Will Barber-Taylor: Hello, and welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series, In Conversation. As always, I am your host, Will Barber-Taylor, and in this episode, I am delighted to be joined by Yair Zivan, author and editor of The Centre Must Hold and a former diplomatic advisor to the former Prime Minister of Israel, Yair Lapid. 

Yair Zivan: Thank you, Will. It is great to be here.

Will Barber-Taylor: It is wonderful to have you on. Before we talk about the book, the first question I would like to ask is: how would you define centrism as a broad concept or ideology?

Yair Zivan: I think that is probably the best place to start. It is important to start with what centrism is not, and then go into what it is. What centrism is not is the middle. The initial reaction when you talk to people about centrism is that you are looking for some artificial midpoint between left and right. If left and right move, then you move accordingly, either one way or the other, depending on the political context of a country.

That is not what the centre is. The centre is also not a constant search for a compromise between the two. It is not to say the left is making one argument, the right is making another argument, and we want to split the difference. It is important to set that out right at the beginning and then go into what centrism is.

What centrism effectively says as a political approach – and I think it is a coherent political approach, and as we talk more about the book, I am happy to talk about how that comes through – is that in a world that is as complicated as ours, we need to find a way to balance the tensions that exist in running any society, any country, and find the best balance for all those issues, the big challenges that we face.

I can give a series of examples, we can dive into them in more detail, but how we balance between globalisation, which we all, I think, understand has a force for good. Your supermarket shop is cheaper because you can buy products from a different country, but it also damages local communities and the local industry.

How do we balance a real need to fight terrorism while protecting our civil rights, which are a cornerstone of who we are? Those sorts of issues are enormous. We will get into technology, I am sure, later, and how we balance technological progress with the role of the state in managing.

Centrism says we need to take those issues and we need to find the right balance between them. But it also says some things are core foundational values that we will not shift on. They are the things that underpin everything that we believe. And what are those? An unflinching commitment to liberal democracy and the institutions that uphold it. An unwavering commitment to free speech and an independent judicial system, things that we take for granted, or maybe used to take for granted, but certainly should not anymore.

It says we believe in equality of opportunity. It is not about aiming for equality of outcome, where everybody will end up in the same place; that is not possible. Nor is it saying everybody should be able to fend for themselves because we understand that some people start in a different place, and the role of the government, the role of the state, should be to try and give everybody an opportunity in life. Then it is up to them whether they take it.

It says we are liberal nationalists. We believe in patriotism. We love our countries. We think that is a good thing and a positive thing and not a racist, right-wing concept that we have to let go of and somehow reclaim. Actually, love of your country and love of your community are a core part of who we are. That is something that we should embrace positively. That is, a taste, but a summary of what centrism is.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. Turning to the book specifically now, what was it that made you want to make the book, contribute to it, edit it, and how did you go about getting the different contributors to contribute essays to the book?

Yair Zivan: There are some great names in the book: Michael Bloomberg, Tony Blair, Yair Lapid, the Prime Minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi, and the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull. There are also current ministers, including the French foreign minister and the German justice minister. I would like to say that it was a real Herculean effort,t and I did an amazing job of selling this to them. But the truth is the opposite. It was easy to convince them.

People wanted to be part of this. They want to be part of a book on centrism. They felt that it was an important project, and I think people were not sure how it had not been done yet. The actual convincing of people, once I got to them, was much more straightforward than I had feared. People wanted to be a part of this. People wanted to commit to this idea and to help promote it.

Why did I want to put this book together? I think there are two primary reasons. First, it does not exist yet. As centrists, we have not tried to say: is there something coherent that crosses national boundaries that can connect from Clinton and Blair in the 90s through to Macron or Lapid in 2024? Does centrism work in Latin America as well as in Europe, North America and Asia? And the book aimed to say: actually, we believe that it does. And if it is a genuine political approach, then it has to work in all those different contexts in one way or another.

