(Suzan Moore/EMPICS Entertainment)
UK politics has been volatile for a while now. But today, Wednesday the 13th of September 2017, we're on the verge of something truly huge.It all started a few months ago, when a group of leading broadsheet commentators and public intellectuals began clamouring for the establishment of a new centrist party. On the 23rd of June, the Times published a fantastic column by Philip Collins demanding that a new third force be established in UK politics, to present to the voters "a serious message of enterprise and equality". Later that morning, the widely respected philosopher Alain de Botton shared Collins' article, brilliantly suggesting that such a party be called "Centre Forward", and led by Gary Lineker.De Botton's remarks were met by enthusiasm from his followers on Twitter, but for a few days nothing much happened. Then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn took the fatal decision of refusing to support an amendment to the Queen's Speech that would have blocked a hard Brexit by protecting the UK's common market status. Gary Lineker tweeted he was feeling "politically homeless". It was one of those cathartic moments: finally someone was saying what we were all thinking, which was: "Everything is pretty much OK, but could you make some minor adjustments?"It was Labour's disregard for the Single Market that did it. Corbyn's young supporters had seen manifested in him the hope their bosses' companies might continue to enjoy tariff-free access to trade with continental Europe. That the amendment was sponsored by the well-liked, unassuming and personally unambitious backbencher Chuka Umunna ensured that its defeat enraged everyone. Once enthusiastic for radical change, Corbyn's young fans quickly turned against the man they had been calling "the absolute boy". When confronted with a politics that offered to very slightly ameliorate their worst hardships, rather than make their lives good, they could hardly wait to lower their expectations in favour of something drudgingly unambitious.With de Botton's help, Lineker set up a website, and within the first day some 100,000 people had registered to join the fledging party. The number would have been higher, if sheer scale of demand hadn't caused the servers to crash. The Centre Forward movement was on.Labour's lead in the polls, especially amongst voters aged 18 to 24, collapsed as quickly as it had grown in the lead up to the June election.Umunna was the first Labour MP to resign Corbyn's whip, citing a point of principle (though nobody can quite remember what it was now). Another 50 followed. Anna Soubry triggered a similar wave of resignations in the Conservative party. The government collapsed.Tomorrow, on Thursday the 14th of September, 2017, the UK will go to the polls in a general election for the second time this year, and Centre Forward have every chance of winning in a landslide.Taking their cues from Emmanuel Macron's En Marche! Movement in France, another centrist insurgency, Centre Forward's candidates are drawn from all walks of life. Dissatisfied moderate MPs aside they include doctors, fire-fighters, teachers and policemen – as well as prominent media personalities, the most notable of whom is J.K. Rowling. Others include the journalist Simon Hedges, as well as anti-Brexit activist Jolyon Maugham, who had previously tried to launch a Centre Forward-type movement called Spring, and is standing in Arundel & South Downs, the constituency that contains his windmill.The membership, now over 2 million strong, have adopted tactics from the Labour-affiliated Momentum – a group many Centre Forward activists used to be involved with. Members have been out on the streets bedecked in their new political home's colours of beige and grey – handing out leaflets, knocking on doors and winning round swing voters with rational arguments grounded in key metrics and meticulous use of data-based policy soundings. Meanwhile, Lineker himself has been bellowing his slogan – "For The Many, And Also The Few" – to sell-out crowds at stadiums up and down the country. It's a political miracle – we've never seen anything quite like this.And, of course, we never will.
