Has The Left Already Won Britain?

In this episode of the IEA Podcast, Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Dr Kristian Niemietz to launch a new series on the IEA Insider Substack: Millennial Liberalism. The series, inspired by the IEA’s 1985 anthology The New Right Enlightenment, brings together young classical liberals to share how they came to their ideas in a generation overwhelmingly hostile to free markets. Kristian explains why liberals of any era have interesting origin stories worth telling, while their left-wing peers rarely do, because being left-wing at a young age has become the default rather than a deliberate choice.The conversation digs into the polling that defines the moment. More than one in three young Britons hold a positive view of communism, two-thirds back BLM, and around half favour reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. Kristian argues this is not boomer slop from the right wing press but the sincere answers of millions of young people, and he dispels the comforting myth that this generation will grow out of it. The data shows older millennials in their early 40s already think indistinguishably from teenagers, meaning the traditional rightward drift with age has effectively stalled.Callum and Kristian also explore why the old left-right map no longer fits, with progressives driving cancel culture and the British right increasingly defined by NIMBYism and a refusal to build anything. They discuss what unites today’s young classical liberals with the boomer-era thinkers who came before them, the intellectual sources they still draw on from the Chicago and Austrian schools to Robert Nozick, and what gives Kristian hope that liberalism can survive as one credible option among many, even if it never becomes the majority view.The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe