around you, people look different. That's taking your work, that's taking your so you build up a lot of suspicion and hostility that goes with the pace of change, which is itself destabilizing. So once you've got that general destabilization, you then have parti political entrepreneurs and who'll do things like say, yes, it's all immigrants' fault. Yes, it's all foreigners, Chinese have taken all our jobs, according to J.D. Vance. In the UK, it's you know, the Indian subcontinent has come and taken all of our jobs. or it's the political class that allowed that to happen. So then you get an anti-elite critique. The trouble is it's all people like me, you know, late middle-aged white male professors talking about these values. Which are remote from you know, the experience of these people. And they think, you know, we don't know anything. Look, I've got all these books. Who has books like that in the house? You know, I'm I'm not normal. So the
Grace May: Thanks
Paul Kelly: elites, you know, university professors aren't actually, and they are very elite, you know, and we're privileged. So, you know,
Grace May: establishment.
Paul Kelly: we we are the establishment. Yes, we are the we are the props of the establishment. And the populist argument is also then. know, the liberals, me, others like me, we are the ones who are providing the ideological props for this political elite who are then not paying attention to the real issues facing ordinary people confronted by the rapidity of social change. Part of that story I wholly agree with. The the sort of conspiracy element that it's all, you know. People like me who are doing this for their own interest because they hated their upbringing and their small towns and so on. That's the bit that's just bogus. You
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: know, opportunity brings with it change, but equalising opportunity was not a bad thing. You know, if you go back to the 1960s and look at the expansion of the university system in the UK, the first big change was a rapid influx of women. And they were all from the same social class as the men who went to university, but they were the sisters of the boys who got in. And the sisters, traditionally, apart from very small numbers, had not had that as an opportunity. You didn't go to university. That wasn't for women. You know,
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: you'd be in the workforce for a brief time and then you can't become a mother or get married or something. So you see social change like that, which is good, but of course, it does bring. You know, it it it does have complexity to it.
Grace May: So if
Paul Kelly: And then the beneficiaries of that are the ones who resent it now. Sorry, carry on.
Grace May: Yeah, that's very true. Well, not necessarily resent it so much as have called the by-election in Clacton so that they can fight the establishment of the
Paul Kelly: Yeah. Hmm. Yes.
Grace May: bin. So if we're arguing that post-liberalism is not the alternative to
Paul Kelly: Mm.
Grace May: the flaws of liberalism, then, but at the same time, we're seeing this rise in the far right, rise in... anti-establishment thinking and anti-university as well seems to be coming in as well. If liberalism is to survive, what does it need to do? How are we going to survive the far right?
Paul Kelly: Yeah. I I think I think so liberalism faces a major problem. and I think this is why, you know, I've I and I see this with young people when I teach them. They're all kind of sympathetic to the long-term agenda and the values, but there's something about liberalism, you know, it's for old people like me, you know, it's a bit stayed, it's not exciting. And exciting politics is street politics, it's transformative, it's Campaigning, it's doing very important things against you know climate crisis and so on. But it's big stuff. It's it's politics is about finding meaning and purpose. Now, the populists and the post-liberals also play on that. You know, they say that you know the trouble with liberalism is all boring and it's all about consuming and it's all about you know getting on and and so on. Politics is more is more important than. Need kind of fulfillment from that. So I think liberalism has to address that. It does appear to be boring in terms of its technical discussions about constituting political power, drawing up constitutions, legislating, and so on. But those things are important, right? They're just different. You know, I always think, you know, if you want meaning, you know. learn a musical instrument, start a garage band, listen to Beethoven, you know, fall in love. You know, there's lots of things that give personal meaning to an individual. Politics shouldn't really be that, except
Grace May: Hmm.
Paul Kelly: at you know, at the extreme, you know, when you're confronting existential threats, I suppose like Ukraine, Russia, you know, then the state Fighting for a people is the thing. But but beyond that, it ought to be about civility, living with difference and diversity, and finding other means of human flourishing and human fulfillment that don't involve or involve as little coercion and domination of others. So that's the first bit. The second bit, of course, is, you know, in our economies, that's actually quite hard for most people. So I also think, and this is part of my critique of faith, family, and flag in favor of some version of liberal egalitarianism, is you need to think about states and a redistributive function of states which allows people to access opportunities, not to have their future determined by their identity or where they grew up or the society they fit in. And I think without that, you can see why dissatisfaction in you know, in in closed communities, communities without hope, without opportunity grows. You've got to give something there. It isn't necessarily taking people out. Hey, come to university, it's brilliant. You'll be in a great big city, it'll be lovely. It's also about giving things back and ensuring. That those who don't access some opportunities are not seen as losers. So I, you know, I come from quite a big family. not all of my brothers and sisters went to university or even stayed on in school a long time. That doesn't make them losers. That just makes them different. And that, you know, the state should be able to ensure to some degree that people can be like me or be like them. Or be like some other differences that I don't know, without that being, you know, in a sense, succeeding or failing. Succeeding or failing in life, you know, shouldn't be that sort of relationship. So liberals have to think about mechanisms and policies and so on, which which allow liberty, which allow equality of opportunity and flourishing. But which also protect those who do other things, who make other choices, who add other values to themselves and their lives. And that's the discourse that we just don't hear enough from, you know, on the political center left, even the political left. You know, we we see the discourse being shaped by the populist one. the threats to community rather than the positive challenges that politics requires us to face in order to build a more inclusive, egalitarian but valuable order. And that's that's what I think. And that's really kind of hard. You know, that's
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: where hard policy choices come in. That's where, you know, you know, real work needs to be done. My colleagues in the social sciences contribute a lot there. it doesn't quite capture the imagination like let's overthrow capitalism and everything will be brilliant, or let's, you know, let's get rid of all the foreigners and and it'll be fine. You know,
Grace May: Yeah.
