The elections in Britain on May 7th mark a tectonic shift in UK politics with implications for both Europe and the Anglosphere. After a century of two-party rule, the country’s political landscape is profoundly fragmented, mirroring the deep economic, cultural, and social divides. The country is more atomized and fractured today than even in the run-up to the Brexit referendum ten years ago. Keir Starmer will likely face a challenge as prime minister, and his successor would be the seventh since 2016. Yet successive government have failed to rebuild state capacity for renewed prosperity at home or defending national and shared Western interests against the threats from hostile foreign powers such as China or Russia.

In the English local elections, the governing center-left Labour Party and to a lesser extent the center-right Conservative Party suffered heavy losses to the radical-right populist Reform UK party and the far-left populist Green Party. Meanwhile, in the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections, the nationalists emerged triumphant, with Reform in second place and the Greens progressing while Labour lost dramatically and the Conservatives shed support too.

Thus, in one sense the populist backlash against progressivist technocracy continues apace. Labour, which won a landslide victory in the UK national elections less than two years ago, are losing everywhere to everyone. In their former heartlands in the North-East, North-West, and the Midlands, they are being replaced by Reform. In London and university towns, their vote is squeezed by the Greens. And in some of the so-called home counties—the wealthy middle-class regions around the capital—Labour is ceding ground to the centrist Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, though the latter are losing to Reform in working-class areas across southern England.

Geography and social class largely coincide. Labour’s electoral coalition used to stretch from Hampstead (north London), home to Fabian-style intellectuals, to Hull (northern England), home to the industrial working class. This coalition has fractured, with parts of the progressive professional managerial class abandoning Labour in favor of the Green Party and the nationalists in Scotland and Wales, while the socially conservative ex-industrial working class have switched their support to Reform. The Conservatives are now the party of the older, more affluent voters, a small yet stable rump.

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In another sense, Britain is witnessing a decomposition of mainstream parties and a realignment. The two-party system that has underpinned UK politics for two centuries—first Liberals and Conservatives, then Labour and Conservatives—has given way to a contest of five UK-wide parties (Labour, Conservative, LibDem, Reform, and Green) and three nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (Scottish Nationalist Party, Plaid Cymru, and Sinn Féin). We might be seeing the demise of Labour and the Conservatives as national parties, with their national share of the vote well below 20 percent each, while Reform UK got about 26 percent and, so far, has the advantage of building a relatively stable electoral coalition out of the working and lower middle classes across England and now Wales too.

But at this juncture, no party can govern on its own, and the prospect of coalition government for years to come adds to the sense of paralysis. Scotland, where the SNP has been in power for over twenty years and governed either as a minority party or in coalition with the Greens, has some of the worst public services and other economic outcomes, showing that a governing strategy of the lowest common denominator accelerates decline. Something similar applies to the Conservative/LibDem coalition in Westminster from 2010 to 2015, which gave the country the lasting damage wrought by austerity, depressing economic growth and involving draconian cuts to public services and defense spending. So far coalitions have existed within the national parties, not between them. Over time, the very legitimacy of British parliamentary democracy will be in question.

Ideologically, the defeat of centrist technocracy does not represent the demise of progressivism or the tempering of the populist right—as with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. Instead, the energy is with two rival forms of populism—the nationalist, sovereignist populist brand of Reform versus the globalist, “inclusive” populist brand of the Greens. While Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage, led the charge for Brexit and is a staunch defender of President Trump (albeit not in favor of the Iran war), the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, sides with those who accuse Israel of genocide and champions ultra-progressive causes ranging from trans-activism to the decolonization of the school curriculum. Progressivist politics is growing on the populist far left of the spectrum.

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Yet this clash of the two brands of populism conceals a deeper fusion of certain libertarian with specific statist views. Both Reform and the Greens accuse the old mainstream parties of liberticide and a sustained crackdown on free speech, combined with censorship and surveillance. All this is couched in the familiar terms of elite coercive control versus popular resistance. The Greens are even more libertarian than Reform in promoting the legalization of recreational drugs and euthanasia. At the same time, both parties support statist solutions to the economic crisis, advocating vast public spending on welfare and public services in the hope of boosting the living standards of people left behind by globalization and austerity.

