Change UK - UnHerd

Centrism always fails

Will Lloyd — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Keir Starmer declared a few months ago that Labour was “coming home”.

Where exactly is home for Labour? The answer was decisively revealed this week by the leader’s conference speech: home is an Islington townhouse in the year 1996. What a time to be British! Hugh Grant is shagging Liz Hurley. Princess Diana is sparklingly alive. Football means Skinner and Baddiel, not Heysel and Hillsborough. Damon and Noel are the new Mick and John. Somehow, Ian Hislop is actually quite funny.

Bonkers, barmy, grotesque Tories in pin-stripe suits dusted with dandruff are going mental over Europe. But on the telly, inspiring Tony and pragmatic Gordon are preparing, as smoothly professional as stockbrokers, for power. Things can only get… better.

Starmer did not have to mention Blair on Wednesday. The spirit of Tone was lurking underneath every word, dressed in greasy overalls, wrenching every rhetorical bolt into place. Tough on crime? Absolutely. Education? Say it three times baby.

More important than anything Starmer said was Peter Mandelson’s remark to Seumas Milne: “We’re back in control.”

Twilight of the centrist dads

By Will Lloyd

Speaking of figures from the past who consistently ruin the breakfasts of Daily Mail readers, Gina Miller is back too. New New Labour was not the only centre party to stagger on to the scene in the last few days.

“The True & Fair Party” is her new political vehicle. Miller said: “This government needs to be held to account. Voters deserve better than the current politics of incompetence and self-interest.”

The party’s policies are yet to be announced, but they will be a homecoming for Miller as well. You have to imagine that they will be Rejoin-ishly pro-EU and described everywhere as “centrist”. Like every middle-aged product of British centrism, whether it is a political party, or a newspaper columnist, True & Fair would be better named: Let Down & Fed Up & Really Quite Tired.

Miller is, at least, about a thousand times more interesting than Sir Keir. In the long 2016 era, when the British middle-class were lost in a prolonged and anxious freak out, she was easily the most charismatic and exciting Remainer personality.

The others were lame. Elsewhere there was only terrible hair (A.C. Grayling), or needling over-familiarity (Alastair Campbell, Andrew Adonis), or sad, sullen machismo (Bob Geldof, James O’Brien, David Aaronovitch), or… Femi.

Miller was their antidote and foil. She intrigued in all senses. She was a cigar-smoking sports racer, and a parachutist. Her background was pure 1980s, pure Thatcherite graft. After her family lost its fortune, she chewed her way back through the class system, from hard-luck indigence to a £7 million Chelsea villa, by way of the City. She was serious and respected. A lawyerly battle axe. Joan of Arc to Remainers; the Terminator to Brexiteers.

She took flak, both of the legitimate and grimly racist sort. Her most intelligent profilers wondered whether her high-wire legal challenges to Brexit were motivated by “an extreme sense of civic duty” or the chance of another adrenaline rush.

The same question hovers over her new party. In a sense though the answer doesn’t matter. Like Starmer’s zombie centrism, True & Fair will fail, because there is no market for this politics anymore. Barely months have passed since the last attempts to rebuild the centre.

Suggested reading

The speech Starmer should have given

By Ian Martin

During the Brexit years, centrist fever dreams rolled above the land like rain clouds. In 2017, a Twitter-famous tax lawyer called Jolyon Maugham wanted to launch a new party called “Spring”. His plans were big, massively big. According to the Guardian: “He would hold a 28-day festival at the football stadium in Maidenhead, [Theresa] May’s constituency. Each day would be dedicated to the national dress and cuisine of a different EU member state. For the finale, Maugham planned to announce that he was standing in Maidenhead as a Spring candidate.” That sounds like satire written after a long, drunken seance with the hooting spirit of Auberon Waugh, but apparently it’s true. In the end Maugham “decided he didn’t have enough time to go ahead with it”. A wise choice!

There were smaller, but no less Partridge-into-a-dictaphone visions that year. Former George Osborne aide James Chapman called for an anti-Brexit party called ‘The Democrats’ in a Twitter meltdown, which only ended after he’d demanded — sad machismo again — that Theresa May personally debate him outside parliament. Even PR Week (not exactly Guido Fawkes) was moved to call this “an extraordinary rant”. A few months later, the then Economist writer Jeremy Cliffe proposed setting up a party called “The Radicals” — pro-tech, pro-Europe, social-liberal — and ultimately, anti-ever amounting to anything.

The biggest centrist bubble blown and pricked was Change UK. Or was it The Independent Group for Change? Or the UK’s Independently Grouped Change? Or the UK Group’s Independent Change? Nobody — not even lead member Anna Soubry, who called the party “Change.org” in the Commons — was very sure. (The only Change UK question anybody really wanted to know the answer to was what moisturiser Chuka Umunna used. Sadly, he never told us.)