That was the first reason. The second reason was one of the biggest challenges facing democratic societies today – the threat of populism, polarisation, and the rise of extremism. And centrism is the answer to those. We cannot fight the illiberal right with an illiberal left, or, in the Latin American context, an illiberal left with an illiberal right. The answer to both of those comes from the centre.

It is important, I think, for us as centrists, and speaking to fellow centrists, the idea that we say we can lead this fight, and we will lead this fight, and we are the best antidote to the extremism and the polarisation tearing our countries apart.

I will say a few words about populism because I think it is a core thing that comes up throughout the book. Populists – and I think, by nature, become illiberal leaders if they get power – essentially say two things. They say society is divided into two groups. There is a them. It is the real people against the elites. It is the locals against the outsiders, the oppressed against the oppressors. There is no nuance. There is no individuality. There is no complexity. It is just two groups, one against the other. You are either with us, the good guys, or you are with the enemy.

The other thing they say is that there is a simple solution to your problems. There is always a simple solution. It does not matter how complicated the problem is. I can solve it in five words. If I can fit it into a tweet, that will solve all your problems. And when inevitably populists fail to solve those problems, as they inevitably do, it is not because of any foundational problem with their approach. It is because somebody betrayed them along the way. We were not pure enough in how we implemented it. Actually, what we need is more populism to fix the problem. And we see that that simply does not work.

Why then is centrism the antidote to that? Centrism comes along and says, it is okay that things are complicated. It is all right that the problem does not have a clear-cut answer. It is all right that I need to find a balance. It is okay that managing a national budget means national priorities. There are things I spend more money on and things I spend less money on because it is not unlimited. Centrism has to take that complexity and, rather than try to hide it, say to the public with complete honesty, these are complicated questions. They are complicated issues, and the answers will not be clear-cut.

The other thing that I will say to you as a centrist politician is that not everyone is going to be happy with everything I do all of the time. But here is what I think centrists need to be able to promise the public. They need to promise that they will take governing seriously, unlike populists. They need to promise that they will care, that they will strive to do their best for the public and put the public first. That puts them in a completely different governing style from where it puts populists and extremists as we see them, especially in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere today.

Those were the two main reasons. But one, because it was not there, and I think it needs to be. And two, because in the political climate that we are in, with the rise of extremism and populism and polarisation, centrism has the answer to those or has the best antidote to those.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. I think on that polarisation point, I would like to pick up firstly on the essay by Baroness Anderson relating to freedom of speech and how often it is associated, particularly in the United States, with the right. Do you think that part of the issue some centrists or centre groups have with freedom of speech is that seeming association with the political extreme, when in fact it is a very important, necessary part of being in the centre? Being able to have a certain degree of freedom of speech and promote differing opinions?

Yair Zivan: Yeah, the absolute worst thing we can do with freedom of speech is to hand it over to the right to control. Because what we see is that while the right takes freedom of speech as a rallying cry, it is only when it comes to speech that they do not agree with. And then when we see it in the United States, and Ruth makes this case in her essay, I think very, very convincingly, when they get a chance to, they start banning books they do not like. Shutting down speech they do not like. The commitment is not to free speech; the commitment is to their free speech.

Where the centre has to come in, and here we have to be consistent, and it is not always easy, but it is to say, we believe in free speech, that means speech we also do not agree with, and we do not like. We might think it is even offensive, and we have boundaries. We have lines, you are not allowed to incite racial hatred, and you are not allowed to shout fire in a crowded theatre, but we try to keep the space as wide as possible. And I think when the right does take free speech as an issue, it is disingenuous, and we need to call that out.

I also think that problem exists on the illiberal left to a lesser degree on free speech, but certainly on some of the other issues that we will talk about, where they talk with passion about a value that they only really keep to themselves and do not apply to the rest of the political space or society.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. I would like to turn now to Tony Blair’s essay in the book, and one particular part of it in which he argues that it is important that the state is strategic. Could you explain what he means by that context, particularly about other interpretations of the way that the state acts?