Moreover, each of the two insurgent forces is deeply divided. Reform oscillates between statist intervention to support its working-class voters and a Thatcherite low-tax, low-spend economy to placate its suburban middle-class support. The Greens are simultaneously appealing to socially ultra-progressive secular graduates and middle-class voters and socially more conservative Muslim voters.

It is therefore highly uncertain whether their political positioning or policy platforms command greater popular support in a general election for the UK Parliament, due by July 2029 when the current parliamentary term expires. Arguably the fusion of libertarian with statist ideas will limit their appeal among voters as time—and scrutiny—goes on. A majority of British people remain much more small-“c” communitarian in terms of family, work, and a sense of national belonging. Most people are culturally and socially moderate while wanting to see a radically different economic model that allows them and their children to flourish once more.

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A broad section of the UK population are opposed to the ethno-nationalist atavism of Reform’s radical wing, who seek to deport millions of foreign-born Brits, as much as to the globalist reverse racism of Green’s militant activists, who blame the white indigenous people for all the ills of the country and the whole world.

So far, no political party or politicians seems to have grasped the sheer depth of the crisis or worked out how to confront the structural drivers. Reform UK says that the United Kingdom is broken but falls back on old ideas such as Global Britain as a buccaneering free-trade country in a world of great-power blocs and growing protectionism. It also speaks the language of the “special relationship” with the United States at a time when historically close diplomatic, military, intelligence, and economic ties are giving way to more transactional deals based on very short-term calculations rather than longer-term strategic interests.

While Reform UK has consistently criticized high levels of immigration and the associated cultural changes, it has so far failed to connect these to economic pressures. Free trade will only exacerbate the divides between globally traded service sectors and the foundational economy of non-traded goods and services. Linked to this is the reliance on importing skilled, cheap(er) labor to fill vacancies in more vocational and technical sectors such as healthcare, adult social care, construction, and adjacent activities. Crucially, Reform UK seems fully invested in the “culture wars” pitting ultra-progressive woke activists against national-populists, when a majority of voters reject identity-driven politics and do not view the underlying divisions as set in stone.

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How will its current political outlook and nascent policy platform speak to the two parts of the electoral coalition that it needs to hold together and grow, i.e., working-class voters in ex-industrial towns, suburban zones, but also rural and coastal areas (who used to vote Labour), as well as lower-middle-class voters in cities and more affluent pensioners (who are disillusioned by the Conservatives)?

Amid political fragmentation, fracturing communities, and material fault lines, what’s missing from British politics is a broad UK-wide party with a vision that balances tradition with transformation. An economic model that creates value, not financial speculation or the extraction of rents, and rewards hard work. An economic model that fosters firms with a social and not only an economic purpose, such as public-interest companies, cooperatives, and mutuals that pool risk, resources, and rewards. An economic model that reduces energy costs for both households and businesses, and that replaces dependency on energy imports with real energy security based on a combination of nuclear with renewables.

A central state that devolves power and resources to local and regional tiers of government, which know better about the needs of their citizens and are accountable to them. A central state that abandons managerial micro-management with decisive action in favor of reindustrialization, affordable and good-quality public services run by organizations governed by funders, workers, and users. A central state that clamps down on rent-seeking and profiteering, invests in innovation, and deploys technology for public benefit. A central state that enforces strong borders and takes decisive action to eliminate illegal immigration.

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Good government at all levels of the country to celebrate the United Kingdom’s shared history, strengthen communities, go after those preaching hate, and deal with the scourge of antisemitism and ethno-sectarian intolerance. All this requires less focus on process and rules and instead a much greater exercise of both ethical and political leadership based on courage and conviction.

For the past decade or so, Western politics has been characterized by the opposition between progressives and populists amid growing cultural and economic polarization. Today, politics is fragmented as old parties lose their popular base while new insurgent forces still struggle to command majority support. A majority politics can be built on solidarity and subsidiarity instead of diversity and coercion, the common good and flourishing rather than the right to have rights or the maximization of utility, freedom and duties instead of servitude and entitlement.

