An American Centrist Looks Across the Pond
Centrists in the United States who bemoan the partisan divide might be forgiven for looking longingly at other nations that offer more to their electorate than Coke or Pepsi, aka the Republicans and the Democrats. Just two major parties might have been sufficient decades ago, when true centrists were welcomed into the fold of both parties, but as even a casual observer of politics knows, there’s not much of a welcome mat these days. Big Tent has shrunk to tiny tarpaulin. Perhaps there’s still some grudging acceptance of certain centrists by the Democrats (e.g. Barack Obama and Pete Buttigieg), but not in the GOP.
A (seemingly) golden opportunity
I was reminded of this situation in December of 2019 when the British held a General Election. Jeez, I thought, if ever there was a time for the Liberal Democrats to make some significant gains, this is it. Boris Johnson, the Tory Prime Minister, was Britain’s version of a Trumpian populist demagogue, seemingly leading the U.K. off the cliff of an irrational Brexit. And the Labour Party, then headed by Jeremy Corbyn, was offering the British electorate a Euro-skeptical, thoroughly Marxist and (it was often claimed in the British press) anti-Semitic vision of leadership. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems were headed by Jo Swinson, a relatively young and freshly appealing centrist. She had made some history by being the first British Member of Parliament to bring her newborn into the House of Commons so she could breastfeed. And she was unabashedly calling Boris Johnson out for the folly of Brexit, telling Britons that she would reverse course if the Liberal Democrats were elected to power. The (sadly) predictable result? The Liberal Democrats performed horribly on election day. Jo Swinson lost her seat in Parliament, in fact, as did veteran Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake.
A veteran liberal democrat’s perspective
As it happens, I had interviewed Tom Brake in his Westminster office on June 21, 2017, the very morning that Queen Elizabeth II was ceremonially opening Parliament and reading the speech written by Theresa May’s Conservative government. Despite this obvious distraction, Tom graciously sat down with me for a lengthy one-on-one discussion of centrism in Britain and how the Lib Dems might shed some light on the path forward for American centrists. (Note: I was interviewing Tom Brake as a founding member of The Centrist Project, now known as Unite America.)
Relevance and marginalization
Tom and I discussed where things had gone well for the Liberal Democrats in the past, including the gaining of enough seats in Parliament to be invited to form a coalition government in 2010 between the Conservative’s David Cameron and the Lib Dem’s Nick Clegg. And we also talked about why the Liberal Democrats have been unable to capitalize on those gains and become a bona fide third party choice in Britain. Ultimately, Tom laid most of the blame at the door of the prevailing means of choosing MPs, namely Britain’s “first-past-the-post” system of parliamentary elections. Unlike most European countries, which typically utilize proportional representation to elect parliamentary representatives, Britain uses the American method of winner-take-all elections. This obviously benefits the establishment parties, who have a vested interest in keeping things that way through redistricting, which establishes safe seats for their members. Or as that ever-so-witty British playwright, Tom Stoppard, once observed: “It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.”
The paucity of binary choice
I pressed Tom on this point, because it’s both a ready (and plausible) explanation for the failure of Liberal Democrats to break through to the top tier of British governmental relevance, and a possible crutch. Wouldn’t a charismatic party leader, such as a Nick Clegg (or, more recently, a Jo Swinson), with a popular message that resounds with the electorate, have an appeal when the two other parties are more polarized at the extremes? I recall Tom’s pained expression only too well. The shoulder shrug and pursed lips told me all I needed to know, that this was something he had agonized over for a great deal of time. Even having legitimacy as a centrist party, as the Liberal Democrats do in Britain, was not enough. It’s hard to beat Coke or Pepsi, whether you’re RC Cola or Dr Pepper. Maybe it’s human nature, but people like a binary choice.
Lessons for the colonials
So what are the lessons for an American centrist frustrated with the partisan divide back here in the States? Fantasize about the creation of a third party that can do it better than the UK’s Liberal Democrats? Or keep working on political reforms to make elections more responsive to the true will of the people, thereby allowing centrists of all stripes — independent, Democrat and Republican — to succeed at the ballot box? A close observation of politics across the pond would seem to dictate for the latter course of action.
