the flight from the centre

I want to know where Ed Miliband buys his suits. Seriously. (Pic: Getty).

It seems clear to me that the Labour leader's speech, and the policies he announced, will simply reinforce voters' perceptions of the Labour Party - hates business, loves welfare, couldn't give a crap about the deficit - rather than challenging them and expanding his party's appeal.

But I suppose the next question is, does that matter? 

Ed Miliband and his team used to insist that, post-crisis, the centre ground of British politics has shifted, and in their direction. They may still believe that, although given the difficulty that centre-left parties are having across Europe it's a hard argument to sustain. But perhaps they've concluded something else: the centre ground is no longer where victory is to be had.

It's an axiomatic proposition of modern British politics that elections are won from the middle. I've always believed it, and of course there's at least thirty years of electoral evidence to support it. Leaders like Blair and Cameron became Prime Minister by, essentially, playing against type: focusing on policies and gestures that appeal to voters from outside their natural constituencies, while bringing most of their core voters along with them. That's why Cameron chased huskies and funds international development while Blair sent his kid to a posh school and was tough on crime.

But we may now be in a world where that proposition no longer holds. Labour knows it can win by getting to 35% of the vote, a level which it has so far fairly comfortably reached, despite an unpopular leader (and by the way, there are only two things to say about Miliband-as-leader: first, voters' perceptions of him are set and won't change between now and well, ever; second, that needn't affect our electoral predictions, because those perceptions are already 'priced in' to the polls). That 35% are quite happy in the Labour comfort zone: NHS good, rich people bad, the deficit will look after itself (OK maybe I simplify just a little).

As for the Tories, the most urgent threat to their majority comes from their right. UKIP will force Cameron to move as far away from the political centre as he comfortably can (the centre ground is his comfort zone). We can expect to hear even more about immigration and welfare scrounging, and immigration again, between now and 2015.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are the centre. If you haven't fully grasped just how weird our politics has become, just think about the fact that it's the Lib Dems who are the party most likely to be in government after the next election. Tiny, derided yet oddly powerful, the Liberal Democrats are like a puppet holding the strings of two puppeteers.

I think, at some point, political logic will reassert itself and the big two parties will compete for the centre ground again. But maybe I just want to think that because it's all I know.

Comments

[David]

Spencer Hart suit, by the way.

And yes, folk are only just starting to twig that Clegg's long game started in 2010 and is far from finished. Not so daft after all.

[Simon]

I think one explanation for this might be that the playing-against-type of Blair and Cameron was less about competing for the centre than it was about rehabilitating the image of their party. Labour thought it had to stop looking like a bunch of unelectable sandal-wearers and the Tories thought they had to stop looking like a bunch of murderers. Now, post-Iraq and mid-election, it's Labour that has to stop looking like a bunch of murderers and the Tories that have to stop looking like unelectable jumper-wearers. It's not a race to the centre in other words, but a race to the greener grass on the other side. (Which suggests there is no centre, otherwise the winner would stay put. If there actually is a political centre I'm convinced personally that it lies to the left of all three parties. I'm only saying that because there's no way to prove it, but, you know, look at the Olympic opening ceremony.)

[Simon]

Jumpers. Sandals. Same thing. Stupid Kane.

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