The sway of both social and economic liberalism, which was dominant for forty years, is being undermined by the intrusion of new political polarities that do not readily fit into a left–right spectrum. These new polarities concern variously common sense and common decency versus the binary of technocracy and populism, rootedness and tolerance versus mobility and the division of culture wars, the local and national versus the uniformly global or atavistic ethno-nationalism. Such and similar political polarities require a more paradoxical conception that fuses the defense of tried and tested tradition with the promotion of radical yet realistic transformation.

Britain’s much-vaunted stability and majority rule are unraveling in a world of great-power rivalry. The current capacity of the British state and the ruling establishment to offer remedies is as small as the scale of the task is big. Only a new virtuous elite combined with greater popular participation in power and wealth can reverse decades of decline and renew the United Kingdom before it breaks apart and ceases to play a vital role in the promotion of the wider West both geopolitically and civilizationally.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • Reflections & Dialogues

Adrian Pabst is Honorary Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, UK, and Deputy Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Since 2012 he has been an Associate Editor of Telos. His research is at the interstice of political thought, political economy, and political theology. He is the co-editor of Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics (2015) and the co-author (with John Milbank) of The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future (2016). Author of several other monographs, his most recent book is Penser l’ère post-libérale (2025). Since October 2025 he has been a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

On today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Adrian Pabst talks with Michael Lind and John Milbank about postliberalism, the topic of the current issue of Telos, entitled “Debating Postliberalism.” Adrian Pabst’s “The New Era: What Comes After the Self-Erosion of Liberalism,” Michael Lind’s “After Liberalism,” and John Milbank’s “The Politics of Virtue” all appear in the issue. The articles by Pabst and Lind are available as open access publications, and they can be read for free at the Telos website.

Listen to the podcast here.

The issue as well as the podcast discussion grew out of last year’s postliberalism conference on “Political Economy and the Good Life,” which took place on December 13–14, 2024, at the University of Cambridge, and was co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough. Videos of the conference sessions can be viewed here.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

The aim of the program is to develop thinking on nature that avoids at once the progressive-liberal trap of bourgeois environmentalism that seeks to reduce CO₂ emissions on the back of working people and the radical populist trap of climate change denial. Instead, our ambition is to bring together thinkers who can reconnect ecology to local places and the land, to people’s sense of belonging, and to ethical approaches that promote the moral responsibility to act as stewards of common goods such as nature and the environment.

We will combine critiques of technocracy, liberal legalism, untrammeled market liberalism, and the bureaucratic state with a positive vision of environmentalism that draws on both religious and secular sources of thinking and practice, including notions of sacredness and wisdom found in more traditional ways of life.

TPPI is delighted to partner with the Centre for Social Renewal, the co-organizer of the December 2024 postliberalism conference in Cambridge, and Our Common Home, an international network that promotes the civic participation of everyone in society to build solutions to the changing natural environment.

We will bring together public intellectuals, academics, politicians, and community organizers from North America, Latin America, and Europe. There will be an initial workshop on December 6, 2025, in New York City and a two-day international conference on October 8–9, 2026, in Berlin, with the option of a subsequent event in Washington, DC.

Please contact TPPI for details, which will be announced in the coming months.

Topics: Beyond State and Market

Introduction

In March 2024, after a Muslim Hadith was displayed on the departure board at King’s Cross station, Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform Party, posted on X: “Aren’t we supposed to be a Christian country?”1 Farage has often been comfortable implicitly associating the term “Christian” with a right-wing worldview that combines a socially conservative instinct with economic liberalism.2 This invoking of Christianity brings to mind the well-established Christian right in the United States, whose attitudes are characterized by fear and suspicion.3 So what does this mean for those in this country who love Jesus but don’t recognize their own values in this alternative Christian right?

We hope to outline here a joyful and accessible approach to politics and community for those who follow Jesus that subverts the stridency of right or left. We will draw from the Bible and the wider Christian tradition to explore God’s design for living well together and our own role in bringing it about. We will start by discussing what politics (and government) is: the deliberation by a community about “common good”—that is, the end to which the community is oriented. We argue that the divine design for the common good is the continual pursuit of human flourishing in community, and we will explore this by examining who God is and how He designs creation. This helps us flesh out the shape of a flourishing community before closing with a reflection on our own role in bringing about this better society through virtue and character. We are at every stage knowingly and feebly imitating political theologians such as Oliver O’Donovan, Luke Bretherton, and James K.A. Smith, as well as postliberal thinkers such as Maurice Glasman, John Milbank, and Adrian Pabst.

