Over the last few months, simmers have travelled round the media of proposals for a new political party opposed to Brexit and supportive of business. Remind you of anything? Most recently, the Observer announced £50 million has been given to a new, secret party under development for over year to break the mould of politics. Despite the deep divisions on the left and right, many members of the public signing up to neither side, I doubt a party attached to the centre would succeed, whether this is by breaking the mould or becoming the government.
Parties are broad churches. That is what we are always told. It’s simple. In the Tories, you’ve got one nation conservatives, staunch Thatcherities and Cornerstone social conservatives. The varying definitions of conservatism mean Anna Soubry and Jacob Rees-Mogg are in the same party. It’s the same in Labour. Feel free to choose from Old Labour socialists (Corbyn!), economic left-wingers who are also social conservatives (Kate Hoey and Frank Field) or Blairites (well, pretty much everyone else on the backbenches). If that doesn’t suit you, the Lib Dems, what’s left of them, are made up of free market orange bookers (Clegg, remember him?) and modern liberals, who were especially prevalent during the reign of the late Charles Kennedy. Despite these divisions, all the parties maintain a united front, appearing similar enough on the key issues, despite personal ideological differences, to create a manifesto which nearly all parts of the party can stand behind. Whatever the composition of this party, it looks set to be made up of Labour, Tory and Lib Dems opposed to Brexit. Nevertheless, unity on the European question doesn’t mean there won’t be great – perhaps irreconcilable – differences on taxation, welfare and social policy. Differences this stark would prevent any party gaining considerable traction, instead it would be deemed a laughing stock. Creating a party out of thin air simply because you don’t like the two main parties on offer has been proven not to work. The Social Democratic Party originated from former Labour MPs who couldn’t stand Labour’s move to the left under Michael Foot and were fed up with Mrs Thatcher’s agenda. Instead of breaking through, the whole aim of all new parties, it split the left-wing vote, allowing the Conservatives to maintain power for 16 years after its formation. No wonder it fell apart after less than a decade. Of course, you could blame this on our electoral system. Personally, I am a supporter of First-Past-The-Post, believing it creates strong government with strong opposition. Proportional representation, widely used across Europe, I fear would deliver apathy, as nobody would vote for the coalition government agreed behind closed doors. Furthermore, some ministers in the former government would inevitably appear in the new cabinet after an election, due to no party ever being able to gain a full majority alone. A future vote, or even referendum, on changing the electoral system may take place, but the endorsement of FPTP by over 67.5% in 2011, the percentage far higher than those who want a greater mandate for Brexit, has killed the issue for a generation. Therefore, if a centrist party is to form the next government, it must win over large, concentrated support across the country. I don’t see how this can be done. A way in which a new party certainly won’t be helped is by the whispers of who should lead it. Many callers of change voice David Miliband, currently in New York, as their Brexit-ending saviour. They weep every night at how Ed Miliband stole the Labour leadership (he didn’t) and what may have been. Is the country desperate for the other Miliband brother? If David Miliband was so desperate to change Britain, he should have remained as an MP and fought the 2015 Labour leadership election, admirable though his present role is. Tony Blair is even being touted as a significant player. Erm…right. While Mr Blair most certainly has the right to speak out as often as he wishes (and I feel he makes some relevant points on Brexit), his legacy of ‘humanitarian interventionism’, creeping privatisation into the NHS, banning new grammar schools from opening, eroding civil liberties and obsession with spin, I could take no party seriously in which he played a significant role. Given I was five when Mr Blair left office, I’m sure some with even greater knowledge of his premiership may have stronger views. Politics is completely divided in Britain. It always has been, that is the key element of democracy and freedom: the right to disagree and have your own opinion. Yet recently, whether between of the referendum or the clearest divide between the parties for a long time, there has formed a hatred, a refusal to engage with those of other political affiliations. It’s though a fear exists about what they may be like, ‘they’ being so different from I in every respect. Though the combined share of the major parties votes in 2017 was 82%, the largest since 1970 (and smaller parties must reflect on this), I can’t help but wonder what percentage of the 12.8 million who voted Labour did so not out of any great love for Jeremy Corbyn’s socialism but fears of five years of Mrs May’s conservatism. When the decisions facing the country are so large, people are far more likely to vote tactically to keep out their least desired option rather than for what they believe in. This could only be a cost to a new party. One of many criticisms of the Lib Dems, formerly seen as the eternal centrist party, was that it was often unclear what they stood for. Sure, they were against Labour for borrowing too much and against the Tories for cutting too much, but what were they proposing? Why was their vision based not on how the future could be different under them, but instead relying on the failings of the main parties? If a party is to place itself slap bang in the middle of the political spectrum, it is inevitably going to disappoint some people. If other options are available, which the centrist party is against, surely people will feel they should approach a party that adheres to all their beliefs. Any new party must have radical, realistic ideas fit for the third decade of the 21st century and not be an anti-Brexit throwback to a 1990s New Labour, which some of its members would surely desire. Even the formation of a new party is, at best, speculative. At the time of posting, nobody significant has spoken out in support of the party and moved to sit as an independent in the House of Commons. Given our electoral system, which is remaining firmly in place for the foreseeable future, a new party would have to seek to replace one of the major parties. Given the next election, at the latest, is less than 50 months away, this seems an unbelievably short period of time to gather immeasurable levels of support. The combination of the SDP’s complete failure, the immense pillar of polarisation in politics, the reliance on billionaire donors hardly a great people-led difference to the main parties’ form of funding and a void of specific new ideas means, as a political observer, the success of an emerging party looks near-fantasy. In this blog title, you’ll note I wrote 'unlikely’ to succeed. Politics is volatile and, as I wrote at the start, many feel underrepresented by both major parties and hate Brexit. They may want a change, a chance of something different, however successful it is. As a result, it is impossible to resolutely declare who will form the next government.
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