I first read about The Identity Trap in a piece by Nick Cohen called ‘The Weird Roots of Wokeness’. It was reviewed by Zoe Williams in The Guardian in considerably more negative terms. I was drawn to it in part because of my thoughts about ‘identity politics’.

Mounk analyses how identity politics broadly, in collaboration with postmodernism and ideas like critical race theory, has taken over many aspects of society. Or maybe that’s too strong. Has gained an astonishing amount of influence in quite a short time, let’s say.

I feel I have a lot more I want to say about it, about its themes and conclusions; but I’m not quite ready to write about all that yet, and it doesn’t belong in a books post anyway. Let me just say that at its heart the book is a defence of, and almost a call to arms for, liberalism and free speech. Which these days, I am increasingly realising, are at the heart of my own political and social beliefs.