Yair Zivan: I think the argument that he makes in the book is that if it used to be about big state versus small state, that is just the wrong paradigm. It is something that comes through in a whole series of essays, where they say an old paradigm does not apply anymore. It is not really about what debate we used to have. If I say in the introduction of the book that Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx can offer us a neat solution for all the problems of 2024, that is absurd.

What Tony Blair argues for, and it is one of the standout essays in the book, as you would expect, is a state that takes all the forces that exist in society and brings them together for the benefit of moving the state forward. He talks a lot about the power of technology and working with the private sector, and how we use that as a force multiplier.

The idea is to ask where the state can be really effective, rather than how big or how small it is. How do we take the key issues that the state deals with and apply the powers that the state now has differently? How do we use AI and technological advances to better prepare societies? How do we go from talking about the healthcare system, how do we go from a model of treating people, to a model of preventing people from getting there in the first place, using the technological and scientific knowledge that we have?

That is another theme that comes through a lot in the book. It is, sadly, in contrast to the trend of global politics, a belief in science. Michael Bloomberg writes this in his essay as well, where he talks about how he tackled air pollution in New York – something that has been back in the news in the past week. He says that rather than going by what people believed was popular, once they did the scientific research, they came out with a completely different conclusion and a much more effective way to deal with air pollution in New York.

That reliance or that belief in science and facts as a governing basis is really important. That is not to say that centrists blindly follow either scientific consensus or what experts say should happen. It is not a technocratic approach, but it does say that when we want to implement a policy, and we find a problem that we want to deal with, we need to find the most effective way, rather than the catchy way or the way that is the perceived wisdom.

This comes up in an essay – that for some people will be a bit challenging – on climate change and on global energy, which talks about the fact that it is all well and good that we reduce our use of electricity, turn off lights and bring down carbon emissions. But if we do not find a solution for economies that are now starting to develop and need cheap energy in order to be able to advance to the place where other societies have advanced in terms of standard of living and quality of life, we are never gonna be able to seriously address climate change. That is something that is missing from the perceived wisdom, but is very solidly based in science.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. And just on technology, it is something that comes up quite a bit throughout the book. Do you feel that there has been, particularly concerning AI, a lack of objectivity in terms of approach from some politicians on both the left and the right as to both the potential good of AI, but also the potential harm of it concerning policy? Do you think that this is something that allows the centre and centrists to tackle it in a way that is much more balanced, and do not believe that it is the solution to everything or scaremonger too much?

Yair Zivan: Yeah, I think so. This is in the essay by Jamie Susskind in the book, and he has his book as well on the digital revolution, which I think is fantastic, and I recommend very highly. He also has another one of these examples where he takes the old paradigm and says, “It does not work. We need to think about it completely differently because the algorithms that drive much of technological progress are political. They impact our economy, and they impact our society in very fundamental ways”.

Yes, I think AI is another one of those places where we look at it differently. One of the issues that many politicians have, and I remember the Senate hearing, I think it was a year or two ago now, where the social media companies came in and were brought into the Senate for a hearing. It was very clear that the politicians asking them the questions did not understand engineering, science, or coding at all.

I am not an expert in AI. My scientific knowledge is not where it should be in order to create policy around this, but you have to be able to bring in a young generation of smart people who will combine real knowledge of the tech sector with knowledge of governance and writing policy. Who knows how to combine those two? That is something that the centre is pretty uniquely placed to do. And you often see, not always, but often see with centrist leaders that they come from a younger generation. When centrist leaders disrupt the political system, it is often that they come through, and you see young, charismatic leaders.

