Andrew Doyle

Journalist, playwright, satirist.

Andrew Doyle has established himself as one of the left’s key self-critics, satirising political correctness and identity politics from a left-wing position. He is the creator of Titania McGrath, has written for Jonathan Pie, and, until last year, hosted the popular GB News show Free Speech Nation. In 2024, he presented a lecture series for Peterson Academy on ‘The Shakespearen Tragedies’. Today, he’s busy founding a new production company with Rob Schneider and Graham Linehan and is on the precipice of the release of his latest book - The End Of Woke.

Why did we invite him on?

Andrew is one of our most frequently returning guests, and for good reason.His knack for addressing the key issues and identifying social developments before they reach levels of contagion is near unrivalled, and every Andrew joins us, we came away wiser for the experience.

We’ve been talking about wokeism’s loosening deathgrip on culture for a while now, and the time has come to start considering what it means. His latest book, The End Of Woke: How The Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution, addresses this very issue. Now seemed like the perfect time to invite him back and see what our future holds.

What did we talk about?

”In 50 years time, historians are going to look back and think ‘What the hell happened there? This was a hysteria!”

In 2025, even wokeism’s strongest advocates would struggle to be optimistic about its future. Looking around, it seems like all the corrosive sociopolitical influence the movement has enjoyed over the last decade is retracting, and fast. Many of the unsayables and unthinkables have entered the public conversation again, and it doesn’t seem like we’re going back.

”The Cass Report, the Supreme court ruling, the death of DEI, Trump signing these executive orders, Black Lives Matter being discredited… too much is happening too quickly, it won’t stand up anymore.”

These are all major sociopolitical turning points, but Andrew thinks the small things are even more indicative. When Jaguar premiered their new ‘brand film’ last year with “non-binary models mincing about, not a car in sight”, it didn’t seem like a alarming spectre of our future - it seemed old hat. That, Andrew reckons, tells you everything you need to know about the state of woke: it’s already, at least psychologically, a thing of the past. We’re living in its afterwind.

In the storm, it’s near impossible to get any kind of perspective. With a bit of distance forming, now is a good time to look back and ask how it happened. Common belief tells us that wokeism is left-wing thinking taken to its logical endpoint - almost all criticism of the movement comes from the right, and why when the pendulum swings back, we’re bracing for the same kind of ugliness to come from that wing of the discussion.

But as we mentioned earlier, Andrew does not criticise wokeism from the typical position. Instead, he’s a staunch defendant of liberalism - the very framework from which this parasitic thinking is alleged to have mutated out of.

Or so they say; Andrew disagrees.

”Woke isn’t liberalism going too far. It’s what happens what you fail to apply the principles of liberalism. Woke is the failing of liberalism, not when it goes too far.”

Wokeism’s proponents market it as a liberating force. Everyone can be whoever they want, do whatever they please, and move freely without the influence of an unjust power structure. It sounds good, so why does it never manifest that way? As Andrew argues, it’s because that’s a lie.

”Wokeness is authoritarianism … If you apply the principles of wokeness to society, you are anti-liberal. You are saying ‘We are going to impose our values on you regardless of what you think’. The closest synonym to woke, to me, is ‘anti-liberal’.”

It’s a compelling case, but it raises another question. If liberalism means allowing anyone to live how they want provided they don’t encroach on the rights of others, how can society safeguard against harmful change? Konstantin employs the example of the grooming gangs scandal. If communities are free to form parallel societies and are under no obligation to ingratiate, how can you protect yourself against what happens when that turns sour? Sure, we can punish the wrongdoers, but by then is it not already too late? “Did we really need to import millions of people and, now that they’re doing grooming gangs, let’s deal with it?”