Flirting with Centrism: A Passionate Leftist Tempted to Swipe Right

Suzy Eddie Izzard doesn’t get quoted enough. The brilliant comedian and future Prime Minister of the UK—I’m calling it now—often makes the same assertion:

The vast majority of the world are with us. It’s like we’re all, generally, centre-right, centre-left, centre-centre, and that’s eighty-to-ninety percent of the world. Then there’s ten percent of extremists.

This figure is worth keeping fixed to the front of our minds as we enter a difficult period of history where the far, far right is ascendant and imposing its brutality on minorities, on dissidents, and on the democratic system of government itself, while the far, far left has become churlish, petty, imprudent, contradictory, self-obsessed, mean-spirited, censorious, fallacious, and…well, rather embarrassing.

I take no pleasure in admitting that the left has lost its way. I’ve always voted with social justice, foreign aid, secular humanism, animal rights, climate change and environmental protection as my key issues of concern. My commitment to a cleaner, greener, saner world is unlikely to everchange; however, I’m a pragmatist at heart, and I’m not interested in being seen as ‘nice’ or ‘an ally’, or ‘on the winning side of history’. Maybe it’s utilitarianism that guides me, but producing the most happiness and the least unhappiness for the largest number of people—and animals—seems a pretty solid ethical framework. If that’s the goal, then contemporary leftism may no longer be the gameplan. Vague promises, symbolic ‘slacktivism’, hollow sloganeering and public shaming are antithetical to actual, tangible progressive public policy. For those of us who are results driven, it may be time to re-strategise.

Modern leftist ideology has not had a tangible positive impact on the causes I care about. Here are but three examples…

Firstly, the environment is still suffering.

We all read the recent headline when Sheryl Crow sold her Tesla. I like Sheryl. I don’t like Elon Musk. Even so, I was drawn to the responses her announcement inspired this week and the immediate criticism of her gesture. Crow has since been branded ‘an elite’ indulging in ‘virtue signalling’, and this rhetoric—while hardly new—has come to unseat the waning ‘cancel culture’ (read: shame culture) that has been left-wing social currency over the past ten years. Simply put, it’s the right that is shaming the left now because it turns out hypocrisy and performativity have a very limited cultural shelf life.

Iconic progressive Taylor Swift, meanwhile, was just booed at the Superbowl. The symbolism of this cultural turn should not be underestimated. Yesterday, Tom Hanks copped some flak too. I never thought I’d see the day the world would turn on Woody! RUN, FOREST, RUN!

These are glib examples that underline a serious point: the failure of the left to actually walk the walk on environmental issues has fuelled a populist backlash. Obviously, the right are the heavy polluters, with the Trumpian cry to ‘drill, baby, drill!’ potentially tunnelling all the way to the planet’s oblivion. But I want a movement that actually pushes back with something real. Not just the pretence of virtue. We could start by limiting meat consumption, limiting travel, limiting our exploitation of Earth’s resources…something tangible outside Instagram or X.

Secondly, the left has abandoned the working class, and it’s time to admit that.

Again, I’m not suggesting—not even stomaching—any capitulation to the fringe views of far-right autocrats. My unease is centred on intersectionality and complexity, and the left’s failure to engage at that level. My love for Swift and Hanks stands eternal, but class dynamics are evident in the backlash that has been brewing since the 2024 election. Something has shifted. The prism we’re looking through has changed. Leaders on the left need to reengage with working people.

Bernie Sanders, ever the bellwether politician, gets it:

While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.

The idealist in me still pretends the left cares about economics; the realist in me sees cosseted, frequently disdainful, cashed-up mouthpieces demonising strangers along class lines.

At my worst, I fear I’ve been one of these people. I want to do better.

While they are themselves simplistic, I cannot go on pretending that fervent accusations of ‘elitism’, of ‘wokeism’, and of liberals being ‘out of touch’, lack foundation in day-to-day discourse. We the left can say ‘woke is meaningless’ and ‘there is no culture war’… but if a large number of human beings around the globe believe otherwise, and this belief is influencing how they vote, then we’d best recalibrate and respond to the root causes—poor wages and working conditions, expensive housing, individuals feeling silenced and shamed—that have added ‘woke’ as a pejorative to the international lexicon. Maybe we could consider our own rhetorical tricks and our own policy failures.

The left should neverhave lost the people who need us most.

Thirdly, the education sector certainly hasn’t benefited from leftist dogma.

I can only speak to my career working in the Australian education sector, but I suspect the underlying issues are universal. Australian universities are in a competence crisis. Standards are abysmal. AI is doing people’s work for them and nobody is strong enough to call it out. No, really…we’re in very, very big trouble.

While former conservative Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s attacks against the Humanities—and, going further back, his mentor John Howard’s assaults against student unionism and campus life—set the scene for the atrophic malaise that has gripped tertiary institutions, few can excuse the current trend of ‘junk degrees’ and the toxic lack of respect for scholarship and critical thinking.

