The Centrist Hole 👀
What if we didn't fix anything because things are fine actually, you maniacs.
Simon McGarr over on The Gist had an amazing take on the parallels between UK’s collapsing Labour party and Ireland’s flailing Fine Gael party. Two ruling centrist parties with no ideologies, who both revile their own bases and fail to win over their opponents.
He summarised this fundamental issue with centrism (which I would say is kind of the problem with neoliberalism in general):
What unites both parties ruling cadre is the belief that beliefs, always presented as a contrast to ‘common sense’, are per-se inherently suspicious. This of course is exactly what you would term a political belief, but it is one which denies itself as such. Its proponents hold that their political beliefs are ‘centrist’, making any ones you might hold extreme and radical by definition.
The problem with treating politics as a doughnut, where the centre is consistantly defined as the hole where policy doesn’t belong is that it means you can never move the country’s discussion to anywhere it needs to go. It leaves the parties of the Hole to just react to wherever the dough is.
Well worth a read, as always.