Could a new centrist party break the Brexit deadlock?

FOR A WOMAN whose catchphrase is ‘strong and stable’, Theresa May had a pretty wobbly time last week. After unveiling a compromise Brexit deal that disappointed both Leavers and Remainers, she’s faced a wave of Cabinet resignations, a threat from backbenchers to remove her as leader and fresh demands for a people’s vote (or second referendum). With just four months to go until we leave the EU, everything is still alarmingly up in the air. But in the chaos, do some spy an opportunity?

Last week, it emerged that the former Labour leadership contender David Miliband has been holding meetings with his old boss Tony Blair and with donors keen on funding a new breakaway centrist party, bringing together Labour and Tory people alienated from their own tribes. The gossip at Westminster is around whether a people’s vote, if it overturned Brexit, would be a big enough shock to blow the current party system wide open – creating space for something new.

It’s fair to say that Miliband’s had more rumoured comebacks than One Direction, none of which have ever come to anything. But after five years in New York – where he moved after little brother Ed beat him to the Labour leadership – he’s now thought to be keen to come home. Friends insist it will be a family decision, driven largely by his violinist wife Louise’s career. But he’d be landing bang in the middle of an unusually volatile time in politics.

Last week, ‘don’t know’ trumped both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May in a Yougov poll of who’d make the best PM – and that was before the current meltdown. Half of voters say they don’t feel represented by any party, and one in four women tell pollsters they don’t know who they’d vote for. That’s a lot of politically homeless voters potentially prepared to consider an alternative.

So far, unhappy MPS have been reluctant to break away from their parties, often because it’s hard for new parties to break through electorally; it’s much easier to fight Brexit from an established position. But MP Anna Soubry, a passionate Remainer, has said that if Boris Johnson ever became leader of the Conservatives, she’d leave. Labour MPS who can’t reconcile themselves to Corbyn’s leadership, and whose local activists are gunning for their removal anyway, might also have less to lose from jumping after Brexit is settled.

The journalist and former Blair aide Philip Collins, who is close to Miliband, argues in his new book Start Again that this is potentially a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rip up the system and start over. ‘Brexit is such a catalyst. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the possibility that both parties might collapse at the same time,’ he told Grazia. ‘Generally, when one party goes off the rails a bit, the other is sensible and in government, so the country stays on an even keel. That’s not the case right now.’

But could his old friend really come back to lead a new movement? ‘ There’s nothing to come back to at the moment. But if you got to the point where the thing got created, and it’s going to launch, and you know there’s a bunch of MPS who are going to leave their parties, if you then said to David, “This is your moment, are you going to do it?” he might. He’d love to find a way for that to work, but that competes with his caution and scepticism.’

Watch this space…