Brexit is everywhere you look and to think that may cease to be after March 29th 2019 is wishful thinking. At some point in this furore, possibly on a slow news day, attention will turn again to the idea of a new centrist party as part of our lament about the sate of our politics in Brexit Britain. What’s not talked about often is why and what it could or should stand for. The answer tends to be assumed - to stop Brexit. To turn back the clock to the comfortable mainstream politics of circa the 2015 General Election.
One of the reasons I started this blog is to challenge the idea that a new centrist movement should be about the reversal of Brexit and a move back to how things were. To argue that centrists need a renewal of ideas and methods for reasons that are deeper and more wide ranging than Brexit; and that returning to a pre-Brexit world does not provide the answers needed.
Wrong vote, right reasons
Brexit is spoken of as one of the events that is heralding the end to the establish political settlement of the last twenty or thirty years. That has been called Neo-liberalism, Blairism or Cameronism amongst other things and at different times. Those who believe that reversing Brexit is the raison d’etre of a new centrist movement are arguing either explicitly or in kind, that this old order of things that needs to be reestablished. ‘That if we could just go back to June 23rd, 2016 all will be well’. This is why arguments that Vote Leave lied or cheated resonate with them and why they seek to explain the vote in terms of the ignorance or racism of voters. These claims are not without truth, but the fundamental problem that such arguments do not acknowledge is that beneath the division and bitterness of Brexit there were legitimate concerns. People may have voted for the wrong thing, but not all of the reasons they did so were wrong.
A paucity of answers
Any renewal of the centre needs be more about the things that led to Brexit than Brexit itself. It is bigger, wider and deeper than Brexit. These causes are many, and the ground is well trodden: the losers of globalisation, the rise in inequality, a lack of trust in the immigration system, places left behind by the modern economy, austerity and the distrust in a liberal world order following failures abroad. The point is not to explain the importance of these issues over and above Brexit. The point is that these issues are part of the storm that caused it. More importantly they are things that a reversal of Brexit would not come close to solving. Brexit may make many of them worse, but Remain and old mainstream does not provide the answers we need. New thinking is needed. It is providing those answers that any political movement should be about and any political party should be doing.
Independent of Brexit, we are left with a paucity of such answers from political parties both in Britain and the world over. Labour with Jeramy Corbyn have moved back to something resembling the old left of the 1970s and 80s, the Conservatives perhaps to a decade even earlier. The 1870s if Jacob Rees-Mogg, or someone similar, is to become their standard bearer. These approaches have not just failed to produce answers for Britain in 2019, they may be incapable of doing so. Corbynism is about reversing the changes brought about under Margret Thatcher; Moggism is about reversing the changes of social liberalisation and globalisation since the 1960s. Both are firmly facing backwards.
This lack of ideas is not the only problem with the Labour and Conservative parties of 2019. They have an even worse flaw. Both are at their heart are divisive. Mogg’s ilk will rally against migrants and the EU. Corbyn will rally against big business and 'American imperialism’. Their agendas fit best with playing to a base not reaching out to a broad church.
These two reasons are why we need something new and why that must come from the political centre. The centre has enough ideological flexibility to find a new narrative and a settlement that makes sense in the 21st century. It has the chance to find the innovation that will provide solutions to meet the challenges of the modern world. The centre also has at its heart an incentive to make a broad case to the electorate. Not one built on winning support from narrow constituencies and blaming others. One that sets out to unite us, not divide us.
No time for conventional wisdom
Of course to say what is needed in broad and abstract terms is not difficult. The hard part is meeting those challenges. And, yes, the practical difficulties of creating a serious centrist movement whether it be by Labour split, Liberal Democrat rebrand or brand new party are ginormous. Conventual wisdom may be that in Britain its a long shot. But one thing this era of tumultuous politics should teach us is that this is no time for conventual wisdom. It is a time for new ideas and new approaches. So in this very small way, that is what this blog - No Man’s Land - sets out to explore.