There will be no new centrist alliance in British politics

Recent political chatter about a new, centrist force for so-called moderates grew louder yesterday with the revelation that, at some point, Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable plans to quit once Brexit is resolved – so no time soon then! There is also talk of the Lib Dems reforming to permit the choosing of a leader who does not sit in Westminster, a sure sign of their rather tragic fall and loss of place in British political discourse.

Meanwhile in Labour land, local activists were busy passing motions of no-confidence in Israel-supporting MPs, with footage of these proceedings kindly provided by Press TV UK, an Iranian propaganda machine with a base in Britain. Meanwhile, just to prove that sound bites aren’t just for the silly season of summer recesses or to keep dull Sunday politics shows in the spotlight for the whole day, Tony Blair upset pretty much everyone by stating the bloomin’ obvious – he said that Labour might never return to what it was. Given that the entrenched position of Comrade Corbyn and his henchmen is that the 3-times victorious former Labour leader doesn’t really know what Labour ought to be about, and most of the current membership consists of those who signed up to elect Corbyn, what Blair says is hardly astounding or worth the excitable coverage it generated.

Meanwhile, Tory-themed discussion focussed on Boris Johnson’s impending divorce from wife Marina, and his potential as a challenger to Theresa May – Conservative Home polling, the best barometer of grassroots opinion you’ll find for the Conservative party, shows that he is now the favourite and well ahead of Jacob Rees-Mogg, a potentially powerful challenger for the hearts and minds of the committed brexiteers. So Blair raised the very plausible Spector of a Corbyn versus Johnson contest in 2022. Surely, the argument runs, there must be loads of people wishing to form a powerful centrist, moderate block to prevent that?

Now I know that making political predictions is an unwise pursuit that must be undertaken with a lot of caution these days, but I’m predicting with confidence that anyone hoping for some seismic and momentous smashing down of the old two-party system should brace themselves for disappointment.  For one thing, a powerful central block has been tried and tested before – it’s how the Liberal Democrat party was born. It never tore down the old system; it simply became a respected voice of opposition, led mostly by people who were nice and liked by everyone such as Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy. Selling out almost entirely to the Conservatives, it gambled everything on a proportional representation referendum: in the end their side was defeated, and the proposed replacement system wasn’t even a truly proportional one anyway. That was that!

Labour moderates aren’t stupid. They know all this, and the poor prospects that a break-away movement will have. That is why, after 3 years of moaning and sniping from the back benches, only Frank Field has actually left the party – and dear Frank is just a bit odd anyway as he nominated Corbyn for the leadership in the first place. Moderates, if that’s what you want to call them, are currently split between those who comfort themselves that the party went through a wayward lurch to the left in the 1980s and survived, and those who think they are looking at a party in terminal decline, helpless as a nasty, ugly and intolerant force sweeps through the party with an unstoppable momentum (word chosen deliberately). Indeed, what they have to contend with now is a membership sympathetic to the Corbynistas, which gives them a sense of invincibility and justifies their prioritisation of ideological purity to a hard-left agenda over, you know, silly things that occupied Blairites like winning. The point is, the moderates know that there is no big hope, no quick fix or chance of redemption if they leave.

And what about the Tories? In contrast to Labour, the Tories have pragmatism down to a fine art. They’re accustomed to long-standing divisions over Europe, and a broader ideological divide between the so-called One Nation, paternalistic social cohesion advocates on one hand, and the free marketeers whose ideas find their home in Thatcherism on the other. What’s more, those historic divisions mean that the party holds together a whole bunch of people who have liberal and conservative perspectives on issues of morality and economics. This is a party that knows how to disagree.

Things might look bad at the moment and that’s because Europe is dominating everything; the government can’t get behind a big social agenda as Theresa May pledged on the steps of Downing Street; the weakening of the government by the poor performance in 2017 and the emboldening of critics within that this created. But this is nothing either Westminster grandees or loyal and faithful party members haven’t seen before. Nor does it change the fact that there are a good number of people who would be considered moderate (not far right anyway) within the party and within the commons. Indeed, going back to the Conservative Home poll, it’s the man whose star is quietly but definitely rising, Sajid Javid, who tips up in second place behind BoJo. Unlike in Labour, there is no real sense of departure from the political mainstream either within the Tory party or amongst those who take an interest in what it does and what it stands for. There is criticism of Theresa May, of Brexit, or Rees-Mogg and Boris on one side and Anna Soubry on the other. But, Soubry excepted, there’s no sense that anyone might want to leave or has stopped believing in what the party is.

Sir Vince Cable might lead a transition towards a Liberal Democrat party that gives a greater prominence to voices outside the walls of Westminster. I say good for him. The party did a noble thing to ensure stability in 2010 by partnering with David Cameron’s Tories and paid a quite unfair price for it, notwithstanding some unwise choices during the 2015 election campaign. It has been an important voice of opposition and scrutiny. It desperately needs to re-invent itself. But I don’t think Sir Vince wants to do much more than rebuild his party. Those who see some big centrist alliance, uniting Brexit opponents and those worried about an apparent rise of extremes within the two mainstream parties, are barking up the wrong tree. Such so-called moderates won’t take the bait. In one party, they see no point, and in the other they see no need.