Ship of Fools: The centre cannot hold?

Thread: The centre cannot hold? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :

Interesting exchange on yesterday's Newsnight. Suggestion - "Why don't Labour moderates and Tory remainers form a new grouping in the centre?"

Answer - "This is suggested every couple of years but will never work because 1) people remember the fate of the SDP and 2) there is no base. All the activists are on the right or the left, not in the centre."

Do you think point 2 is true? If so, why is this? Why aren't there activists in the centre?

Posted by Jack o' the Green (# 11091) on :

Arguably that space is already taken by the Liberal Democrats.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
Why aren't there activists in the centre?

Because they are hated by both extremes.
Because that involves compromise.
Because that requires a greater understanding of complex issues.
Because slogans for the centre tend to be too long to fit on a protest sign because explaining exactly what is being represented takes too much explanation to be written as a pithy one-liner.

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

There is a certain lack of zeal amongst reasonable, moderate people. Even in the LibDems, the most active tend to be on the fringe.

It's been like that since at least the days of the Young Liberals and Peter Hain (c 1971-72).

[golly, this makes me feel old]

Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
Why aren't there activists in the centre?

I think it's because moderates don't tend to be activists. There would probably be quite a strong consensus of social democracy between soft Labour and soft Tory, and I have always believed that the British public want moderate government. Sometimes you get a Thatcher, whose ultimate aim was an American style deregulated economy. I thank God I've never had to live under a Corbyn. But we don't want people like that governing us. Consensus means compromise and cooperation. I'm pleased that the big parties poll such smaller percentages now than they did when I was young. They can rarely form a government without coalition in future if this continues. PR would make it even more impossible for them. Marginalise the "wingers" where they belong, on the margins, and let the centre govern. We're all better off for it.

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

The 'wings' tend to shout the loudest and thus get the most attention. Interest gambit though by Farron to campaign on not leaving the EU if a General Election is called anytime soon - this might just reinvigorate the LibDems.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

No one seemed very interested in the Lib dems just over a year ago and I fear there is little evidence that the current Electorate, split between pumped-up revolutionism and dejection, would be much interested now either.

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

Why aren't there activists in the centre?

Read further into the poem:

quote:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
I think it's because moderates don't tend to be activists. There would probably be quite a strong consensus of social democracy between soft Labour and soft Tory, and I have always believed that the British public want moderate government. Sometimes you get a Thatcher, whose ultimate aim was an American style deregulated economy. I thank God I've never had to live under a Corbyn. But we don't want people like that governing us. Consensus means compromise and cooperation. I'm pleased that the big parties poll such smaller percentages now than they did when I was young. They can rarely form a government without coalition in future if this continues. PR would make it even more impossible for them. Marginalise the "wingers" where they belong, on the margins, and let the centre govern. We're all better off for it.

Very good summary. I'd buy that. I'm sure it's true and I'm sure it also explains a key reason why so many of the public (i.e. us/me) neither admire nor respect our politicians very much.

Journalists like cantankerous politics. The rest of us prefer our politics boring.

Most of us would rather get on with our lives in peace. We would like a political system that enables us to do so. Representative government is there to protect us from tyranny and to be responsive when we need it to be. We don't want to be expected to be activists and enthusiasts. We've better things to do.

I've said before on these threads that I think the best administration in my lifetime was the Coalition from 2010-15. It isn't that government that is responsible for the Conservatives fouling up so spectacularly in less than a year.

The Blair ones before he went off on his jolly in Iraq wasn't bad, either.

It always disgusts me that Ramsay MacDonald is vilified, has gone down in history as a hate figure of the left for being 'the man who put his country before his party'.

[ 28. June 2016, 21:37: Message edited by: Enoch ]

Posted by Callan (# 525) on :

The thing about the SDP was that it drew upon Labour MPs who opposed Bennism but it didn't draw upon One Nation Tories who kept faith with Mrs T. because she kept winning elections. Similarly, whilst Tories defected to Mr Blair in his pomp the likes of Corbyn and McDonnell declined to join the SWP on the grounds that whilst Blair was, like. totally and utterly a fascist bastard, like man, he enabled the likes of Corbyn et. al. to ponce off his triumph over the Tories.

Basically, if a party is moving or winning people will throw in their lot with it. For example Mr Nicholas Soames who has spent the last month denouncing Incitatus and Gove now wants them as Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Basically politicians are, with a few noble and conspicuous exceptions a bunch of cocksuckers who would sell their mothers for the post of undersecretary for posts and telecommunications.

Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :

Simple. Politicians of the centre believe in nothing but their own power. That doesn't inspire people to vote for them. They offer no improvement, no progress, no change, just stagnation and the continuation of suffering that could be prevented. You might as well hand the country over to Sir Humphrey and not bother with elections.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I thought that in England the centre tends to get hollowed out, and filled in by right-wing ideas. See for exampe, the LibDem coalition with the Tories, voting for the bedroom tax and so on. Orange Book liberals, etc.

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
The thing about the SDP was that it drew upon Labour MPs who opposed Bennism but it didn't draw upon One Nation Tories who kept faith with Mrs T. because she kept winning elections.

I think there was one, wasn't there: Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler?

Posted by Callan (# 525) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:

quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
The thing about the SDP was that it drew upon Labour MPs who opposed Bennism but it didn't draw upon One Nation Tories who kept faith with Mrs T. because she kept winning elections.
I think there was one, wasn't there: Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler?

Well remembered, there was indeed. But there were also plenty of wets who, in policy terms, probably were more sympathetic to the SDP bill of goods but nonetheless persevered with hanging on to a safe seat and/ or preferment. IIRC, when Roy Jenkins called for a new centre party he had an alliance with right-thinking persons of left and right in mind but, of course, whilst both parties moved away from the centre only one of them went into meltdown. Of course, if you had a situation where *both* main parties went into meltdown it might be interesting but such a scenario would only be the stuff of dystopian science fiction and not remotely like the idyll in which we are currently fortunate to dwell.

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

Callan, that's certainly my recollection also. He did not expect all that many Tories, even with Thatcher in power, but thought that a few of the old Macmillan school would transfer.

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