The land down under, long a stage for the dreary waltz of Labour vs. Liberal, has suddenly produced a political novelty: a new centrist party, poised to pull the rug from under the feet of the Australian Labor Party. The party’s launch, trumpeted as a ‘moderate revolution’, has sent tremors through the Antipodean political class. But brace yourselves: the echoes of this seismic event are already lapping at the shores of the Thames. The UK’s Liberal Democrats, those perennial third-party martyrs, are reportedly watching with undisguised covetousness. Could this be the beginning of a centrist realignment in the Anglosphere? Or is it merely the latest example of what I call ‘political nostalgia’ – a futile attempt to resurrect the ghost of a long-dead consensus?
Let us examine the Australian case. Labour, once the party of the working man, has for decades been a shadow of its former self – a technocratic husk that offers the electorate little more than a choice between pale pink and deepest beige. The new centrist party, whatever its name (and I suspect it will be something dreadfully bland like ‘The Sensible Centre’ or ‘Moderate Australia’), preys on this emptiness. It promises ‘common sense’, ‘pragmatism’, and ‘evidence-based policy’. In other words, it promises nothing that dares to disturb the slumber of the status quo.
This is the standard playbook of centrism: to occupy the swampy middle ground while pretending to be above the fray. It is a delusion that has its roots in the late-Victorian era, when the Liberal Party in Britain – yes, the ancestors of the Lib Dems – convinced themselves they could be a party of moral uplift while simultaneously propping up the empire’s worst excesses. The great Liberal collapse of the 1920s, when the party was crushed between Labour and the Tories, should serve as a warning: the centre is a treacherous place, especially in times of crisis.
And yet, the UK’s Liberal Democrats, led by the ever-earnest Sir Ed Davey, appear to be following the Australian script. They dream of a ‘realignment’ where disgruntled Conservatives and moderate Labour voters flock to their banner, recreating the so-called ‘golden age’ of the Liberal-SDP Alliance. But this is historical illiteracy of the highest order. The Alliance, born in 1981, was a product of its time: a reaction to a left-wing Labour party and a divided country. Today’s political landscape, fissured by Brexit, austerity, and the culture wars, bears no resemblance to that era. The Lib Dems, like their Australian counterparts, are offering a mild-mannered answer to questions nobody is asking.
What does this tell us about the state of our democracies? It reveals a profound intellectual decadence. The major parties have abandoned ideology for focus groups, and the centrist newcomers are merely the ultimate expression of this emptiness. They are pitch-perfect for an age that has lost faith in grand narratives, but they will not save us. They will only deliver more of the same: managerialism, technocracy, and a deep aversion to any real change.
I predict that the Australian centrist party will, within a few election cycles, either be absorbed by the establishment or collapse into irrelevance, much like the UK’s short-lived ‘Change UK’ experiment. The Lib Dems, for their part, will continue to be the loyal opposition to nothing in particular, winning by-elections and losing general elections. The centre cannot hold, as Yeats wrote, but that does not stop the political class from trying to build a new centrist edifice on the ruins of the old.
Let us not be fooled by this latest political novelty. It is a symptom, not a cure. We are living through a period of decay, and the centrist parties are merely the latest hospice workers, offering palliative care to a dying consensus. The Australians, bless them, have done us the favour of offering a preview. The UK watchers would do well to learn from their folly before investing too much hope in a very tired idea.
