Both political parties are determined to hold the centre ground. This is where swing voters are swung, where majorities are made, and where elections are fought and won.
There will enevitably be people in both parties who will attempt to pull them to the left or right of the centre ground, depending on the party. However, given the importance of holding a centre ground course, the leader who manages to resist and hold course consistently, will win the next election.
I can see why the Tories thought that attacking grammar schools might be a way to show the party has changed. However, it allowed the more right wing elements of the party to force not so much a u-turn, but certainly a clarification that confuses what should have been a clean break with the past.
To hold a firmer centre ground course, Cameron should have stuck to improving education for the many not the few. Grammar schools need not have been mentioned.
Though, I like to think this was just a hitch. And anyway, Labour are far more at risk from a leftward drift than the Conservatives are from one to the right.
Labour have been holding a centre ground course pretty consistently for ten years, and no doubt some in the party see this watershed as an opportunity to shift the party to the left. After ten years in power and three massive election wins, some will forget what made Labour electable after 18 years in opposition.
Some, indeed, are already trying to re-write history, painting a picture of a radical left-wing government elected in 1997. Both Polly Toynbee and Harriet Harman, who appear to have joined forces, have convinced themselves that Labour was elected because of its left-wing polices, and that the party should now continue in the same direction. Toynbee comments, “ Labour was not nearly as tentative back in 1997 as [some] now imagine… Remember the £5bn windfall on privatised utilities to pay for the New Deal?”.
However, Toynbee fails to mention the plethora of Conservative reforms that Labour pledged to stick to. But then, all propaganda promotes its own version of history, with the more inconvenient parts discreetly left out.
And worryingly for Labour’s electoral prospects, it seems that others are falling for the siren song of the left. Despite Labour’s 1997 pledge to stick to the Tory’s 40% top rate of tax, Peter Hain, John Cruddas and even Hillary Benn, have indicated that they want to explore the possibility of introducing a higher rate of tax or at least ways to redistribute wealth.
Tony Blair always opposed any increases in the top rate, which a politician attempting to hold a centre-ground course should do. However without Blair’s guiding influence, and with commentators like Toynbee playing tricks with history, Labour could take a fateful turn to the left.
After being out of power for ten years, the Conservatives are probably more focused on maintaining a middle ground course, and willing to swallow modernisation, like the Labour Party did in 1997, including the likes of Harriet Harman.
To return to my title, the next few years will be a case of who swerves the most from the centre ground. The Party that blinks first will push swing voters towards the party that holds its nerve, and ultimately find themselves in opposition.
