The strange death of the ‘centre ground’

The concept of the ‘centre ground’ has been vexing Labour recently. Tony Blair told The Economist that the centre ground, “which the Labour Party succeeds best when it is in”, had if anything “moved to the right, not left”, while hinting that Labour was moving towards a “traditional left-wing party”. Ed Balls came back fighting in the Guardian, saying that the Tories’ “lurch to the right”, with their vision of a “35% state”, had left Labour as “the centre-ground alternative”.

The idea that Labour must ‘hold the centre’ to win is oft-repeated, but makes a big assumption: That voters congregate in the centre of a one-dimensional line, a centre supposedly defined today by the same positions as during Blair’s three victories.

The evidence points otherwise. Recent polling from Populus with hypothetical ‘unlabelled’ policy-only parties showed that the biggest clusters of voters are around: (a), an anti-EU/immigration, anti-privatisation, pro-regulation party, and (b), a pro-EU/immigration, anti-privatisation, pro-regulation party. Not very ‘centrist’ at all. The Economist, in a remarkable feat of mental acrobatics, declared that these findings were not the result of “too few centrist voters” but because “too few politicians are promoting [Blairite-type centrism]”.

But whether New Labour-era policies are worth spending valuable effort defending for their own worth is different to flaunting them as juicy electoral assets. Indeed, all those missing voters gives lie to that claim. In truth the exodus from Blair’s idea of the centre is because the grand bargain that he struck no longer holds true. If coddling the City and courting the super-rich with low taxes was the price to pay for better public services and rising standards of living, so be it. A rising tide lifts all boats. But that period is well and truly over.

Average real wages in 2013 were at 2003 levels, and only just began to rise again in late 2014. But for the top 0.5% of earners, wages rose a healthy 17% between 2003 and 2011 and are surely higher now. Their take of all national income is now back at approximately 10%, levels last seen before WW2. Given this, voters are rightly asking why we should continue to tread softly around inequality and the highly profitable privatised industries.

Make no mistake, the electorate do not hunger for a return to the 1970s. Support among voters for regulation of business is not based on a philosophical desire for collective ownership, but on the spreading realisation that market failures have exacted a tremendous cost on the country since 2008, and that sometimes the best outcome for society is only possible with the guiding mind of the state. The view, therefore, that ‘Red Ed’ is pandering to the old left by talking about business’ responsibilities to society, or about the vast untaxed wealth of a tiny minority, is profoundly mistaken. However well those at the top are doing, unlike 1997-2008, few now could claim that growth translates to gains for ordinary people.

As shown by Populus, large parts of the electorate hold views that defy traditional descriptions like liberal or statist, left or right. These voters aren’t on a line that can be reached by New Labour-esque triangulation, and such outdated strategies would leave us with glass-half-empty policies that satisfy no-one. What was the ‘centre-ground’ has become the middle of nowhere.