Formed by 11 MPs fleeing Labour and the Tories, and born in Nando’s, Change UK died in bathos when every single member lost their seat at the last general election. But for me, Change.Independence.UK only really expired for good when its former MEP candidate Gavin Esler was booted off Celebrity Masterchef this summer after serving a dessert condemned as “incomplete” by John Torrode. The judge’s cruel reception of this pudding, which was also compared to “soup”, exactly mirrored the British public’s reaction to Change UK, namely: “WTF is this supposed to be lads.”

The war on Martin Amis

By Will Lloyd

Anyway, by 2019 the public was done with soup. They wanted cake. At least Esler reached the Masterchef quarter finals — Change UK didn’t make it past two elections.

How many centrist parties have to get Hindenburged before this all stops? The strangest thing about Miller, and Starmer-Mandelson is that they can’t locate the centre ground at all. If there is a centre ground today in England, it is enormously unpalatable to those who self-identify as centrists. They would not vote for the “Hang the nonces, fund the NHS party”, but that’s where the centre is now.

The centre wants nationalised railways and birched criminals. It wants its borders closed and its healthcare free at the point of access. It is fear and loathing, and charity and kindliness; a truly mutant hybrid of Paul Dacre and Jeremy Corbyn. Pundits would love the English to be the stout and sensible strivers described in Orwell’s The Lion and The Unicorn; sadly, I fear the reality is that they are more like the suspicious and cruel folk described in Chesterton’s The Secret People.

And they’re getting stranger all the time. England is weirding. David Icke has never been so adored. Football fans descended on Nuneaton to defend a half-forgotten statue of George Eliot from BLM; no, they had not read Middlemarch. Parents style their children as Captain Tom. Sports mascots become ultra-large poppies every November. Jackie Weaver publishes books. There are candlelit vigils or protests on a seemingly daily basis.

The mood is jittery, not only in the petrol queues. The writer Clive Martin calls it “Radical Normal”. Gina Miller and Keir Starmer probably don’t know much about Radical Normal, but it has more to do with the future of British politics than they do.

Are breakaway parties always doomed?

Peter Franklin — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 10:53:04 +0000

In some countries, political parties are like underwear – best changed at regular intervals. They split, merge, de-merge, emerge from the shadows, return to obscurity, re-brand and re-form in an endless reshuffling of the party system.

In Britain, however, we cling to the tried-and-tested – not least because our electoral system tends to kill off start-up parties. In the democratic age (and apart from the nationalists and/or unionists of the Celtic nations) only one new party has established an enduring and significant presence in the House of Commons: the Labour Party.

Suggested reading

What do we want from our leaders?

By Douglas Murray

Of course, Labour was formed as a new party to represent the newly enfranchised working class – it was not a breakaway group.

In Britain, party splits are traumatic events, born more out of desperation than hope. Splitters may convince themselves otherwise, but the reality is that they are putting their careers on the line. A few may blaze a trail before burning out, most simply fade away.

Nevertheless, their sacrifice is not necessarily in vain. Though breakaway parties invariably fail on their own terms, they can still bring about change.

As the 21 whipless Tories – still sat upon the Tory benches – wait to see what happens next, they might want to study the history of previous party splits. Here are five of the most significant.

1. The Peelites

Let’s begin in the mid-19th century – when modern political parties were beginning to form. It’s hard to put a precise date on it, but the Conservative Party came into being in the 1830s – and, if it had a founder, it was Sir Robert Peel. By the 1840s though, Peel had fallen out with his party over Corn Law reform – and in 1846 he and his followers broke away.

We’ll never know if the Peelites could have survived as an independent political force. In 1850, he died after his horse fell on top of him. His followers joined up with the Whigs and Radicals, an alliance that became the Liberal Party in 1859.

2. The Liberal Unionists

Not long after it was formed, the Liberal Party began falling apart. In the 1860s, there was a breakaway faction called the Adullamites who believed that all the democracy stuff was going a bit far. There was a more serious split in 1880s – when William Gladstone (originally a Peelite) embraced Irish Home Rule. The Liberals who opposed it – including Joseph Chamberlain – formed the Liberal Unionist Party.

Suggested reading

Liberalism: the other God that failed

By John Gray

The Liberal Unionists remained a significant force for the next twenty years, but in close association with Conservatives. In 1912 the two parties officially ‘merged’ – in much the same manner that I merged with the sandwich I had for lunch today.

Nevertheless, the breakaway party had a long-term impact on British and Irish politics – helping to delay home rule by decades (but arguably hastening independence). It also brought the Chamberlain family into the Conservative Party.

