Middle-of-the-road politics won’t tackle society’s ills
WITH Monday’s news that six MPs nobody has ever heard of – and Chuka Umunna – decided to split from the Labour Party dominating headlines all week, now might be a good time to discuss the pros and cons of the prevailing political philosophy of our age: Centrism.
Somewhere between the political extremes of left and right sits a middle-ground where politicians use words like “gosh”. These politicians are called centrists.
I realise this may be an unhelpfully sarcastic way of starting a column but please bear with me. It’s all part of my longterm strategy to endear myself to as many people as possible.
Centrism is a moderate form of politicking, where an easy-does it, non-ideological approach to political policy is seen as the most practical route to bringing about change.
Centrism emerges in complex societies where social cohesion and economic stability depend on managing the competing needs, expectations and aspirations of many individuals and groups.
Until very recently, centrism was its own justification – centrist parties won elections, often with large enough majorities that they could comfortably implement policies in areas like welfare, public services and the labour market without too much trouble.
In the centre-ground there is a greater tolerance of opposing viewpoints – as long as they have good grammar and are nauseatingly polite. This is because the main function of centrism is to attract voters from both sides of every argument. This logic produces cool sounding slogans like “bold moderation” and “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, which create smoke and mirrors in which voters who would normally disagree can simultaneously admire themselves.
Centrism, when things are going well, creates the sense that society is both changing and staying the same.
Centrist politicians, who often speak vaguely about their “values”, act as political Rorschach paintings, on to which electorally lucrative sections of the population – feeling they too have values – can endlessly self-project.
Centrism is slick, calculating and often insincere but has proven tremendously effective at providing political and economic continuity for significant sections of the UK population. Therefore, it persists.The biggest flaw is that centre-ground politics is about appealing to the more sociallymobile, economically-active voters and special interests who tend to be either politically pivotal or financially powerful.
They must be bought off before meaningful action on other social issues, like poverty, can be considered.
However, as inequality deepens, the interests of the haves and have-nots are increasingly hard to reconcile.
In some cases, they are in direct competition and when this happens there will only ever be one winner: not the poor.
You can’t have quality public services while letting Amazon off the hook for tax. You can’t get serious about child poverty while devoting so much cash to fund free tuition fees for middle-class students. And you can’t criticise Tory austerity while championing the financial system that necessitates it.
If centrists are organising a comeback tour, then I hope those at the wheel of the mini bus will reflect, firstly, on the undeniable failures of centrism.
While I do not hold the view that moderates are to blame for everything that’s going wrong with the world, it’s hard to argue that the dominant political viewpoint, whether held by voters or politicians, bears no responsibility for the mess we currently find ourselves in.
And perhaps they will consider, if their desire is to be truly bold, that while speaking in the temperate language of moderation history shows they fare far better at the ballot box when they nick, and take credit for, ideas they often dismiss, initially, as radical.