Robert Marshall-Andrews

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The centre cannot be bold (from The Guardian)

The most dangerous alchemy in contemporary British politics is the myth of the radical centre. The initial concept of this fools' gold is widely attributed to a speech by Roy Jenkins during his first attempt to destroy the Labour party and before he was appointed as sage and mentor to the present prime minister. The idea of the radical centre is rooted, apparently, in the belief that the British people, despite their piratical past, discursive nature and disrespectful instincts, secretly long to be led to the comfort and safety of an eternal middle ground. Here, so it is said, they will finally be allowed to inhabit a serene, unchallenging political landscape, rendered featureless by the soft climate of consensus and compromise. In this political never-never -land New Labour will not grow old and policy forums will debate endlessly the desiderata of government, blinded to their impotence by the veil of flattered self regard. Most important, the crude dialectics of parliamentary government will disappear, as will the irritating resolutions of party conference. Problems, of course, unhappily arise when attempts are made to endow this political buffer zone with a radical credo. An intellectual area whose principal raison d'etre is the avoidance of conflict is not the most promising territory from which to launch robust offensives bent upon social change, still less social justice. 'A penny on income tax hypothecated to education' may be a nice thought, but it is hardly the battle hymn of a new republic. In essence the only real claim to radicalism advanced from the centre ground is the reform of elected democracy by some application of proportional representation. The elevation of political form over substance is a common hallmark of the centre and the touching belief that single transferable votes hold the key to poverty, crime, third world destitution and global warming is a fine example of the craft.

All this would have no relevance beyond curious observation if it had remained confined to Roy Jenkins and the Liberal party, to which the SDP clung briefly before disappearing forever into the fault line of its own making. But it has not remained so confined. All that has changed is the metaphor. The 'third way' is a centre ground with the illusion of directional movement. The sublime belief that a capitalist economy can be re formed, controlled and rendered beautiful by pluralist consensus is a common piety shared by the gurus of New Labour, most of whom have not the slightest experience of politics or anything else outside the dappled groves of academia. From this obvious limitation comes the first fallacy, the concept that the noble idea of the radical is in some way joined to the odious claim to be modern. The most elementary etymology tells us that the radical seeks change, the modernist seeks fashion.

The ideals of the radical left have always been and will always remain, simple. They are to rescue and empower the domestic and global underclass to enjoy free lives of dignity and contribution within a sustainable, healthy and diverse environment. These aims conflict and always will conflict with the precepts and dynamics of a capitalist world. To state as much is no more old Labour than old truth. It is a constant. For a socialist to state less is to commit a political fraud. As with the aims, so the means remain constant: significant redistribution of resources on the basis of need between free peoples possessing the educational skills to sustain the natural world in which they live.

Whether these precepts remain the bedrock of the Labour party or whether they have become heresy remains to be seen. In the next administration the demands of radical change are clear. To meet them we must employ our surpluses of income together with modest increases in direct taxation to the eradication of the poverty in which 14m of our fellow citizens live and to provide public services which are benchmarks to the world.

We must acknowledge our responsibility to purchase at heavy discount the debt which daily destroys the lives of the poorest on earth and limit our personal consumption of energy. We must learn that intolerance and civil brutality are the handmaidens of poverty and direct our moral largesse accordingly at the expense of grandiose aerial warfare. Finally we must also learn that high moral posture at least dictates the refusal to stock the arsenals of the dictators of the world. If we do these things we will have earned our place in the pantheons of the radical left.

If we cling to the myth of the radical centre, if we reserve our venom for those who work in public service and our praise for those who create private profit; if we fail to redress the growing divide between rich and poor, able and disabled, strong and weak in order to create hymns to prudence and toil, then we will find ourselves in a flat and friendless landscape. The arid middle ground littered with political bones.