A new centre party: do we need one?
“It is easy to set up a political party,” said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. You just have to register with the Electoral Commission and raise enough cash to fund deposits for your candidates. In the first three months of this year, 35 new political outfits were formed, including the Aspire party, Save Us Now and the Psychedelic Future Party. What’s harder “is creating a new party with the potential to get to power”: since 1900, only one new entrant – Labour – has gone on to govern the UK. But many would argue that, today, conditions are ripe for a new political movement, said Michael Savage in the same paper. And it emerged this week that one is being set up by a network of entrepreneurs and philanthropists keen to “break the Westminster mould”. The new party, established by Simon Franks, the co-founder of Lovefilm, will aim for the centre ground, and it will have access to £50m in funding.
About time too, said Rachel Sylvester in The Times. “There are so many people who feel politically homeless” in Britain at the moment, faced with a choice between Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party and a Conservative party in thrall to the likes of Jacob Rees-mogg. A survey for the National Centre for Social Research last year found that 56% of the British public do not feel that any of the political parties represent their views. Doubters point to the failure of the SDP in the 1980s, but politics today is far more fluid. “Brexit has scrambled the party Rubik’s cube, mixing up the political colours.” In France, Emmanuel Macron has shown that a party built from scratch can go on to triumph only months later. If a socially and economically liberal alternative were set up in Britain – one which, of course, opposed Brexit – moderate Labour MPS would join in droves. The Lib Dems “would almost certainly fold into it”, and some pro-european Tories might jump ship too. It would soon be “a force to be reckoned with”.
Actually, said Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail, a centrist, pro-eu party already exists; it’s called the Lib Dems and it polled only 7.4% at the last election. Besides, who would lead the new centrists? Owen Smith? David Miliband, now running a charity in New York, is sometimes mentioned as a “king over the water” – which only shows how short of talent they are. Successful parties spring up to represent a class or a cause, said Stephen Daisley on his Spectator blog. Centrism itself isn’t enough: a Labour rightwinger like Liz Kendall has little in common with a Tory left-winger like George Osborne. A centre party would do little except rob Corbyn’s Labour of votes – although, on second thoughts, that might be “a cause worth signing up for”.