What Is Politics?

First, can we work toward a common good with non-Christians if we are separated from them by how we see Jesus? The Christian tradition suggests “yes” because through history we have seen God’s mysterious work of “common grace”: the reality that God keeps society from being as appalling as sin should make it, and that non-Christians are able to live with love and hope despite not experiencing the regeneration and sanctification of the Holy Spirit.4

This allows us to do politics together—but what is politics? We think of politics as a placard-waving, voting business that some people take too seriously, but in reality we believe politics is the constant practice of establishing what any given community wants through the shaping of beliefs and values.5 In the post-fall world, family units have a limited range of options when they interact: to fight each other, to flee from one another, or to coexist peacefully in order to achieve a shared—common—good.6 This “common good” may be a secure food supply, an absence of conflict, or another shared need. And the deliberation around what these common goods are and how to seek them occurs constantly: any time we speak to a neighbor about our upcoming holiday and who we’re going with or what food we’re eating and who we’re eating it with, we are making a statement about what is valuable and what we think the fruits of peace should be. Government, as we will discuss, is downstream from this deliberation, which must mean that the crucial discussion—the politics—is happening well before the voting starts, at a much deeper level than is realized.7 In every community, everyone “politics” all the time about what the common good should be, and the consensus emerging out of this politics is the context within which every government operates.

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“Government” is not just bureaucrats in a big city. In almost every community some form of central authority emerges to help steward the common good, and this government is shaped by the constant value discourse of those in the community—politics—as well as occasional, intentional expressions of desire (revolutions and elections).8 It is important to note that relatively few Christians will be called to play a professional role living Christ’s love within government, but the whole Church is a living challenge to the temptations of all governments to indignify the community it governs. This is because God has His own vision of the common good, and every Christian is called to live their life signposting toward it, often in tension with their own community and their government. It is to this vision that we now turn.

God’s Flourishing and Common Good

God designed creation for human flourishing—the common good—and the Bible and the Christian tradition make clear the core fundamentals of flourishing: family, creation care, proper valuing of work and rest, and care for the marginalized. But to become citizens capable of living these common goods, we need the family.

We learn much about the common good in the beginning, where a perfect, loving triune God dwells relationally and communally.9 So, when God creates man in “my own image,” we know man will also be designed to live loving and loved, relational and communal. The creation of a companion follows soon after, forming the first human community and the perfect basis for all humanity.

The family is the first act of God-designed common good upon which further common good can be built. We are born into a family so that we can experience communal love long before we have a self-conscious identity.10 The newborn learns what love is through the total giving of her parents, and she loves in return without really knowing it, as well as learning both how to practice the character virtues of love and sacrifice that are necessary for any community pursuing a common good, and the reality that she has bonded obligations to groups she has not chosen: family, neighborhood, town, nation. God’s design for our lives is for us to love and be loved in the communities in which we find ourselves on this side of Heaven, and the ingredients for living this truth well are prepared for us in our early years.

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So, as we grow up, we can begin to think about the practicalities of a flourishing community. Some key facts are repeatedly clear:

1. Freedom is shaped by duty and belonging. The world is a collection not of individuals but rather of communities of families, and our being raised in a family is the hint that we are to live in deep mutual sharing in every community we find ourselves in. Those who reject these connections find themselves deeply lonely and confused.11

2. We are to seek preference for the vulnerable, marginalized, and impoverished, so that those whose voices are not the loudest are able to participate equally in the politics of the community.12

3. Where communities have government, this government is to represent the whole community, seeking justice as God defines it, not acquiescing to mob rule, and devolving decision-making as frequently as possible.13

4. Because the economy is subservient to communal life, education should be focused on building virtuous citizens who can work together for the common good, not employable workers.14

5. Natural creation is deeply important; land is a common resource managed by local people for the good of the community, not because they can meaningfully “own” it.15 Climate change is a threat to the common good and must be recognized as a failure of stewardship.