Paul Kelly: that, you know, that's the danger that those easy answers, one they're never easy, also capture the sort of dynamism and excitement of politics.
Grace May: Yeah, this reminds me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with one of my former professors who said when things work, it tends to be boring. Nobody is really interested in
Paul Kelly: Yeah.
Grace May: the good stuff that works. So I'll just wrap up with the last few questions then. You may have already answered this one as well, but I wondered if you had any other contributions. What do you think the biggest misconception of liberalism is? Would you say it's the fact that it seems boring? Is it the privacy of the individual? Is it something else?
Paul Kelly: I so I think I think the the the biggest, the easiest argument against it is that it's just focused on individuals as abstract, atomistic, independent, and it doesn't take care take account of relationships. Actually, I think politically it is that point about being boring.
Grace May: in the
Paul Kelly: It's the sort of technocratic elite politics that doesn't seem to include everybody and it doesn't have the excitement that goes with other things. So It it's both of those things, but I think, you know, the the philosophical, theoretical agenda is the one about individualism, the practical one is that we all look kind of dull and
Grace May: And what would you say is the biggest misconception about post-liberalism?
Paul Kelly: Well I think I think the the the the the biggest misconception of post liberalism is that it offers us an exciting, open, dynamic politics of the common good. but as I said earlier and as we discussed, I think the risk there is who's common good, who decides, you know, and and and the authoritarianism that potentially goes with that. So, you know, it it it does offer something that does appeal. But I think there's a lot masked there. and I think you know, you see that when you think hard about the intermediate associations that they put so much emphasis on, they want to regulate those quite closely, right? They have very, very, you know, particular views about how families should be done. you know, rather than supporting families and having, you know, you know. very generous, I don't know, you know, maternity, paternity stroke support. You know, if you're interested in family, those those would be kind of no brainers, surely. Yeah, anyway. So it's those things. Yeah.
Grace May: You'd think. And if they're, what would you say is the one strongest reason why liberalism should be defended? What's the strongest reason you have why liberalism over anything else?
Paul Kelly: Okay, so so I think, you know, I I think the challenge that liberalism forces us to confront is how we decide who decides what over others. So how we distribute power and exercise it over others. And I think if we abandon that very specific political discourse, because liberalism's boring, liberalism is complicated too, individualistic. We will suddenly find ourselves in a world where we need to recreate it. I
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: think that's the important point about liberalism. It is kind of why, you know, in my own academic career, I kind of keep coming back to it. It's it it's a sort of smallish, boring, but quite precious achievement that can offer us some important ways of thinking about our political. Predicament, which save us from some otherwise terrible mistakes. And it's constantly recovering that truth, which I think is both important. And, you know, until we've really thought about a new way of organizing politics beyond states or nations or whatever, I think we we're going to carry on having to think through that way of understanding.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: politics as separate from the good and the ways in which we find personal meaning.
Grace May: And my last question that I always like to ask people is do you have any book recommendations at all?
Paul Kelly: so so I've got a couple of odd ones, which may seem odd. Okay, so I so I always tell students this. I think the most important political book is Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, because
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: it kind of raises so many different issues, and it even presents a conception of liberalism which Thucydides thinks is a mistake, and then you look at what happens.
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: Another book, you know, which is possibly appropriate given the post-liberal's, you know, interest in or coming out of Catholicism is Saint Augustine's City of God against the pagans, which is massive and kind of insane that somebody in four hundred AD could write eleven hundred eleven hundred word books like that thick. It's about everything. But within it it has this important separation between the city of God and the city of man. And underpinning that precisely is Augustine's view that politics is not about human redemption. He has views about what is, but that's not the task of the state. And I
Grace May: Mm-hmm.
Paul Kelly: think there's something hugely significant in that from that kind of person for how we should think about the limitations and constraints of politics. And then, you know, the classics of modern political theory. John Rawls gets a lot of criticism, but I think he's probably the most interesting political thinker, certainly of my life. and the book I would recommend there is not his his major work, Theory of Justice, which I think is just brilliant, but it's his kind of final summary of all he thought, which is Justice as Fairness, a restate. So it's still a hard read. He's not a very accessible writer, but you know, if you come to him after you've read Augustine, then it's really easy. But that
Grace May: Bye.
Paul Kelly: that would be that would be the b the three books, I think I would say. and may
Grace May: Okay,
Paul Kelly: end up here.
Grace May: Yeah. Well, perfect. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been super interesting to speak to you.
Paul Kelly: Thank you very much for the invitation.
Grace May: Thank you. See you later.