3. National Liberals and National Labour

In the 1930s, it happened again! A group of Liberals broke away to form a new party – in this case the National Liberal Party. Disliking Labour more than the Conservatives, they fell in with the latter. As with the Liberal Unionists, the National Liberals carried on for a while as a formally separate entity. However, by the early 60s, no one could much see the point – and so they were swallowed up by the Tories.

The Conservative-dominated National government of the 1930s also attracted a breakaway group of Labour MPs – foremost among them Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, who died in 1937.

While Labour has never forgotten his ‘betrayal’, few now remember MacDonald’s National Labour Organisation, which dissolved itself in 1945. However, it would not be the last group of social democrats to escape Labour’s grip.

4. The SDP

In 1981, the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ – Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rogers – broke away from Labour to form the Social Democratic Party. They also aimed to break the mould of British politics – and when they hit 50% in the opinion polls, it looked as though they might.

It wasn’t to last. The Falklands War happened and the county rallied round Margaret Thatcher. In 1983 she won a landslide victory, while the SDP failed to kill-off Michael Foot’s Labour Party. Already in alliance with the Liberals, the SDP eventually merged with them to form the ‘Social and Liberal Democrats’ (the ‘Salads’), who later renamed themselves the ‘Liberal Democrats’ .

Meanwhile, a continuity SDP under David Owen failed to thrive and dissolved itself after a ‘disappointing’ performance in the 1990 Bootle by-election (it was beaten into seventh place by the Monster Raving Loony Party).

An ignominious end – but it could be argued that the SDP prompted Labour to follow a path of moderation and modernisation, which culminated in New Labour and three election wins for Tony Blair.

5. Change UK

And so to the present day. Having snatched the Labour Party from Tony Blair in 2007, Gordon Brown bequeathed it to Ed Miliband in 2010 who accidentally delivered it to Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. Oops!

Early this year, seven Labour MPs who could take no more quit to form The Independent Group, which then became Change UK, but is now called (for reasons of extreme dullness) the Independent Group for Change.

Suggested reading

The trouble with TIGgers

By Graeme Archer

The original seven MPs were soon joined by another Labour colleague and three Conservatives. But having had enough of their old parties, they subsequently decided they’d had enough of each other. The year isn’t even out, but the new party has split three ways. Five MPs remain united behind the exciting leadership of Anna Soubry, three have joined the Lib Dems and three sit in a non-party group called The Independents (who have made a new friend, another ex-Labour MP).

I’m sure these are just the sort of people we need to form a Government of National Unity.

So what are we to conclude from 173 years of party splits?

Firstly, that breakaway parties have never been big enough to guarantee long-term viability. If you want to split, then take half your colleagues with you.

Secondly, splitting over one or two issues – no matter how important they might seem at present – will not sustain you over the longer term.

Thirdly, you don’t just need to to distinguish yourselves from your former party, but also from all the other established parties – if you don’t, voters will fail to see your relevance. Furthermore, you and your colleagues may come to feel the same way – either giving up or descending into internecine conflict.

Of course, the ongoing survival of your new party and political career may not be your first concern. If your top priority is to make a stand on an issue you really care about, then a doomed breakaway party might be just the thing. After all, a politician consciously acting against their own self interest isn’t so common that it goes unnoticed.

Labour’s latest target

James Bloodworth — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 13:22:02 +0000

Something’s got under Labour’s skin. You can tell because their spin machine is going full tilt. Their target is Change UK. The arrival of the new party on the scene has triggered a massive trawl through prospective candidates’ social media posts, looking for instances of racist and sexist comments, in an attempt to prove that the “hard-centre is racist”.

It’s no bad thing that parties should seek to bring to light instances of racism and misogyny – and several legitimate examples of both have been unearthed.

Ali Sadjady, for example, a candidate in London for the European elections, resigned after an old tweet resurfaced, in which he made derogatory remarks about Romanians. “When I hear that 70% of pick pockets caught on the London Underground are Romanian it kind [sic] makes me want Brexit”.

An incriminating tweet from Joseph Russo, a leading candidate in Scotland, was also uncovered: “Black women scare me. I put this down to be chased through Amsterdam by a crazy black wh***.”

Change UK acted swiftly to distance themselves from both men. Yet they have stood solidly by another candidate, Nora Mulready, who was accused of “Islamophobia” and charged with “conflating terrorism with Islam” by Labour supporters and organisations which claim to speak for British Muslims. In comments posted online, Mulready suggested it was a “fallacy that Islamism is nothing to do with Islam” and that radical Islamism could be “Koranically justified”. She also said the concerns of far-Right leader Tommy Robinson should be “acknowledged” because he had “hit [a] societal nerve”.

