A new SDP has got no chance – May’s Tories are the real centrists

Comparisons with 1981 are wishful thinking by a Liberal elite still smarting over their Brexit defeat

Some ideas are logical, compelling and exciting yet doomed to utter, catastrophic failure. The suggestion that anti-Brexit Conservatives, anti-Corbyn Labour and the Liberal Democrat rump should merge and create a new, centrist party is getting up steam by the day. It may even happen: there are signs of plotting, intrigue and manoeuvring all over Westminster.

But while the frustration of much of the Pro-Remain establishment at the lack of a suitable political vehicle is understandable, a new party isn’t the answer, just as it wasn’t the last time a female Tory prime minister was battling a hopeless, socialist Labour leader. Being anti a few things isn’t enough: you also need a positive and distinctive agenda, compelling personalities and, above all, a demand from the public for a different kind of politics. Yet we’ve had that clamour: the Brexit vote was, in part, a repudiation of the very people who now want to form a new party.

One of the great unintended consequences of the referendum is that the extraordinarily cautious, and in economic terms almost socialdemocratic, Theresa May has become Britain’s very own change agent. She is building a coalition that stretches from the centre to the Right, brought together not just by Brexit but also by a rejection of a certain set of flashy, metropolitan values. Unlike many of the Remainers, she understands the difference between the centre ground – a narrow spectrum of opinion – and the common ground, which she is bestriding superbly.

She wants to get on with Brexit, a position supported by three quarters of the public, and wants greater restrictions on immigration, a stance that has huge support among all sections of society. She also understands cultural positioning. Tony Blair once grasped this brilliantly, though he no longer does. Mrs May is seen as trustworthy, diligent, provincial and deeply serious, and that’s exactly what a large bulk of voters want in these troubled times. She also buys into the social change of recent years, including gay marriage. On that, like on much else, her policies would be indistinguishable from those of a centrist party.

This isn’t preventing the big beasts from testing the waters. Shirley Williams, co-founder of the original Social Democratic Party, called for rebel Labour MPs to break away at the weekend. She wants a new Limehouse Declaration, named after the famous statement that paved the way for the SDP. George Osborne is building a new powerbase outside the Tory party: as editor of the Evening Standard, he may try to rally London’s liberal elite to his cause. As for Tony Blair, who believes that his life’s achievement is in ruins, he has just launched a well-funded think tank: he is desperate for some sort of return to UK politics.

Such people feel that they have more in common with each other – and with Tories such as Anna Soubry, activists such as Gina Miller, the Lib Dems and myriad media and arty types – than with their respective parties. The Cameroon project, at least in its extreme version, was self-consciously neo-Blairite, of course, so some of the connection has long been there.

The solution seems obvious: create a new SDP, starting off with half a dozen Tory Remainers, 20 or so centrist Labour types, take over the hapless Lib Dems, raise millions from Pro-EU City types and build a new, professional, centrist force in British politics, with the aim of overtaking Labour to become the main opposition party in England and even woo the Scottish Tories.

Yet there is a long list of reasons nobody has actually pushed the button yet. The SDP grabbed almost as many votes as Labour did in 1983 but hardly any seats. It split the Left and helped the Tories, thanks to the Westminster voting system. The same would happen this time: there is a market for a Corbyn-style socialist party of about 22-25 per cent of the electorate. It’s hard to see how a “moderate” party would get much more than 15-20 per cent of the vote given Ukip and the SNP’s resilience, and Mrs May’s remarkable positioning, leaving the Tories at well above 40 per cent. The new SDP would gain some constituencies, but at the cost of giving the Tories a 200-seat majority.

There is another problem: virtually the only policy that all of these big beasts agree on is their opposition to Brexit. What will happen on March 29 2019, when we do leave? Will this party then turn itself into a strange, reactionary group obsessed with trying to undo the greatest political change since the end of the Empire? Even if the new SDP were able to survive our departure from the EU, severe ideological differences would remain. Apart from opposing grammar schools, and advocating the most liberal immigration policy possible, what would the party’s economic vision be? Spend a bit more than the Tories, but less than Corbyn? Would it back hypothecated taxes for the NHS and social care? If so, how would it be different from a post-Corbyn Labour Party? And why would any pro-free market but pro-EU Tories defect? Would the new SDP back a wealth or mansion tax, in a fundamental break with capitalism, as the Lib Dems (and Labour) wanted in the last election? It was said that Mr Osborne himself wanted to do this, and the exChancellor certainly relished increasing stamp duty. But this would be anathema to genuine Blairites, and it would terrify the south-west London, pro-Remain banker classes. The Libertarian Right would have no time for this either: it is uncomfortable with Mrs May’s interventionism, but this would be several bridges too far.

There are other critical differences with 1981. The public isn’t craving a centrist, pro-Nato mainstream alternative to the hard Left, as it did in the difficult, recessionary early Thatcher years when her radical programme looked (wrongly) on the brink of failure. All of the individuals that would make up the new SDP today are in fact stunningly unattractive, not least the hated Blair, and politics has become more identitybased and fragmented.

The reality is that Mrs May’s Tories are the real centrists. A new SDP would be another niche party; like Corbyn’s Labour and Ukip it would provide a temporary outlet for the anti-Brexit obsessives, but would have zero impact on this country’s future.