WATCH: Brexit Stage Left
Gary Lineker did tweet that he was feeling "politically homeless", but it feels like he's misread the mood rather than nailed the zeitgeist. Broadsheets are chattering about a new centrist party, but their hegemony is broken. Chuka Umunna did put forward an anti-Hard Brexit amendment to the Queen's Speech which Corbyn whipped MPs to abstain on, but it was a charade, primarily motivated by his own, inevitably doomed, leadership ambitions. But the yearning for "sensible centrism" is apparently not going to go away by itself, with the Sunday Times reporting that "moderate" Labour MPs are plotting to start a new party.Frankly, it is time for these people to grow up and start thinking seriously about what their actual political priorities ought to be.The Brexit vote; Trump's election in the US; the return of socialism to mainstream left-wing discourse at the recent general election; this context means that, to some, centrist views might seem to be a sort of sensible middle way between two extremes, but they are completely delusional. The world in which "Third Way" ideas made sense is in a state of inexorable collapse.Really, these votes have made clear just how alienated most people feel from the political and economic system our leaders are still struggling to run. They have left UK politics starkly polarised – between a bullish Tory right, hopped up on anti-immigrant sentiment and imperialist nostalgia, and a newly hopeful Labour left sensing the end of austerity and striving to build a better future whether in or out of the EU. It's no surprise that the people who liked things how they were – who worshipped Blair and thought Cameron was the best of a bad lot – have been left feeling "politically homeless".In 2017, centrism is roughly as "sensible" as being really into the divine right of kings. But while Macron seems to be keen on channelling just that in his Versailles speech, a Macron-style electoral miracle is unlikely to be repeated in the UK. Macron wants a neoliberal transformation of France, and in the UK, years of bitter experience have left us all-too-aware of the truth that grey technocracy cannot bring about a world in which they are assured lives that are meaningful, in which they feel valued by the society they participate in.Disdain for centrist politics in Britain is empirically observable – in the dwindling electoral prospects of the anti-Brexit centrist party we already have: the Lib Dems, a party whose return of 12 MPs on the 8th of June seems almost unbelievably flattering.If "centrists" want a political home, they had better make it in the real world. If you find yourself starting to think a new centrist party might be a good idea, then I suggest you need to discard your fantasies that the neoliberal consensus might suddenly return, and start confronting reality as most voters actually live it.@HealthUntoDeath
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WATCH: Brexit Stage Left
Gary Lineker did tweet that he was feeling "politically homeless", but it feels like he's misread the mood rather than nailed the zeitgeist. Broadsheets are chattering about a new centrist party, but their hegemony is broken. Chuka Umunna did put forward an anti-Hard Brexit amendment to the Queen's Speech which Corbyn whipped MPs to abstain on, but it was a charade, primarily motivated by his own, inevitably doomed, leadership ambitions. But the yearning for "sensible centrism" is apparently not going to go away by itself, with the Sunday Times reporting that "moderate" Labour MPs are plotting to start a new party.Frankly, it is time for these people to grow up and start thinking seriously about what their actual political priorities ought to be.The Brexit vote; Trump's election in the US; the return of socialism to mainstream left-wing discourse at the recent general election; this context means that, to some, centrist views might seem to be a sort of sensible middle way between two extremes, but they are completely delusional. The world in which "Third Way" ideas made sense is in a state of inexorable collapse.Really, these votes have made clear just how alienated most people feel from the political and economic system our leaders are still struggling to run. They have left UK politics starkly polarised – between a bullish Tory right, hopped up on anti-immigrant sentiment and imperialist nostalgia, and a newly hopeful Labour left sensing the end of austerity and striving to build a better future whether in or out of the EU. It's no surprise that the people who liked things how they were – who worshipped Blair and thought Cameron was the best of a bad lot – have been left feeling "politically homeless".In 2017, centrism is roughly as "sensible" as being really into the divine right of kings. But while Macron seems to be keen on channelling just that in his Versailles speech, a Macron-style electoral miracle is unlikely to be repeated in the UK. Macron wants a neoliberal transformation of France, and in the UK, years of bitter experience have left us all-too-aware of the truth that grey technocracy cannot bring about a world in which they are assured lives that are meaningful, in which they feel valued by the society they participate in.Disdain for centrist politics in Britain is empirically observable – in the dwindling electoral prospects of the anti-Brexit centrist party we already have: the Lib Dems, a party whose return of 12 MPs on the 8th of June seems almost unbelievably flattering.If "centrists" want a political home, they had better make it in the real world. If you find yourself starting to think a new centrist party might be a good idea, then I suggest you need to discard your fantasies that the neoliberal consensus might suddenly return, and start confronting reality as most voters actually live it.@HealthUntoDeath