I give people the example of President Macron when he was first elected, who had his official portrait taken. Official portraits tend to have a very standard shape to them. But his one is on the table next to it. If you go back and look at it, there are two iPhones on the table. Knowing how politically savvy Emmanuel Macron is, you can realise that it is not a mistake. They were not accidentally left there for the photo. The phones are there to say, I am a technological president. I understand what the future looks like as well. We need to all be doing a much better job than we are doing today. Centrists can have the ability to lead that.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. And a little bit ago, you touched upon the essay by Michael Bloomberg about governing in the centre, from the centre. Do you think that governing from the centre produces a different set of challenges, than governing either from the extreme of the right or the extreme of the left, because you are not relying on populism to say “I will just do this and everything will be fantastic and sorted” There is much more policy detail, and there is much more nuance there that sometimes makes it a bit difficult for centrists to govern, to be able to communicate their ideas effectively in a way that does not confuse people.

Yair Zivan: I would say two things about that. The first is, if the case we are making is that centrism is a more effective form of governance, then we have to be able to back it up when we are in government. We place a high burden on ourselves because if you are from the political right, from the more traditional political right, then you can make the argument that it is not the role of government, and problems are not ours to fix, because we do not believe that government has a role in everything. And if you are from the political left, it allows you to say that we have gone so far down a particular road that your ability to fix it is gonna take decades.

Centrists put a very heavy burden of responsibility on themselves, and we have to be able to back it up. That is part of it. We should want to back it up. We should want to be able to deliver for people, but we also have to make sure that we do that when we are in government.

The second thing is –  and this is true for political campaigns for centrists, and it is true once you are in government – that the nature of politics today is that the campaign does not stop after election day. Every political party understands that you have to keep selling yourself and your work to the public every single day, including when you are already in government, and you should not lose sight of that.

This is where centrists have to offer something different. It is a theme that comes through in multiple essays throughout the book, and it is one of the most important elements of what centrism offers to politics today, in direct contrast to where politics is. Populists and extremists feed off fear – and the fear is real. The concerns that people have are genuine.

There is a temptation if you are talking about the liberal right to talk about them as racist or to talk about them as fascist, and it is a throwaway label. It is completely ineffective because one of the things that you have to say is that the concerns that people have about the impact of AI on their jobs are real. The nostalgia for how they remember things used to be and their fear about where things are going is real. Immigration, which is an incredibly hot topic, is also in the US. Those fears are genuine, and we have to treat them as such. We cannot just dismiss them out of hand.

If centrists want to counter that narrative based on fear, driven by fear, you have to offer something different. We are not going to be able to compete on the same ground as the extremes. The way we compete with that is by offering a politics of hope.

Throughout history, anybody who has ever done political marketing has been in a constant debate about whether hope is a powerful enough emotion. The case that I make in the book, in my introduction, and is made by several authors, and in the general tone, is that hope can be an effective political message. The election anthem of JFK was High Hopes, and the 60-second Bill Clinton advert about where he was born is called A Place Called Hope. Barack Obama built an entire campaign and T-shirt line unintentionally with the word Hope on it. New Labour, with Things Can Only Get Better, was a hopeful message.

The party that I work for in Israel is called Yesh Atid. There is a future. That is inherently hopeful. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks talked about the politics of hope, and he differentiated between hope and optimism. One of the things about hope is that it drives you to be active and to be involved, as opposed to optimism, which is, I believe that things will get better. Hope says, I can make them better. It is an active virtue.

Centrists have to take hope and put it at the core of what they do. If we can combine that with pragmatism, with a pragmatic set of policies, we can combine it with effective governance. All of that together will solve the problem of the fact that what we are offering is more complicated than a five-word slogan or a short tweet.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. I would like to turn to your essay on foreign policy. To what extent did your own experiences working in government influence the arguments that you make in that essay? To what degree do you think it is easy for people to understand what a centrist foreign policy even is?

Yair Zivan: People understand it when they see it. If you take foreign policy, then there are two real schools, the old schools of thought. One says it is all about interests. It is just about what my national interest is. What is your national interest, and how do we get something that allows me to maximise what I want? A very cold, realpolitik approach to foreign policy. There is another that says the role of foreign policy is for us to all come together and build a better world. Which is a nice principle, and we should all want to build a better world.

