In the last year, the United States has transitioned from flawed liberal democracy to competitive authoritarianism. In this new regime, institutions as diverse as universities, law firms and news outlets can be bullied into changing behaviour, or shaken down for bribes, by a lawless president. Legal residents are rounded up on the basis of their race or nationality and sent to hastily constructed concentration camps, or foreign prisons, where some report being tortured. Around a quarter of Americans fear they or someone close to them could be deported. Numerous experts have described the ideology of those in power in the US as clearly, openly fascistic.
There is a great deal to be said about what led the world’s foremost superpower to this juncture. We might focus on two major parts of the story, however. First, that powerful people and groups within the American elite orchestrated an aggressive, top-down push to make overt racism and sexism more acceptable, and to make appeals to them much more central to the country’s politics. Second, that the mainstream US media generally portrayed this trend as a reaction to the supposed excesses of liberalism.
Early in the first Trump presidency, progressives coined the term “reactionary centrist” to describe this latter tendency. It’s a pejorative—no one self-identifies as one. Nonetheless, it is valuable in digging out the implicit assumptions of many commentators and politicians—and in explaining why their theory of politics is failing liberal democracy so badly.
If this is all sounding discomfitingly familiar from a British perspective, that is essentially my point
These are people who—while not exactly supportive of the political right—tend to view it as without agency, as if the radicalisation of US conservatism is the result of people responding to the excesses of social justice, incivility from the left or cultural disrespect. So-called reactionary centrists both blamed the victims of the populist right, and spent a lot of time humanising the perpetrators. If only liberals could understand what drove Maga voters. Reactionary centrists admonished liberals to be very careful in their language, to not call very obvious fascists fascist, lest they be further provoked. The solution was to give ground; if democrats made appeals to the centre, particularly if they moved right on immigration and trans rights, they could regain votes lost to Trump.
If this is all sounding discomfitingly familiar from a British perspective, that is essentially my point. Every day in the UK we see a similar push to normalise and centre discrimination. Newspaper headlines scream about an “invasion” or “swarm” of refugees. In 2012, 60 trans-related articles were published by Britain’s media. By 2022, it was more than 7,500, according to figures from Trans Media Watch. The media is not responding to public rage against vulnerable minorities; it is helping to create it. Polling shows that opinion on immigration tracks tabloid coverage much more closely than actual immigration levels. People become more concerned not when the number of immigrants rises, but when the press fearmongers about it more. Research has also shown that media coverage of dramatic but unrepresentative cases (such as small boat crossings) is shaping opinion of immigrants–including those who are in the UK legally—more broadly.
But our reactionary centrists—for yes, the UK has them too—reliably invert the agency, and hence moral responsibility, in this story. Politicians and the press are not to blame for stoking hatred. Those gathering outside asylum hotels have “legitimate concerns” and must be listened to and empathised with.
“Reactionary centrist” is an American term not commonly used in the UK. It fits well enough, however, and it helps to highlight some of the patterns that have shifted British political discourse so far to the right. American reactionary centrists can be moderate democrats (like Matt Yglesias or Jonathan Chait), or former “anti-Trump” republicans (such as Bret Stephens). Many are quite conservative, but they are not pro-Trump. In the UK, they could be Labour supporters from the right flank of the party, or moderate or more right-wing Tories.
The normative thrust is the same, however. Take this article by Nick Timothy, former chief of staff to Theresa May and now a Conservative MP, about the racist riots in which ordinary Britons attempted to set fire to hotels with asylum seekers inside them. These were “disgraceful”, he avers. Yet the context must be taken into account, including the failures of multiculturalism, the way “mainstream conservative views” about immigration have been ignored, and “police discrimination” against the rioters.
This moral inversion is one of two dominant viewpoints in the UK press (the other being enthusiastic cheerleading for the hard right). Even the Guardian, supposedly a progressive voice, gave considerable space to an uncritical airing of the voices of those sentenced for their part in last year’s riots. In contrast, this sort of coverage and context has not been afforded to members of the (now proscribed) group Palestine Action in the mainstream press.
This is, in many ways, the dynamic that defines reactionary centrism: the right must be understood, but never blamed. The left can be blamed, but need not be understood. One thing that follows from this is a hyper-sensitivity about treating the right fairly. John Rentoul, for instance, the chief political commentator for the Independent, is no cheerleader for Reform UK. Yet his theory of how to defeat the party often involves scolding the left for directly stating the nature of the threat: “Oh dear, m’lud: It’s never a good idea to call people Nazis if they are not Nazis” (that might sound like a mean-spirited parody of a British establishment type, but it’s actually the title of one of his columns).
