Tag Archives: Centrism

Chuka Umunna? Former choirboy, but most definitely not the Messiah… In my limited spare time since commencing law school, I have been attending a wonderful Bible study group for graduate students, organized by the university’s Catholic Student Center. Having plodded our way methodically through the New Testament, last week we …

For the first time in ages, Brexit is not dominating the news. Rather, a possible change in political alliances is breaking with the departure of the 7 Blairite MPs from the Labour party under the banner of “The Independent Group”. It is certainly possible that more Blairite MPs, such as …

Many so-called liberals are great at diagnosing destructive political tribalism when it manifests in other people, but are often blind to the same pathologies within their own ranks I wrote a long piece earlier this month about deepening political tribalism as it relates to Brexit. After the piece was serialised in Country Squire Magazine, …

When unelected technocrats increasingly set policy and carry out the day-to-day business of governance we should not be surprised that electoral politics, castrated and less consequential than ever before, is becoming a circus freak show Michael Brendan Dougherty has a new piece in the National Review which so succinctly captures the state …

For many years, the most angry and bitter invective in our political discourse hailed from the far Left and Right. But now it is the supposedly rational and pragmatic centrists who are becoming unhinged and increasingly uncivilised. Like the stopped clock which still tells the correct time twice a day, …

Despite its complete and utter failure to deliver a solid electoral victory for the conservatives, or to meaningfully detoxify the Conservative Party’s “nasty party” image, the woolly, nebulous and thoroughly unhelpful concept of “compassionate conservatism” refuses to die. Following Theresa May’s abject failure in the 2017 general election – losing …

Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit… People want meaning in their lives and a purpose in their politics that dry, centrist managerialism cannot hope to provide This, by Ted Yarbrough, is very perceptive: Man does not live by bread alone. Though a religious statement by Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew …

No courage, no backbone, no vision of their own Telegraph sketchwriter Michael Deacon reports on the rapturous reception given to Jeremy Corbyn by the Parliamentary Labour Party when he entered the Commons yesterday: Labour MPs cheered Jeremy Corbyn. Genuinely. They really did. And when I say Labour MPs, I don’t …

Turns out that pooling their strength and holding hands beneath a big progressive rainbow will not help Britain’s left-wing parties get back into power after all. What a shame. Remember the Great British Progressive Majority, that overwhelmingly large (yet always infuriatingly hidden) bloc of centre-leftish voters who together wielded the …

What exactly constitutes the political centre, anyway? Is it even a real thing? And why are we so in thrall to something so vague and ill-defined? The political centre ground: people talk about it all the time. It is meant to represent the silent majority, that great conclave of wise and …