No.75 - The Angry Party, the Nasty Party or the 'New Extreme Party'?

Dear James,

Yesterday we saw the Labour Party commit electoral suicide in the ‘stitch up’ vote at their Conference in Brighton. It was committed against a chorus of ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’ as his supporters packed the hall and the chair fumbled and fussed and decided not to put the decision to a card vote even though the hand votes were extremely close. The chair, initially appeared to say the motion had been passed but then said it had been lost, after words from Labour general secretary Jennie Formby, who was sitting next to the chair on the conference stage. With such cynical moves are such parties ruined. Labour, the Angry Party, will be slaughtered at the next election.

Joy to your heart I guess James but not so fast. You must be getting ready for your own version of the Labour débâcle  at the Tory Party conference in Manchester next weekend? Should be just as interesting. We shall no doubt see the usual shows of Tory unity and leadership chutzpah but beneath the oleaginous bromides everyone knows that your party too is facing ruination.  Both of our two traditional mainstream parties, one split by a radical coterie of Corbynistas, the other attempting to convince us that you are not the ‘Nasty Party’ or the ERG in drag, are seriously damaged beneath the waterline of Brexit and yet so far refusing to sink. Our binary party system lies holed, its bows sunk beneath the crashing waves of change and yet both your boats are refusing to sink – yet.

How many times have I said it? We are facing the most profound crisis of our times. Economically, politically and socially our nation is divided between parties who want to withdraw into either the fantasy of a small island state battling it out with the large economic blocks of China, the EU and the Americas or the dream of a 1970’s version of Marxist socialism. But can you not see what your two parties have created? By becoming extreme, you have now created the outline of a new shape in politics. The outline created is in fact a mould - a mould is defined as ‘a hollow container used to give shape to molten or hot liquid material when it cools and hardens’. Our current system is like a couple of binary stars decaying into white dwarfs, cold and empty hulks of ancient ideologies dying as we watch. But on the basis of cosmic evolution, these old stars should very soon explode and from their debris a new star will be born. I shall resist the temptation to get carried away but I shall call this new party, the party of extreme common sense and determined fairness. The party of the centre with a manifesto that will eventually reunite the nation. That centre is the ‘natural Britain’, the rational, tolerant, kind centre that has now become quietly and firmly angry. We have become the new ‘extremists’.  We are the future. And you have helped to create it. 

I suppose I should admit to you what I did last weekend. I went to the last refuge of political decency and rationality, to somewhere where those  old values still exist. I don’t know how to say this to you James but I attended the Annual Conference of the Liberal Democrats in Bournemouth. Now before you enter the usual put downs of the ‘salad and sandals’ party, which until recently I shared, I should explain a little more. The conference was my first experience of any political gathering of this scale and, unlike your own coming conference, it is a united party with a broad church.  Here was a place where deep political research and thought were transformed into coherent and costed programmes for our nation in this time of climatic, economic and political emergency. Here the meaning of democracy was discussed, the sovereignty of parliament was debated. The need to establish a forum for political change, the voting system, the taxation system for further education and at their core the concepts of fairness and equality of opportunity were all analysed and forged into policy. But most of all, they were put into the context of the greatest threat to us all – the climate crisis. Here are the realists. Here is the cause of justice. Here there was real humanity without the ‘artificial projections’ of class warfare and disguised protections of the status quo (Tories) or the total destruction of the status quo (Labour).

I came out refreshed, cleansed, invigorated. I could breathe again. There is still humanity alive in our country. People no longer have to vote for Labour, ‘The Angry Party’ or Tory, ‘The Ever Nastier Party’. The Lib-Dems – the once Nice Party transformed into the Lib-Dems the Radically Fair Party reinvigorated by your own shared abandonment of the centre ground. At a minimum the Lib Dems are a party of refuge for those who have lost their political home. At a maximum they are the party of careful analysis, reason and realism.  The party of the future. 

I won’t ask you to join the Lib-Dems James, but I would ask you to look outside the Westminster bubble and the approaching Manchester coven of bewitchery. The current crisis is temporary. The Lib Dems are the nearest we have to a party that can offer a new view of our nation’s woes and the new path to a future that will eventually win. You and the Labour party are intellectually exhausted and, like those white dwarf stars, heading for oblivion. Such a pity.

But good luck next weekend. You are going to need it!

Kind regards,

BH - Your Concerned Constituent.