From Defensive Democracy To Militant Centrism

Why militant centrism adopted such a high profile in 2025.

The hollowing out of political life in the western world – which dates back to the 1970s – has led to the gradual disappearance or decomposition of the mainstream parties of the post-war settlement. As I noted in my study, The Politics of Fear: Beyond Left And Right (2005) one of the most striking expressions of this development was the loss of faith in politics, specifically in the belief that ‘people can shape or alter their circumstances through political action’[i]. This development, which I characterised as Deference to Fate came to afflict public life in the decades to come. This sentiment was widely internalized by the Political Establishment and the mainstream parties linked to them. The fatalistic turn by both Left- and Right-wing parties was justified in the language of pragmatic realism and the embrace of this outlook all but extinguished the ideological/political difference between them. What emerged from this fatalistic turn was a systematic embrace of technocratic centrism as the fundamental principle of governance.

Centrism has adopted a form of technocratic governance that eschews classical political principles and seeks to legitimate itself on the basis of expertise and process. It has no ideological pretension and is entirely focused on its task of preserving its own dominance over the institutions of society.

Apart from the European Union, technocratic governance rarely exists in a pure form. On its own, technocratic governance lacks the capacity to motivate and inspire. It therefore relies on policies and ideals that are external to itself to retain credibility. From the tradition of the old right, technocratic governance has adopted market-oriented economics with its promise of future prosperity to justify its socio-economic programme. From the cultural left, it has internalized the ethos of anti-national, minority identity politics. It has identified the public’s concern with the environment as an issue that can it can use to connect with the electorate.

In the 1980s technocratic centrism was most consistently expresses through the politics of the Third Way. Prominent supporters of the Third Way – Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jean Chrétien, Gerhards Schröder, Matteo Renzi – promoted the Third Way as an alternative to the classical division between left and right. Their alternative was based on the project of depoliticizing public life through transforming fundamental political questions into one of technical governance. Technocratic centrism sought to constrain the influence of parliamentary democracy through shifting power to expert dominated institutions and the judiciary.

By the early 1990s virtually all the mainstream parties of western societies came under the spell of technocratic centrism. The more that the legacy parties mutated into a centrists managerial technocracy, the more public life became depoliticised. Citizens were rebranded as ‘stakeholders’, ‘clients’ and ‘consumers’. Debates about the environment, identity and victimisation dominated an era that had little time for issues that affected the socio-economic life of people and the future of society and of the nation.

For a while the power of the centrist elite was rarely challenged. The depoliticization of society rendered large sections of the electorate alienated and passive. However, in recent decades the widespread mood of alienation turned into anger and people reacted by rejecting their traditional legacy parties. The rise and rise of populism indicated that the legacy parties had lost much of their influence and that the governments that they supported faced a crisis of legitimacy.

Technocratic Centrism Turns Militant

The main response of technocratic centrism to the threat posed by populism is forge an informal alliance with a variety of legacy parties and different political viewpoints to isolate to what it caricatures as the far right. That centrism lacks any principles is demonstrated the opportunistic manner with which alliances are formed with supposed political foes. Take the example of Germany. This nation’s centrist establishment has responded to the rise of the right-wing populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) by forging a tactical alliance with the far left Die Linke party. That a so-called conservative German Chancellor is prepared to forge a tactical alliance with a party that has strong roots in East Germany’s Stalinist past highlights the opportunism of centrist governance.

As a report from the New York Times observed;

‘Now, that center is cracking under pressure from the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which controls about a quarter of the seats in Parliament. Desperate to avoid relying on the far right, Germany’s establishment parties are turning to the far left for support — an unofficial alliance that could prove key to the government’s survival, or its undoing[ii].

One reason why centrism regards populism as its main enemy is because these upstart movements serve as a medium of democratic pressure. The public’s aspiration for democracy represents a threat to the maintenance of centrist governance. That is why it has gone into a hyper-defensive mode to the point that centrism has become increasingly intolerant and willing to implement authoritarian and anti-democratic measures to destroy its political opponents.

Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of Britain personifies a new breed of militant centrist who believe that they have the moral authority to adopt extreme measures to hold back the rising tide of populism. Cancelling local elections, promoting the call for ending trials by jury, policing speech are some of the measures adopted by Starmer on the ground of defending democracy. The promoters of extreme centrism express a mood of desperation and a willingness to by-pass the normal democratic conventions and rules. One commentator writes of ‘Starmer’s marshmallow dictatorship’[iv]. But although it appears soft on the outside militant centrism appears to adopt hard authoritarian measures against its political opponents

Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of Britain warned that he was the ‘last chance for the centre’ in the battle against Reform UK. He acknowledged that ‘millions of people in the UK had turned to the populist Right because they “don’t trust centrist parties to deliver”.’[iii]’ Starmer regards populism as an existential threat to centrism. He explained; ‘If there is a Conservative government, I can sleep at night’ , but ‘If there was a Right-wing government in the United Kingdom, that would be a different proposition’. That’s another way of saying Reform and other populist parties cannot be treated as if they were an ordinary centrist political opponent. And they certainly cannot be allowed to govern.

