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Maybe I am naive (I mean definitely, but let’s not that get in the way), but I don’t see the UK as a nation of extremists. Sure we have our right wing nationalist nuts in the EDL (but fellas, erectile dysfunction has nothing to do with the immigrants - you’re channelling your anger into the wrong place. It’s probably part of your problem) and our left-wing anti-semites calling for the dismantling of capitalism, but I think the vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle. I know the rise of UKIP and the Brexit vote might suggest a tendency towards more extreme politics, but you could also argue that the success of Farage is as much down to our centre politician letting us down and the need for protest.
Most of us, even if on one side or the other, want more or less the same thing: a chance to improve our lot if we work hard, alongside some degree of knowing the state will care for us if we get ill, or incapacitated or displaced.
The vacuum in the middle of politics has perhaps tended to push more people to the extremes, but I also think that the media, in an attempt to create balance, has exacerbated the problem. Firstly debates are more interesting if they encompass a wide range of beliefs, but also it feels fair to have a right winger, a centrist and a left winger on every discussion. The tendency for good TV will be to go to the extremes at either end, which doesn’t help. But also that isn’t an actual balance. If 70% of people broadly fall into soft left, centre and soft right, then a panel of someone from UKIP, the leader of the Lib Dems (whoever that is) and Dennis Skinner is not representative. It means that proportionately we are bound to hear a lot more about the extreme ends of the spectrum and less from the middle than is fair.
My guesstimates may be wrong, but a strong political middle would hold the balance of power and much more fairly represent the country. If an extreme gets into power they just push on with their own agenda and ignore the plight of the people who didn’t vote for them, but a centrist government has to take into account the wishes of most people and do its best to provide for them all. But whatever, a simple truth struck me today, in the face of Labour committing suicide and the Tories lurching to the right (and Farage’s resignation is definitely not all that it seems, so I am very worried about whatever monstrosity he is planning next): a strong centrist party that even aimed to satisfy 50% of the population (and as I say I think it’s likely that in actuality about 70% would be bunched up in the broadly central ground) would win any election, because their 50% beats the two 25%s at either end (and those two 25%s are never going to go into coalition).
Perhaps this is achieved by the central politicians forming a coalition, perhaps we need to do away with the outdated concept of political parties all together, but rather than heading for extremes (which seem to me to invite disaster in either direction), wouldn’t it be amazing if the boring, reasonable people in the centre, prepared to compromise a bit for the common good, got together and made a UK that was a bit fairer for everyone (with the possible exception of the super rich and the super anarchist)?
I think it’s unlikely to happen, because we increasingly prefer the outspoken and the characters and the people who stick to their principles, even when in doing so they have little chance of achieving anything, but if we are to pull our nation back together and be a forward looking country, then this seems to be the obvious solution.
A new political alliance called The Middle is all we need. But even I am not so naive as to think that it will happen. Just want to put this out there, so anyone looking back can see we did have a way out, but we failed to take it. Sorry.