On the grounds of many Australian universities, rapidly becoming vacant and sad due to the religion of online teaching, it’s fair to say emotion supersedes intellectual inquiry. I’ve met ‘educators’ who claim “gravity is a Western construct”, “writing fiction makes you a scholar”, and “animal cruelty is fine if it’s part of your cultural heritage.” Only in a corroding system could such one-liners land without a laugh track.

Way back in 2019, Australian lecturers were raising alarms, as highlighted in an interview conducted by journalist Dana Pham:

The old model of taxpayer-funded university places being limited and only available to those with sufficient academic merit or relevant experience was criticised for being too elitist. Academics used to be in charge and would run the courses, and decide the content and students would revere their knowledge. It was replaced with a system of uncapped taxpayer funded university places, with entry standards to many courses being very low. The low standards have been justified and continue to slip further down in the name of ‘equity’, and ‘inclusion’.

Emotionally, I want to argue with this assessment.

Intellectually, I can’t toe the line anymore.

While ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’ may offend the Musks of this world, they are concepts that matter to me and to many others. Fairness, impartiality and equal access to education are principles I believe most people support. In practice, however, the university sector is dying.

What is the value of a degree that anyone and everyone can attain? Is there not a more balanced position we can strike that restores the old standards, draws the best teachers, and still provides fair pathways for students from varied backgrounds? It might be nice to mark attendance again, move offline, pay attention to literacy, and return to valuing scholarship as complementary to—but distinct from—creative endeavour.

The idealist in me continues to campaign against wage theft and the now undeniable exploitation of university staff; the realist in me misses the university I once studied and taught at, where ideas from across the political and ideological spectrum were welcomed, explored…and understood.

The left has let Australian students down.

Is balancereallya bad thing?

Three examples should be enough for now. I can think of dozens more.

In a rabidly partisan climate, I’m sure many people have already disengaged, but surely that is the error we need to address? I blame the algorithms for much of this conflict, but we’re living in a world where the left is linking JK Rowling to the Nazis and Liz Cheney is too moderate for the right.

We left Kansas a few realities back.

If leftism is flagging—and it is—then centrism is worth a conscious analysis that doesn’t misconstrue the movement as simply ‘in-between’ or ‘undecided’. On the contrary, centrism is a decisive position that rejects the loud extremes currently smothering public debate.

Centrism is neither a cop out nor an equidistant line between cold fascism on the right and fiery Marxism on the left. That’s a reductive misreading of the term.

Centrism is an acknowledgement of systems in their complexity, and in relationship to one another…

It is the kaleidoscope of influences that make up a whole human being.

Author Yair Zivan refutes the myth that centrists are concerned with ‘fence sitting’ by instead arguing that pragmatism and progress are made possible by widening the centre, rejecting extremism, and having a broader understanding of the issues in play:

If populists and extremists try to govern and try to campaign through fear, there’s no point us competing with that. We’re never going to be able to out-fear them. And so what we should be doing is offering an alternative. And that alternative is a message of hope.

When I say “the left has let us down” it’s not to push the problem onto other people and it’s not to waggle an accusing finger. I’m talking about my own side. My own self. Me. I don’t think I will ever wholeheartedly identify as anything other than a leftist—a far leftist on environmental and animal rights issues, and well left of centre when it comes to most social and interpersonal issues—but I want to be able to see the imperfections in my own thinking and acknowledge that other people’s perspectives are not only valid but engaging and constructive. I want to encourage myself and others to concede that the centre is where a lot of good people do a lot of good work.

Bubbles feel nice. It’s cosy to sit in a ‘safe space’ where everyone else agrees and nobody ever challenges us. It doesn’t achieve anything, though. Leftists floating in bubbles didn’t stop Trump from returning to power in the US. We probably helped him.

I want progressive thought to guide the rest of this conflicted and messy millennium, but I’m not going to pretend the left is doing well. I’m not going to pretend that we’re above reproach or too noble to welcome criticism. Please don’t ask me to play make-believe.

If we’re going to lick our wounds and move forward, we need to start with a frank assessment…

We. Are. Fallible.

And we have to accept that the centre is the place where change actually happens. It’s time to engage with people who disagree with us. Time to listen. Time to read. Nothing can be gained by retreating into the comfortable and the familiar. Echo chambers can’t make the world a harmonious place. Cults won’t sway an electoral majority.

As a pragmatist, I want Australia, the US, the UK—every country—to take real steps away from that viral rightward shift that has seen families separated and innocents murdered. The pathway out of darkness can only be achieved through meeting detractors in the middle, having long and hard conversations, working toward compromise and admitting that the left has its own policy shifts to make: away from shame culture, ‘woke’ optics, hypocrisy, selective engagement, and petty one-upmanship, and back to addressing systemic unfairness and economic disadvantage. The left shouldn’t be too proud to learn from recent history.

Our intellectual agility used to be our strength.

If Suzy is correct, and most of us are indeed centre-right or centre-left, or centre-centre, then eighty-to-ninety percent of the world is open to a friendly conversation.

I’m going to try and remember that.