The historical emergence of extreme centrism has well documented by French commentators focusing on the authoritarian tendencies inherent in centrism. In his book The Extreme Centre or the French Poison: 1789–2019, (2019), the French historian Pierre Serna that centrist extremism has had a presence in France since the Revolution. He argues that this standpoint is embodied by his nation’s president, Emmanuel Macron[v]. The term extreme centrism was widely used by the French columnist Alain Gérard Slama and the French-Canadain philosopher Alain Deneault. France leading conservative intellectuals. Mathieu Bock-Côté in his of L’Extrême centre. Sa tentation autoritaire offers a brilliant take down of the political ‘extreme center’. He argues that this regime possesses authoritarian instincts which uses the language of rights, democracy and the rule of law to restrict real political freedom.

Given its activist orientation I believe that the term extreme centre should be linked to its current form of activist militancy. Hence my use of the term ‘militant centrism’. Unlike earlier, classical centrists who advocated moderation and harmony, a new breed of militant centrists embrace authoritarian technocratic measures to weaken and even eliminate their populist opponents. Arguably the widespread practice of militant centrism is one of the most important developments in Europe in the year 2025.

In Europe militant centrists have even taken to delaying elections to prevent their opponent from gaining power. Their attitude to postponing elections and banning candidates from running was casually voiced by Zselyke Csaky of the Centre for European Reform, who referring to the recent the expulsion of candidates in France and Romania from the electoral process, stated ‘excluding candidates in elections may be a legally sound option to protect democracy from anti-democratic forces. But it is an insufficient solution on its own’.

After the annulment of the Romanian presidential election, the centrist-extremist Thierry Breton, a former French EU Commissioner for the internal market between 2019 and 2024 bragged that ‘we did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany’. And they are certainly at it in Germany. Members of the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party have been banned from standing in next year’s mayoral election in Nieder-Olm after local authorities introduced a mandatory declaration excluding candidates linked to organisations labelled extremist by the state interior ministry. For its part the German Government has allowed the security services to classify Afd as ‘extremist’, a possible prelude to banning the party outright.

The growing influence of populist movements have forced the hand of technocratic centrism to play the authoritarian card. There preparedness to employ extreme measures is justified on the ground that democracy and a just inclusive society is threatened by force of populism. They claim that this threat to democracy allows them to take extreme anti-democratic measures But of course History shows that the use of anti-democratic measure supposedly in support of upholding democracy invariably leads to authoritarian outcomes.

The experience of 2025 has shown that we have entered a new political era that will be defined by the outcome of the tension between populism and militant centrism. Representative democracy exists in an uneasy relationship with militant centrism and ensuring that this tension is resolved in favour of populist democracy is the most important political challenge of our time. The technocratic sensibility that regards Deference to Fate as the norm can now be challenged by movements prepared to challenge militant centrism.

I would like to wish all readers of Roots & Wings with Frank Furedi a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Years. Thanks for all your support and encouragement

Over the next few months, I hope to develop the idea of the militant centre further. Comments and criticisms are most welcome.

Just to note, that my new book In Defense of Populism will be published in May 2026 by Polity Press[vi].

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[i] Frank Furedi (2005) The Politics of Fear: Beyond Left And Right , p.71.

[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/world/europe/germany-parliament-die-linke.html

[iii] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/12/05/starmer-i-am-the-last-chance-for-centrist-politics/

[iv] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/22/welcome-to-starmers-marshmallow-dictatorship/

[v] https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2025/01/15/l-extreme-centre-un-extremisme-qui-peut-mener-a-l-autoritarisme_6498630_3232.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[vi] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Defence-Populism-Frank-Furedi/dp/1509571671/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2R0LR2AFRC7J&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.t7KOyPJDFxERsSFmMU1kLanOhaLI6cVZq9atCOa2g_E7O76qWD5q9WQboL8aOoovOQZXzGTkvSFgcnb8BDn6CHFEGuGdaIhTdRQ6IClrvtVYVrZ67UKnZi8-F16Hd5VszLUG4FtnKuqBuaP5ZsJwgKuuRE190TJIWeY2rXnO_0NP-sSy7-f9mmWhscBCwpowO33dkQTnHG4oIs68K22qCe3gHY6sXXaTz-4yXQBC8CI.sY1THYeH8dDTb6JoNbajxrc45O82MCVHQT-2-89rBPs&dib_tag=se&keywords=Frank+Furedi&qid=1766503513&s=books&sprefix=frank+furedi%2Cstripbooks%2C224&sr=1-5