It is impossible to discuss in this short piece all the implications of God’s common good for creation. But here we will take the opportunity to briefly explore one field of life relevant to every reader: work.

Work and the Marketplace

How and why we work matters to God, whether this work is a paid role, caring duties, schooling, or volunteering. Unlike the rest of creation, man is tasked with a mandate, making work part of who we were created to be, which means quiet quitting and benefit dependency are out.16 And good work produces good fruit; the character we show in work can point others toward God and his flourishing—a crucial political act that every Christian engages in.

But those who are more productive quickly find they can receive more in return by dealing in a transactional way, and this temptation for a secure and increased income is powerful. Humans are ensnared by the option of making the products of their labor transactional—“I give . . . I get”—rather than relying on a riskier, more fruitful grace economy: “we share.” And this temptation has generated an entire economic system: capitalism, which relies on individuals accumulating resources and trading them in an ever-more aggressive “urbanization, industrialization, centralization, efficiency, quantity, [and] speed.”17 God’s creation—people and natural resources—are treated as things from which to extract resources. As inequality grows, communal, sacrificial living becomes much harder, moving from the posture of generosity in Acts 2:44–47 to the divided communion of 1 Corinthians 11:21–22.18

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Character

As we engage in deliberations about the common good and seek God’s flourishing, character is crucial, both in shaping our politics and in judging our government. We feel this is a central and underrealized point within much of the Church concerned with government, which implicitly makes itself the “goodies” facing a sea of “baddies” and thereby able to justify a range of blurred behaviors when trying to challenge values pointing away from God.

Character virtue is deeply important in shaping our community to live out God’s common good. Given that every interaction we have with another human is with an imago dei, how we behave with one another in the work of politics matters deeply. By the work of the Holy Spirit, we grow more Christ-like day by day. And when we speak and think and behave in the way Jesus teaches us—honoring God and one another above ourselves; giving up what we have for our enemies and the poor; delighting when our community choses God’s goodness and lamenting when it chooses sin instead—then we stand witness to God’s good design for creation in a way that is itself God’s good design for creation. To “Church” as we are called to is the only right way we can “politics” to bring flourishing into being.

Moreover, character is a metric by which we judge government. When contemporary politicians lobby for what we want yet speak and act in a way our Savior would not, then they are falling short at the very first hurdle: to lay down their lives for those around them. If the president who stops a war is also a bully, then that is a mark against her record, because we know she is incapable of honoring the divine image bearers around her too. That matters to us, because it matters to Jesus: He delights in the poor woman giving what she can out of humility rather than the rich man giving much out of pride.

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Conclusion

We have argued that through God’s revelation we can see a more complete vision for a flourishing community than the current Christian right envisages, and this is a calling that can be picked up and applied by Christians of all stripes: the Holy Spirit works through us to make our community—wherever that may be—a flourishing one.

If we allow the Holy Spirit to steer us to act in ways that value natural creation, that honor ours and others’ labor, that create ties of belonging and responsibility, and that do so in community, beginning with the family, then we are helping bring about the common good in which all people flourish. Where a community’s politics is riven with fear and suspicion, we know there are not Christians picking up litter, healing the sick, giving beyond their means, and praying for a shalom far more powerful than any government policy.

This is hard. Not all want the Church to succeed in the flourishing of creation, and the Bible promises that suffering, persecution, and deep joy accompany the gospel ethic. But when Joshua and the Israelites were in the uncertain land, knowing of the darkness behind them, and nervous of the promised land to be, they were reminded “do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”19 Shall we begin?

Topics: Beyond State and Market • Reflections & Dialogues

Jonathan Downing works to create dense networks of senior leaders who care about rediscovering the common good. He graduated with a degree in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick and is a proud ginger.

Theo Hunt works as a parliamentary assistant to a Labour MP. He also enjoys reading, hiking, and supporting Reading FC (sometimes). He lives in London.

