This is the opening to my essay on the need to distinguish between criticism of liberalism and the politics of illiberalism, published in the Observer on 5 October 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer.

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The threat of mass deportations.The erosion of the right to protest. Treating protest groups as terrorists. The enforcement of blasphemy laws through the back door. Imprisonment for offensive slogans and tweets. The growth of ethnonationalist accounts of belonging.

Much of contemporary policymaking and political debate is infused with a spirit of illiberalism, with a desire to curb individual rights, to squeeze the space for dissenting views, and to restrict, too, the people and groups to which rights can apply.

Behind the rise of illiberalism lies a confusion over what liberalism is – and how to challenge it. Liberalism has become emblematic of much of what is wrong with contemporary society, from the inequalities created by globalisation to the democratic deficit established by transnational organisations, from the cultural impact of mass immigration to the breakdown of working-class communities. Much of this criticism is well merited. But the critique often also conflates distinct aspects of liberalism, throwing together those aspects of liberalism that are injurious to a flourishing society with those that are essential to it.

Most injurious are the neoliberal policies that, beginning with Thatcherism, emerged from the 1980s onwards as the postwar Keynesian order gave way. These policies deindustrialised Britain, often replacing manufacturing with a mass of low-wage, insecure, service-sector jobs; allowed inequality to soar and crushed trade unions that previously had helped keep such inequalities in check; atomised society by disaggregating communities and disparaging collective life; and introduced the market into every nook and cranny of social life. The crushing of labour organisations and the transformation of the Labour party away from its working-class constituencies left many feeling abandoned and voiceless. Today, immigration has become the primary symbol of the broken social contract, but the roots of the brokenness run much deeper.

Read the full version of the essay in the Observer.