I am allergic to attempts to define Liberalism and the role of Liberal Democrats in terms of “the centre”. If I thought Liberal Democrats were only aspiring to be a centre party I would have left years ago. More than sixty years ago I joined a party whose leader regularly described the Liberals as a “non-socialist radical alternative.”
In recent years the left/right terminology (which goes back to the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century) has become even less useful than it was in the Grimond era. The same may be said of “centre-ism.” Even if we take seriously the old left/right spectrum, the centre is a slippery place for doing politics because it moves as parties move who may or may not see themselves as in the centre.
I think the “One Nation Conservatives” who are now becoming an endangered species, understand this. They see themselves as belonging to a mainstream Conservative tradition for whom crude populism is anathema whether it is expressed through Reform or from within their own Conservative party.
I suspect the temptation to want to occupy some sort of centre ground belongs to a pattern now coming to end in which politics was dominated by Labour and Conservative parties who expected to get their turn at governing. This went with a see-saw model. For a sizeable chunk of the electorate it was relatively easy to see Liberals as the party which was not Labour or Conservative.
However thinking of the traditional duopoly as left and right ends of a see-saw may have been profoundly unhelpful. Trying to make sense of Conservative and Labour history may seem like an indulgence at a time of multiple crises but I think it helps us to avoid the pitfalls of taking “the centre” too seriously.
From time to time on this site it has been noted that Labour is perceived differently by Lib Dems in different parts of the UK, including different parts of England. The places where Labour have been running local government for many decades without too much opposition are often places where Lib Dems have the least enthusiasm for co-operation with Labour. If Labour are seen as dangerous it is because they have been dangerously conservative and authoritarian.
Kemi Badenoch and some of her front bench colleagues claim to have discovered dangerous socialism within the present Labour government. I find it interesting that Reform don’t go near that one. They probably prefer to deal in vitriol and prejudice than in any political thinking.
I have never wanted to espouse socialism but I regard it as a respectable political tradition in this country, worthy of debate and disagreement, but never dangerous. The boots on the ground have never been there. Socialists have never made much headway within the ranks of British Labourism.
Many Labour MPs will happily consider themselves to be part of social democracy. There are those who were elected as Labour and Co-op with funding from the Co-operative Party. The latter has some values which have a certain appeal to Liberals but they have a long tradition of losing votes at Labour conferences.
In the present climate I think it unrealistic to see an equivalence of extremism between socialism and the Conservative and Reform corridor, fuelled by a hatred of all things foreign and a dangerous post-colonial myth of British greatness which ignores the best of British values and soft power. Locating dangerous extremism is not that difficult!
* Geoff Reid is a Methodist minister who spent the first twelve years of retirement from the day job as a Bradford City Councillor but has lived in Barnsley since 2024.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Endometriosis and acetylation
Reform makes first gain from Conservatives in this by-election cycle
How Chancellor Reeves torpedoed the economy
The Disneyfication of Hayley Mills
Michael Meadowcroft: A Liberal of Intellectual Rigour and Uncommon Integrity
Daniel Walker
Peter Martin
Chris Cory
Ruth Bright
15 Comments
Fully agree with this article. The idea of left, right and centre, was always a lazy, two dimensional way of viewing something very complex. Some voters are social liberal and economically conservative while others are economically liberal and socially conservative – they have little in common though neither would describe themselves as left or right.
Very much agree with your comments on “the centre ” Liberal Democrats should avoid being boxed in by this description . We should remain a cutting edge radical party not confined the narrow left /right arguments . But free to challenge the state , attacks on civil liberties , standing up for communities and those less able to have their voices heard above the clammer of vested interest and professional lobbyist .
“The idea of left, right and centre, was always a lazy, two dimensional way of viewing something very complex.”
Seconded
“Non-socialist radical alternative “
Yep, that’s always been an attractive description. A pity we don’t incorporate it in some sort of attempt to give our party an image to which people can relate. But we don’t, do we……it’s all “promises” devoid of substance and structure.