Today’s video is from plenary session 8, entitled “Renewing the West,” from day 2 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. This session was moderated by Adrian Pabst, Professor of Politics, University of Kent, and author of The Politics of Virtue: Postliberalism and the Human Future (2016, with John Milbank), and Postliberal Politics (2021). The panel featured presentations from the following four speakers:

• Tom Holland, historian and author of Dominion (2019) and Pax (2023);

• Sebastian Milbank, Executive Editor, The Critic;

• David Pan, Editor of Telos and Professor of German at the University of California, Irvine; and

• Lola Salem, Post-Doctoral Fellow; Lecturer in Music, Oriel College, University of Oxford, and consultant (paper read by Susannah Black Roberts).

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

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On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

The following video is from plenary session 7, entitled “Pursuing the Good Life: Nature, Demography and Politics,” from day 2 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. This session was moderated by Andy Scerri, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Virginia Tech. The panel featured presentations from the following five speakers:

• Ian Marcus Corbin, philosopher at Harvard Medical School; Senior Fellow, Capita;

• José Alberto Garibaldi, Director, Energeia Network and of the Learning by Doing initiative;

• Tobias Phibbs, Deputy Director, Common Good Foundation; Head of Talent and Community, Civic Future;

• Vidal Romero, Professor of Political Science, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM); Co-Director, Centre for the Study of Security, Intelligence, and Governance; and

• Robin White-Grove, Emeritus Professor, Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, University of Lancaster.

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

Subscribe now

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

In the following video, we present plenary session 6, entitled “Imagination and Action: Combatting the Machine,” from day 2 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. This session was moderated by Esmé Partridge, a writer and parliamentary researcher in the UK House of Commons. The panel featured presentations from the following four speakers:

• Tara Burton, author and novelist;

• Paul Kingsnorth, writer, former deputy editor of The Ecologist, and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project;

• Alison Milbank, Emeritus Professor of Theology and Literature, University of Nottingham, and author of God and the Gothic (2018) and For the Parish (2010, with Andrew Davison); and

• James Noyes, Senior Fellow, Social Market Foundation.

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

Subscribe now

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

The following video is from plenary session 5, entitled “Left Conservatism: The Future?,” from day 2 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. This session was moderated by Jason Cowley, Editor-in-Chief of The New Statesman. The panel featured presentations from the following five speakers:

• Phillip Blond, Director, ResPublica and author of Red Tory (2010);

• Miriam Cates, GB News Presenter; Senior Fellow, Centre for Social Justice; former Conservative Member of Parliament for Penistone and Stocksbridge;

• David Goodhart, Head of Demography, Immigration & Integration, Policy Exchange; author of The Care Dilemma (2024);

• Dan Hitchens, Senior Editor, First Things; and

• Katja Hoyer, Visiting Research Fellow, King’s College London, and author of Beyond the Wall (2023).

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

Subscribe now

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

In this video, we present John Milbank’s keynote address “The Politics of Virtue—A Postliberal Manifesto,” from day 2 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. Milbank is Emeritus Professor of Religion, Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham, as well as author of Theology and Social Theory (1990) and The Politics of Virtue (2016, with Adrian Pabst).

The panel discussion was moderated by Michael Gove, Editor of The Spectator and a Conservative Cabinet Minister (2010–2014), and it featured responses to Milbank’s lecture from the following three speakers:

• Susannah Black Roberts, Senior Editor at Plough and New Polity;

• John Ritzema, Associate Faculty Member and Pharos Foundation Marshall Research Fellow, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford; and

• Imogen Sinclair, Director of the New Social Covenant Unit.

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

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On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

In the following video, we present plenary session 4, entitled “Geopolitics, Ecology, and the International Economy,” from day 1 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. This session was moderated by the Very Reverend Dr. Frances Ward, Honorary fellow at St. Chad’s College, Durham. The panel featured presentations from the following three speakers:

• Richard Beardsworth, Professor of International Politics; Head of the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds;

• Maurice (Lord) Glasman, Labour Life Peer, founder of Blue Labour and of the Common Good Foundation, and author of Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good (2022); and

• Aris Roussinos, UnHerd columnist and former war reporter.

