One Lesson the Centre-Left Needs to Learn from the Right
The centre-left would benefit from adopting a culture of rapid prototyping to learn what resonates and breaks through.
By Ryan McGreal.
383 words. Approximately a 1 to 2 minute read.
Posted March 06, 2025 in Blog.
Are you familiar with the story of the ceramics teacher who split their class into two groups? One group would be graded on the quality of one perfect piece, while the other group would be graded on the sheer quantity of pieces they made.
The surprise twist is that the second group actually made the best quality pieces, because they made so many that they got really good at it, while the first group spent all their time trying to make one perfect piece and didn’t hone their skills through trial and error.
The modern right are like the second group, rapidly spraying out a firehouse of one hare-brained, half-baked idea after another to see what resonates and what sticks.
It’s a cacophony of conflicting and downright bizarre stuff and most of it is objectively bullshit. But through sheer law of averages, at least some of the stunts do happen to catch on, and they build momentum and get picked up and repeated a bunch of times and modified and tweaked and fine-tuned along the way and gradually add up to something loosely and superficially resembling a campaign.
All the constant heat and noise and outrage and endless variation means they capture a lot of public attention, including crucially from people who don’t pay attention to politics as such.
In contrast, the centre-left are like the first group, trying to figure out how to make one perfect piece of ceramic that will make the judges swoon, and unsurprisingly they’re not making any headway.
I’m not suggesting the centre-left abandon the idea of making sense. But they would benefit from adopting a culture of rapid prototyping to learn what resonates, what “breaks through” to people who don’t follow politics, and start to develop some skill in navigating the new attention economy.
It’s excruciating watching Democrats flail around, unsure of how to respond to Trump and waiting for someone to come along and provide a unified, poll-tested message they can align around.
It’s time for everything everywhere all at once. Don’t worry about messages that fall flat, just learn and move on to the next thing. Get some reps in, build muscle - and create space for the next generational communications talents who are out there right now, growing and incubating for the upcoming campaign to fight for what remains of liberal democracy.