Double Liberalism

= concept originating from Adrian Wooldridge and Aaron Bastani

Summary

From Grok:

Aaron Bastani is using "double liberalism" to describe the dominant centrist ideology of the past few decades — the fusion of two separate strands of liberalism that have together created a hollow, demoralising society. In the exact tweet you linked, he's reacting to a post about Britain's collapsing national self-confidence and morale (likened to the French Fourth Republic). He calls this "the failures of double liberalism" coming home to roost, arguing that decades of this worldview have built "a world that, actually, is quite horrible — and defeats the human spirit." He links directly to his own new UnHerd column, "How liberalism became a joke," where he explains the term in detail.

What "double liberalism" actually means: Bastani borrows the phrase from journalist Adrian Wooldridge (formerly of The Economist and Bloomberg). It refers to the synthesis of two liberalisms:

• Economic neoliberalism — the market-first, deregulatory model that became dominant from the early 1980s onward (Thatcher/Reagan era: privatisation, financialisation, globalisation, weak unions, etc.).

• Social/moral liberalism — the cultural shift that began in the 1960s (the "permissive society"): dismantling shared moral/religious frameworks, traditional institutions, and collective norms in favour of radical individualism, personal autonomy, and "anything goes" on issues like family, identity, sexuality, and lifestyle.

Bastani writes: “That applies to both pillars of what Wooldridge persuasively labels ‘double liberalism’. Why double? Because it combines the excesses of economic neoliberalism, increasingly pervasive since the early Eighties, with the dismantling of any conception of a shared moral universe, a change that goes back to the 1960s.”

He adds that this is exactly what political and media elites mean when they talk about the “centre” — but it’s no longer moderate or popular. It’s a false consensus that has produced atomisation, declining trust, stagnant living standards for many, and a profound loss of meaning.Why Bastani thinks it's failing nowIn the article and tweet, he argues this "double liberalism" has run out of road:It delivered economic insecurity + cultural rootlessness.

It leaves centrists (Lib Dems, Blairites, Macron-style liberals, etc.) with no positive vision — only "stop" politics (stop Brexit, stop populists, stop change).

The result is the exact collapse in national morale the quoted tweet highlights: people feel the world they were promised is empty and spirit-crushing.

Bastani (a socialist who wants "[[Fully Automated Luxury Communism") sees this as proof that the post-Cold War liberal centre has become a joke — intellectually bankrupt, incapable of fixing the problems it created, and now fuelling the rise of both the populist right and left.In short: "double liberalism" = 1960s cultural permissiveness + 1980s economic deregulation. Bastani says that combo is why Britain (and much of the West) feels so miserable right now. The tweet is him pointing at the evidence and saying: this is what it produced."

(March 2026)

Source

See Aaron Bastani's article: https://unherd.com/2026/03/how-liberalism-became-a-joke/