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

Subscribe now

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

The following video is from plenary session 3, entitled “Economic Democracy and Political Participation,” from day 1 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. This session was moderated by Imogen Sinclair, Director of the New Social Covenant Unit. The panel featured presentations from the following four speakers:

• Dan Carden MP, Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool, Walton since 2017;

• Jonathan C.D. Clark, British historian; Joyce C. and Elizabeth Ann Hall Distinguished Professor Emeritus of British History, University of Kansas;

• Will Hutton, President, Academy of Social Sciences; columnist, The Observer; author of This Time No Mistakes (2024); and

• Munira Mirza, Director, Civic Future; Head of the No. 10 Policy Unit (2019–2022).

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

Subscribe now

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

Update, October 2025: In Telos 212 (Fall 2025), a special issue on postliberalism, Gabriel Noah Brahm and Julius Bielek have written a response to Wolfgang Streeck’s presentation below. Online subscribers to Telos can read their article here.

The following video is from plenary session 2, entitled “Beyond Global Capitalism and the Ecological Crisis: Rebuilding National Economies and Societies,” from day 1 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. This session was moderated by David Pan, Editor of Telos and Professor of German at the University of California, Irvine. The panel featured presentations from the following four speakers:

• Sohrab Ahmari, Co-Founder and Co-Editor, Compact Magazine; U.S. Editor of UnHerd; author of Tyranny, Inc. How Private Power Crushed American Liberty–And What To Do About It (2023);

• Juan Carlos Belausteguigoitia, Professor of Economics; Director of the Center of Energy and Natural Resources, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM);

• Mary Harrington, Contributing Editor, UnHerd and author of Feminism against Progress (2022); and

• Wolfgang Streeck, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany; author of Taking Back Control? States and State Systems After Globalism (2024).

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

Subscribe now

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference • Israel Initiative

Presented here is the video of plenary session 1, entitled “The Crisis of Contemporary Capitalism and Civil Society,” from day 1 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. This session was moderated by Alison Milbank, Emeritus Professor of Theology and Literature, University of Nottingham, and author of God and the Gothic (2018) and For the Parish (2010, with Andrew Davison). The panel featured presentations from the following three speakers:

• Maurice (Lord) Glasman, Labour Life Peer, founder of Blue Labour and of the Common Good Foundation, and author of Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good (2022);

• Frances Foley, Deputy Director of the Compass think-tank; and

• Paul Tyson, Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Queensland, Australia.

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

Subscribe now

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference

In this video, we present Michael Lind’s keynote address “After Liberalism: Pluralism and the Social Constitution,” from day 1 of Political Economy and the Good Life: The 2024 Postliberalism Conference. Lind is a leading academic, commentator, and bestselling author of The New Class War (2020). The panel discussion was moderated by Tom McTague, Political Editor of UnHerd, and it featured responses to Lind’s lecture from the following three speakers:

• Claire Ainsley, Director of the Project on Center-Left Renewal, Progressive Policy Institute; Director of Policy, Labour Party (2020–22); author of The New Working Class;

• Jon Cruddas, former Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham; author of The Dignity of Labour (2021), and A Century of Labour (2024); and

• Adrian Pabst, Professor of Politics, University of Kent, and author of The Politics of Virtue: Postliberalism and the Human Future (2016, with John Milbank) and Postliberal Politics (2021).

The 2024 Postliberalism Conference took place on December 13–14, 2024, in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK. Co-sponsored by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, the Centre for Social Renewal, Energeia, and Plough, the conference brought together leading academics, politicians, policymakers, and journalists to explore the errors and excesses of liberalism and to conceptualize constructive alternatives to its worldview and to the dominant theoretical models that underpin it.

Subscribe now

On day 1, our focus was on political economy, in particular the nature of the crisis of liberalism, the contradictions of capitalism, and a shift from globalization, the “knowledge economy,” debt and speculation toward national resilience, vocations and crafts, investment and production. The discussion also included new ideas about foreign policy and ecology with an emphasis on realist approaches to interests and the exercise of power.

Day 2 expanded our conversation to new thinking about politics, including virtue politics and left conservatism, but also how to combat the machine by re-humanizing technology, how to purse the good life in relation to our demographic and ecological crises, as well as how to renew the West in the face of Western self-hatred and hostile foreign powers.

Would you like to contribute to the conversation? Write to us to propose a response to any of the conference presentations.

Topics: Beyond State and Market • The 2024 Postliberalism Conference