Never mind that Nigel Farage has spent decades gleefully stoking British social divisions, or that he has been an enthusiastic campaigner for Trump. The way to beat the Reform leader is to concede to his policy demands. Rentoul takes it for granted that the average voter is greatly concerned about immigration and that Reform voters “aren’t unreasonable or unpersuadable voters—they’re people who feel utterly let down”. That the public might be less socially conservative than parties like Reform claim, or that politicians might be able to persuade voters to change positions (by appealing to different values or talking about the benefits of an open society), never seems to occur to reactionary centrists.
This desire to meet the hard-right halfway, to find a middle point, is hopelessly exploitable
You would never know it from their writing, but UK public opinion is actually softening on immigration, particularly among young people (voters that Labour needs and is losing to the Greens and Lib Dems). But these voters are functionally invisible to reactionary centrists. The only people who matter seem to be those further to the right. In the UK context, the voters who count are Reform supporters and the Reform-curious. It is imagined that they cannot be persuaded to change their minds on anything, they can only be appeased.
This desire to meet the hard right halfway, to find a middle point, is hopelessly exploitable. In an age of radicalisation, you simply get pulled further and further to the right, while tacitly validating those values at every step. Nowhere is this more evident than in the UK press’s fixation on trans people. The Labour government, following the reactionary centrist logic of trying to diffuse an issue by giving policy ground, has allowed itself to be pulled radically to the right on this matter. First, by abandoning its commitment to changing ID laws to make it easier to transition, then by effectively banning puberty blockers following pressure from those opposed to them. Now the UK is on the verge of implementing a bathroom ban mandating that trans people must be excluded from toilets that match their gender identity. This is being done without parliamentary debate. Most of the public is not aware of it, and yet, if this goes ahead, it would make the UK one of the world’s most illiberal advanced democracies on trans rights.
The motivation for this move against LGBT rights seems to have been to take the issue off the table for voters. Morgan McSweeney, the Starmer aide most associated with the government’s political strategy, operates on classic reactionary centrist logic: we need to meet the public where it’s at and understand the concerns of defectors to Reform (while aggressively ignoring the concerns of the, much more numerous, defectors to the Lib Dems or Greens).
To put it mildly, this has not worked. The theory was that feeding the wolf would starve it. But, somehow, the beast is stronger than ever. Reactionary centrists simply cannot account for this outcome. All they can think to do is keep throwing more meat.
This is the other big divergence from the US: While in both countries reactionary centrists dominate mainstream media, in the UK they’ve captured the main centre-left party. The Democrats do have some reactionary centrists, but the median representative is staunchly anti-Trump and does not seek to appease the Maga faithful. Labour, on the other hand, is now run by reactionary centrists. Starmer himself has made many statements that reflect this mindset. As has Angela Rayner. Wes Streeting, to my mind, is the clearest example in the cabinet, railing against “anti-whiteness” in diversity schemes and other such figments of the reactionary centrist imagination.
In a newspaper column, reactionary centrism can seem like level-headed pragmatism. But proximity to power reveals its dogmatism and incoherence. The theory is that validating national populist or even fascist values and moving towards them on policy will capture some of the voters seduced by the promises of parties further to the right. Every time Labour tries this, Reform gains ground and Labour’s own coalition disintegrates further. Yet the party remains committed to the strategy.
An actual pragmatist would evaluate and change course. Someone who understood public opinion might notice that anti-immigrant sentiment responds to media coverage, not objective reality. They might reason that this is not a problem that can be addressed by policy concessions because policy is not what is causing it. They might even consider offering a different narrative and seeing whether that makes a dent. A truly daring politician might consider telling the British public the truth: that they are being lied to by the right-wing press about the cause of the country's problems, and that Reform is capitalising on this for political gain.
The government does not seem inclined to do any of this. Despite understanding themselves as critical thinkers, reactionary centrists are conformists at heart. And they are so unmoored in our current age because, increasingly, there is no social consensus for them to conform to. Affluent countries the world over are balkanising into fascist and anti-fascist factions. One must simply pick a side. There is no longer such a thing as “British public opinion” (if there ever was). Rather, half the country supports socially illiberal parties and half supports (broadly speaking) liberal ones, similar to the split in the Brexit referendum. If we follow international trends, the values of these two sides will only grow more irreconcilable. Starmer is—though you would never guess it—the captain of the liberal team. His job is not to find consensus, but to hold his own coalition together.