Further reading

Corbyn's intolerant populism

By James Bloodworth

Though I do not agree with everything Mulready has written, Change UK are right to stand by her. The concerted attempt by the Left to silence her and no-platform her from democratic politics has been correctly described as a “smear campaign” by her new party.

Momentum has led the charge against Mulready, along with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and The Independent, with especial help from the newspaper’s Europe Correspondent, Jon Stone – a dedicated Corbyn supporter. The paper ran three stories on Mulready last week alone (though it did give Mulready a right of reply). Its latest revelation (written again by Stone) attempts to damn her by association – claiming that Gerard Batton, the leader of UKIP, has “thrown his support behind Mulready” based on comments she once made about Islam.

Stone and The Independent have attempted to paint this as “yet another racism row”, yet much of what Mulready has said is uncontroversial. She claimed it was a “fallacy that Islamism is nothing to do with Islam” and asserted that radical Islamism could be “Koranically justified”.

Both statements are unarguably true, and it shouldn’t be problematic to accept this, while also acknowledging that a majority of Muslims want nothing to do with Islamism. In contrast, to pretend there is no link whatsoever is absurd; you might as well say the crusades had nothing to do with Christianity and the Gulag nothing to do with communism. Every religion has a fanatical wing which draws at least some of its sustenance from the doctrines adhered to by the mainstream.

Further reading

The Left's long history of antisemitism

By James Bloodworth

The MCB, an umbrella organisation of community leaders who claim to speak for British Muslims, should not be treated uncritically, and is testament to how mainstream organisations can sometimes give succour to extremist elements. In the past, the MCB has refused to attend Holocaust Memorial Day, has denounced homosexuality, and has given prominent organisational roles to men who once backed the Iranian fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie.

Indeed, the MCB’s own record and shifting positions would indicate that there are many interpretations of Islam, some of which are closer to Islamism than others. Would the MCB claim that the stances it has held in the past, some of which share things in common with the tenets of Islamism, also had ‘nothing to do with Islam’?

As well as her comments about Islam, Mulready is being criticised by Labour and its media outriders for remarks she made on the back of blasphemy riots in Pakistan in 2018, in which she wrote that some “immigration brings with it some very regressive cultural values”.

Again, it is difficult to see how this is controversial, especially in light of the recent row over the teaching of LGBT sex and relationships education in Birmingham’s schools. Immigration invariably brings with it new challenges and it should not be off limits to say so. Those in favour of immigration (as I am) should not be burying their heads in the sand and pretending these challenges do not exist (see also labour market exploitation).

Further reading

Bigotry dressed as victimhood

By James Bloodworth

This isn’t to say that some of Mulready’s comments aren’t misjudged. Her point that the concerns of far-Right leader Tommy Robinson have “hit [a] societal nerve and that needs to be acknowledged” reminds me of New Labour’s toadying to the hard-Right on asylum and immigration. Robinson is an anti-Muslim rabble rouser who is adept at exploiting public fears around immigration, not someone who is addressing genuine concerns around integration and shared values.

But I do not believe Mulready is a racist. Her comments – even when disagreeable – sit within the realm of acceptable discourse. Unlike, incidentally, Jeremy Corbyn and his spin-doctor Seumas Milne’s nasty conspiracy-mongering about an entirely fictitious link between ISIS and Israel. She is espousing a robust liberalism that can at times sound insensitive, but which is a perfectly legitimate point of view.

In truth, the attacks on Mulready stink of whataboutery. The Labour Party is engulfed in an ongoing crisis over anti-Semitism and, rather than deal with that, its media mouthpieces have chosen to lecture Change UK on racism based on a handful of cases which have been swiftly dealt with.

Further reading

Why is the hard-Left so conservative?

By James Bloodworth

According to a report published last month by Fathom journal editor Professor Alan Johnson, the Labour Party had “failed to understand contemporary antisemitism, failed to prevent the party becoming a host to antisemitism, failed effectively to tackle antisemitism, free from political interference, and failed to root out a culture of antisemitism denial and victim-blaming”. This, of course, is why Luciana Berger, the Jewish MP for Liverpool Wavertree quit the Labour Party to co-found Change UK. She she was “embarrassed and ashamed” at its failure to confront antisemitism.

Perhaps, when the leader of your own party has been described as an “existential threat” to British Jewry, you might spend a little more time getting your own house in order and a little less time spreading baseless accusations about other people.

But they won’t. And that’s because this sort of prejudice isn’t really what the Labour Party is concerned about. What really bothers them is the Blairites and the purity of the Party. That’s why Corbyn supporters have spent the past four years hounding people like Mulready out of Labour.

The trouble is, it’s not enough that she has gone. They have to go even further. Partly it’s irritation at the new party’s success, but mainly it’s because this is what organisations do when they are in the grip of ideological fervour. They can’t simply let you disagree, they have to destroy you.