U.K. Liberals in search of ‘Trudeau Moment’
Party hopes to fill vacuum in political centre
Sir Vance Cable Friday announced plans to change the Liberal Democrats’ membership rules in an attempt to trigger an “En Marche! moment” as Tony Blair suggested a new centrist party will be needed to fill the “vacuum” at the heart of U.K. politics.
Radical plans unveiled by Cable would allow the Lib Dems to be led by a non-mp and for non-members to vote in leadership contests free.
The Lib Dems hope making it easier to join the party will lead to the kind of surge in support that propelled Justin Trudeau to victory in 2015 and Emmanuel Macron to the French presidency after he set up his own centrist political movement in 2016.
With just 12 seats in Parliament, the Lib Dem push to create a “Movement for Moderates” has been directly inspired by Macron’s electoral success in France and the resurgence of the Liberals in Canada under the leadership of Trudeau, who took the party from third place to a stunning election victory in 2015.
Senior Lib Dem officials have met officials from Macron’s En Marche! and have also spoken to people who helped to deliver success for Trudeau as they seek to orchestrate their own dramatic turnaround.
A senior Lib Dem source said: “We have learnt a lot from the Canadian Liberal party who we have been talking to for some time.
“We have met En Marche! on several occasions. Several senior party figures, including at least one MP, have met with En Marche! We are focused on turning the Liberal Democrats into a movement. This is very much our Trudeau or En Marche! moment.”
Cable’s intervention came on the same day Blair, the former prime minister, said he was unsure whether the Labour Party could be “taken back” from Jeremy Corbyn by moderates.
Blair said Labour was now a “different party” and he hoped it was not “lost.”
But he claimed many voters would not “tolerate” being asked to make a binary choice between Corbyn’s Labour and a Conservative Party potentially led by Boris Johnson.
He said: “I don’t know what will happen and I don’t know how it will happen.
“But I just don’t believe people will find that, in the country as a whole, an acceptable choice. Something will fill that vacuum.”
The timing of Blair’s and Cable’s remarks reignited speculation in Westminster a new party could be set up in an attempt to win the support of voters who feel politically homeless because of Labour’s shift to the left and the Tories’ pro-brexit stance.
Meanwhile, a number of moderate Europhile Tory MPS have threatened to quit the party if Johnson ever wins the leadership.
Cable admitted the Liberal Democrats “may not be the only centre force in British politics in the coming years,” with the possible creation of a new party of the centre ground being the “worst kept secret in Westminster.”