The moral inversion at the heart of reactionary centrism (empathising with the right, but never blaming them, blaming the left, but never empathising) comes from an implicit (and often subconscious) deference to informal social hierarchies, particularly those relating to gender. Philosopher Kate Manne argues that there is a persistent tendency to sympathise more with the perspective of male perpetrators than female victims. She calls this “himpathy”.
The political right is implicitly coded as male. Political scientists have long understood that the values of the right are associated with (and are propounded in a way evocative of) traditional masculinity. They preach strength, discipline, toughness, self-reliance and respect for authority. Liberalism, in contrast, has become increasingly female-coded: it is the ideology of caring, nurturing, empathy and fairness. In rhetoric against the left, the right often uses language to deride liberals that implies they are effeminate or queer. People of all stripes process political choices this way, often without realising they are doing it. (The two major parties in the US are commonly referred to as the “daddy” or “mommy” party—no prizes for guessing which is which).
Himpathy affects how we think of political parties and ideologies. Male-coded conservatism is offered sympathy and understanding, its bad behaviour framed as a reaction to female-coded liberalism—what I call “what did you say to make him hit you?” politics. Increasingly, the resistance to fascism is divided not by policy views, but how much agency the right is seen as having (and hence how much people on the right can be blamed for their actions). This gendered framing also impacts perceptions of authenticity. Men are seen as more authentic than women, more straightforward, so male-coded entities or ideas are seen like that, too. Reactionary centrists have bought the right’s conceit that nativists and bigots are authentic, that they are salt-of-the-earth representations of “real” Britain. The many, many UK citizens who reject their values are (again, often subconsciously) seen as inauthentic. They are elite, overly cosmopolitan, out of touch.
Labour's response to recent protests against asylum seekers is to empathise with the concern
From my own conversations with senior Labour figures, as well as what I’ve heard from other progressives who have attempted to lobby them, this tacitly gendered framework seeps into everything. They talk about socially conservative views as being “working class”. They’re obsessed with the imaginary figure of a retired steel worker who’s considering voting Reform. Policy decisions are made with this mythological voter in mind. This (decidedly male) caricature is arguably no longer representative of the working class. When you argue that Labour should be thinking of a younger service worker, say a female barista at a chain coffee store, or even an NHS care worker who might be upset with the government over issues like trans rights or Gaza, the response is a blank stare. You cannot get reactionary centrists to see such concerns as legitimate in the same way.
This makes absolutely no sense as a governing philosophy. As the US fell to Trumpism, and what many experts now agree is fascism, its press blamed Democrats for provoking right-wing anger with their overtures to woke liberalism. Here, Labour blames itself. It blames its own “side” in our divided culture, even its own voters.
The party’s response to recent protests against asylum seekers, even to rhetoric implying that non-white men are dangerous to white women, is to empathise with the concern. Starmer was recently asked how he would feel if his daughter had to walk past an “asylum hotel”. “I totally get it,” he responded, going on to say that “local people by and large do not want these hotels in their towns, in their place, and nor do I. I’m completely at one with them on that.” What exactly did the PM “get”? What is the limit on his endless validation of the right?
There are very real structural constraints facing the party (and the country more broadly). I am not saying Labour's job is easy. But so much of what is going wrong for the party is, at root, about the frameworks and narratives with which it approaches politics. These are truly mind-forged manacles: Labour is trapped by its own thinking.
It can be useful to name a broad cluster of ideas such as this, a persistent tendency or political mindset. I’ve found “reactionary centrist” —an American import—a useful addition to my British political vocabulary. It describes a way of seeing the world that we must get over, and fast. Our political discourse has moved hard to the right, even just in the last year. Unless more of us take a stand, we too could see a collapse of the rule of law, minorities rounded up, and concentration camps being built.
The mind recoils at such a thought, but as commentators are increasingly arguing, what has happened politically in the States could happen here. Farage has already pledged mass deportations, like Trump did in his last election campaign. We need only look to the president Farage ardently supported to see how much further Reform might go in office. You might think that before it got that bad, reactionary centrists would wake up. That at some point they would stop making excuses for the right. If America’s experience is any indication, they won’t.
