Five more big ideas for a new centrist party.

A few weeks ago I wrote suggesting five ideas a new centrist party could adopt. Since then we’ve seen The Independent Group form and today become a new political party - Change UK . With that in mind here are five more ideas they and other centrists could champion:

1. Reward ‘good’ capitalism. A centrist approach to capitalism should be to reform it, not attack it, as the left do. One way is to realign incentives. In the UK we’ve got one of the lowest rates of Corporation Tax in the G7, we might make that discretionary on the kind of behaviours we want to see from firms, with those that don’t meet agreed measures paying a different rate. That might mean that firms who fail to pay the Living Wage, have a high gender pay gap and so on lose out. The same might apply to new taxes, such as often talked about ‘tech taxes’. There are deeper issues to be addressed with capitalism, but ideas like this might send the kind of signal the public are looking for.

2. Promote a ‘small injustices manifesto’. There is a sense of unfairness in society at the moment. One thing centrist should look at the is many seemingly small injustices that create the sense of a system that seems rigged against so called ‘ordinary people’. These often arise from the feeling that individuals are pushed around by big corporations and bureaucracies. There are many examples from being forced to pay a penalty fare when you’ve bought the wrong train ticket, to energy pricing which means loyal customers loose out, to punitive parking fines. Worse are the various ‘poverty premiums’ like prepayment meters and the high cost of credit for those with low incomes. Change UK could, for example, campaign for a package of measures to ban or restrict these injustices to show it is serious about redressing the balance of power in the economy.

3. Call for universal free childcare. A clear offer of universal state funded childcare from age 2 or 3 would say the right things about the priorities of a new movement. It cuts with the times in supporting women’s career aspirations. It also speaks to an aspirations for improving the life changes of future generations. Early years education being linked to increasing equality of opportunity. Labour’s 2017 manifesto proposed similar measures, but no one owns this issue in the public eyes yet. So a crystal clear pledge to fund childcare 9-5 (or school hours) for all parents would still cut through.

4. Back Cannabis legalisation. Perhaps the one thing the Liberal Democrats have done that has gained traction since the end of the Coalition era is to call for the legalisation of cannabis. Not only is this the kind of eye catching policy a smaller party needs to get attention, it also fits with where public opinion is moving on the issue. Recent polling for YouGov showed that the majority of the public now support either the legalisation or decriminalisation of cannabis. As Canada and many US states have now legalised cannabis the move becomes increasingly less controversial.

5. Fight for Britain’s role in the world. With Brexit forcing the Conservatives towards nationalism and Corbyn's foreign policy views being at times anti-western there is room for, and indeed a need for, a political party to champion Britain’s history of building alliances and promoting liberty, democracy and the rule of law. This is an area the new centrist party could own. Talking about how, Brexit or not, we should stand up for our values on the world stage. As I wrote a few weeks back, the best way to do this might be to champion a liberal version of patriotism - reaching out to many in the public who feel pride in this country, its flag and traditions.

#ChangeUK #TIG #Libdems