What centrism comes and says is, first of all, if you want foreign policy to succeed, people need to see it delivering for them. There has to be a national interest element within it. The way you build relations – and this is where my experience in government influences the essay – is that the people who run foreign policy are people first. If you can build good relations with them, if you can show that you care about the things that they genuinely care about, not out of a cynical need to get something from them, but because you care, there is a very clear difference between diplomatic meetings where you go in and somebody reads talking points to you and the diplomatic meetings where somebody comes and says, what is going on in your country? How are you doing now? What is important to you? You feel that connection and that genuineness.

Part of that connection is how you do foreign policy. There is perhaps no other department within government that is as heavy with protocol as the foreign service of a country. Letters of credence and memos are sent through diplomatic posts and protocol upon protocol upon protocol about who sits where at the table and who walks in first. The truth is that stuff has a role in terms of the symbolic value it has. It is good as a way of sometimes sending particular messages, but it is not the heart of it.

I give the example of a dinner that we had in the United States. During the day, we had a formal diplomatic meeting: three long tables with lots of members of staff, and everybody saying all the things they would be expected to say. Then in the evening, we had a private dinner where the real conversations happened and actual things came out.

That touches on a more progressive, forward-looking approach that centrists have. One of the things that I encouraged Yael Lapid to do, who was the Foreign Minister, and he did it very naturally anyway, was to say at the end of a meeting: take five minutes alone with the other Foreign Minister, with the other person, exchange phone numbers. You would be amazed at how many WhatsApp groups there are, and how many Signal conversations there are between Foreign Ministers and between Prime Ministers today that do not require the entire operation of connecting phone calls and switchboards and lots of people on the line.

That allows for a much faster, more informal, and, a much more effective way to do foreign policy. And all of that has to serve something. What it has to serve, then, is how you use it to advance the interests of your country, of your allies, and make sure that people feel that and get a real sense that it is having a positive impact on them. 

One of the less exciting and glamorous parts of foreign policy is the economic side, the negotiations over free trade agreements, double taxation and all sorts of things that people are not particularly excited about. However, they are the things that end up having an impact on your cost of living. They are the things that affect how easily you can travel from place to place. That technical element is important to make sure it is done, and then you have to find a way to sell it to people.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. We are coming towards the end of the interview. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me. I do have one final question. If you were to try to sell the book to someone who is listening to this – hopefully they have already bought it – and they are going to go out and buy the book as soon as they finish listening to the interview,  what would you say? How would you sum up why the book is important and why people should go out and buy it?

Yair Zivan: I will give you two. The first one is for people who think, after listening to this conversation, that they might be centrist. The answer is: you probably are. This book will hopefully help you find that sense of identity a little bit more deeply, about what that means, who the other people are who think the same as you, and a way to reflect more critically about your approach to politics.

Hopefully, and this is the goal of the book, it is not theoretical or academic. It is not meant to sit on a dusty bookshelf. The idea is that people take this and then go to their politicians and say, “Hey, why aren’t you doing this?” There is an economic policy in this that I like; you should be implementing this. The idea is that the book will give people a way to really rally around centrism and to go and be active.

The second elevator pitch is for those people who have listened to this and hate it, because they come from one of the two extremes. To them I say: buy the book, because you already like arguing. It will give you something to argue with.

What I promise people who might not think of themselves as centrist is: you can finish reading the book and disagree with it. What I think you cannot do is finish reading the book and disagree with the fact that there is a real thing called centrism, that it has depth to it, that it has serious people who support it and who believe in it and who are advancing it, and that it has something significant to contribute to society.

Those are the two elevator pitches for the two different audiences. Whichever one of those you find yourself in, I hope you go and buy the book.

Will Barber-Taylor: I am sure that they will. Those are two very compelling arguments. Thank you once again, Yair, for taking the time to speak to me. I hope people go out and buy the book because it is a fantastic book.

Yair Zivan: Thank you very much, Will.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.