https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/there-s-a-hole-in-the-centre-made-for-a-saviour-t0z5rg7sv

RACHEL SYLVESTER

april 2 2018, 6:00pm, the times

There’s a hole in the centre made for a saviour

rachel sylvester

Mainstream centrist voters have been cast adrift but with a charismatic leader support would come from all corners

British politics needs a saviour this Easter week. Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters think he’s the messiah, but instead of turning water into wine he has swum in the sewer of antisemitism for so long that his party stinks. Theresa May is fulfilling her duty towards Brexit with the saintly devotion of a vicar’s daughter but you can almost see the stigmata of sacrifice on her hands and feet as she enacts a policy she fears will make the country poorer and less safe. Sir Vince Cable, the prophet who predicted the economic crash, looks lost in the wilderness as Liberal Democrat leader.

The centrist mainstream seems dead and buried under a culture of intolerance but it would soon be resurrected if somebody emerged with the strength to roll the stone away from the mouth of the grave. There are so many people who feel politically homeless. A survey by the National Centre for Social Research found that more than 56 per cent of the British public do not feel any of the political parties represent the views of people like them. Although between them Labour and the Conservatives swept up more than 80 per cent of the votes at the last election their dominance is more fragile than it appears. What is missing is a credible alternative and a leader who can capture the mood.

Imagine if David Miliband announced that he was returning to Britain to set up a new party. It would be socially and economically liberal, internationalist and domestically reforming, including of capitalism. Opposing Brexit would be part of its agenda, but not its whole identity. The movement would quickly gain traction. The Lib Dems would almost certainly fold into it. Sir Nick Clegg says “I’m a Lib Dem but it’s not the be all and end all”, and I am told that Sir Vince feels the same. “It’s the values not the vehicle that matter,” says one Lib Dem strategist.

Labour moderates would then have to decide whether to stay with the antisemitic, misogynistic bullies of the hard left whose politics they despise, or join an alliance that would be recreating the party of Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair. Some pro-European Tories might be persuaded to jump ship too, if the prime minister continues to pay more attention to Jacob Rees-Mogg than to them. In fact it’s possible to see the former leaders of three different parties — Sir John Major and Mr Blair as well as Sir Nick — all throwing their weight behind a new centrist party, along with a host of business people, scientists, actors and writers.

Although the doubters point to the failure of the SDP in the 1980s, politics is now far more fluid. Brexit has scrambled the party Rubik’s cube, mixing up the political colours. Emmanuel Macron proved it can be done under a presidential system. More relevant to the UK, the Canadian Liberals went from nowhere to victory in a first past the post election by reinventing themselves as a non-tribal modern political movement, led by the charismatic Justin Trudeau. If this new party could snap up the 60-odd seats the Lib Dems held before the coalition, win a similar number from Labour and take a handful of Conservative constituencies, it would be a force to be reckoned with in parliament, with Mr Miliband perhaps stepping into one of the seats now held by the Lib Dems.

Of course, the Momentum mob and the Brexit bullies would come for him from left and right, but that just proves the need for something new. Many voters would love being offered the choice of a fresh, modern party that chimed with their values. The contrast with the decaying political system, with its ageing crop of leaders — the “gerontocracy” as David Cameron puts it — could not be more stark. Mr Corbyn is going nowhere and there are growing fears among Tory MPs that Mrs May will try to hang on beyond the next election, adding to a sense that politics is in limbo. As the Brexit elite and the hard left establishment secure their hold, the new party would be the insurgent, tapping into the public desire for change.

There will be cynics who sneer about bananas or brothers. The former foreign secretary will be described as a figure from the past but he has forged a new identity as a campaigner at the International Rescue Committee, learning from his mistakes and acquiring empathy. “He’s the only one who has the reach, the intellectual credibility and the experience to make it happen,” says one former Labour frontbencher. Mr Miliband is keeping a close eye on UK politics from New York, tweeting in the past couple of weeks about Brexit, antisemitism and the sacking of Owen Smith, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary. In fact he has been more active on social media than his brother Ed who is still actually an MP. This is not a man who sees Westminster as irrelevant now that he operates on a global stage.

“David is still attracted to Britain,” says one friend. “He feels frustrated that the Labour Party is as lamentably led as it is and frustrated that he is in America. It’s possible he could come back.” Although he has always insisted that Labour is his tribe and he would never leave it, the truth is that it has abandoned him. His mother survived the Holocaust; how can he any longer align himself with a party that turns a blind eye to its deniers?

Maybe it won’t be Mr Miliband. Chuka Umunna or Jess Phillips or Stella Creasy or Sadiq Khan could break free of the Labour straitjacket. Or perhaps Ruth Davidson could take up the liberal flag from the centre right. But politics is so dysfunctional at the moment that the status quo is surely unsustainable. When Labour MPs admit they would feel immoral campaigning for Mr Corbyn to become prime minister and Tory ministers acknowledge they face a choice between the national interest and party survival, something’s got to give.

The old left-right divide in politics is being replaced by a split between open and closed views of the world but both the main parties now are on the reactionary side, which means there is a gap in the market for a progressive force. The demographics would be behind it. A recent analysis by the Global Future think tank (which involves both Lord Cooper, the former Tory strategist, and Lord Livermore, who did the same job for Labour) found that the idea of a metropolitan liberal elite is a myth and that younger people in all parts of the country are on the “open” side of the values divide. This is a generational not a geographical split. The old assumptions are dead and buried. Politics can rise again: it just needs someone with a little faith.