Excellent article.
You have perfectly articulated the anxieties and concerns I have when people try to describe the centre or use the traditional left-right spectrum. We should avoid boxing ourselves into narrow definitions or other boxes like the equally undefined “middle England” which seems to swap and share clothes with various political leanings on the given day.
We have long been a party of radical and reformist traditions. We need to go back to firmly root ourselves on our radical, liberalist principals. Its about having a healthy cyncism of authority BUT understanding the state has an enabling role for people’s destiny. Yes, as said “non-socialist radical alternative” and I think thats key, needing for an alternative.
And I agree with the diagnosis that the old left right nothing is now obsolete as it loses currency and application. Great piece.
The SDP is in our blood and we should own that. Liberal DEMOCRATs after all, not just liberals. I have long said I’d be an SDP voter or an independent co-op party member – if they hadn’t sold their soul out to Labour, that is.
Sarah….SDP a different beast these days.
They are one of the loudest cheerleaders for Glasman’s Blue Labour.
I’m not sure that “centre” is the problem here. Left and Right do, however, seems redundant. The poles seem multifarious, and neither the traditional left or right can easily be transposed onto those poles. I’m thinking of things like – centralism vs localism; nativism vs openness; authoritarianism vs democracy; inward focus vs outward focus; nationalism vs internationalism; conspiracy vs evidence. And so on. If we look at the world in those sort of terms, then no, we are not centrists, we’re radical! We stand for freedom, fairness and an outward, (and European) focus.
We have had a succession of Labour and Tory governments for decades and the big wake up call should have been the vote for Brexit in 2016. Where did that vote come from? Mostly in the deprived communities, which turned on Labour in 2019 and delivered the Tories a big win in 2019 where the party won seats it had never before won from the traditionally Labour Red Wall seats.
After the vote for Brexit, it was agreed on the centre and the left that not enough had been done to give people hope in these deprived communities. Labour are back in power again, but they seem – again – to be unable to deliver. So now voters are turning to the extremes on the left and right – mostly on the right.
Back in the 1930s during the economic depression it looked like society could go down the road of communism or fascism. Fortunately Keynesian economic policies brought prosperity to people who never had it before and we continued as a democracy.
Today in some ways seems similar. Unless we can find an economic policy that can transform the lives of people living in the deprived communities (and not many of them vote for us anymore), then the radical policies of Reform and the Greens may dominate our politics after the next general election for a long time to come.
Geoff, you are entirely correct in your analysis. Like you, I joined a party which Jo Grimond explicitly defined as a “non-Marxist party of the left”, standing for radical politics of liberty, equality and democracy. The term “non-Marxist” was essential as it explained why Liberals did not see stateist determinism, especially the Leninist variety of a vanguard party (which creates a new form of elitism), as an acceptable form of government. Marx was generally correct in identifying much of the causes of inequality (of power as much as wealth) as the evils to be tackled; where Marx and Engels went wrong is in their prescription of the actions needed, as they failed to take into account the human nature of that part of the population which believed they knew the right solution and wanted exclusive power to put those solutions into practice, i.e., to impose them on the rest of the population. Where Labour went wrong from the start was in adopting the idea of “democratic centralism”, and then compelling all their followers to take that course. In a multi-string British policy, they are now seeing fracturing of their support, and are incapable to altering course.
@ Rif,
Labour has never adopted a policy of Democratic Centralism. This would have imposed strict discipline on all party members. Not just MPs or Cabinet members. So, for example, Labour has allowed those who are both pro and anti the UK’s membership of the EU to express their views. There are those who favour more nationalisation and those who are happy to go along with the Tories’ privatisations. There are those who are pro Israel and others who are pro Palestine.
None of this would be possible if so-called democratic centralism had been imposed. It’s really means do-as-you’re-told-by-the leadership. The Trotskyist sects have such a policy. Even if there is even a slight disagreement a faction will split away and form a new party. This is why there are so many different competing groups. The Monty Python team in ‘Life of Brian’ had it spot-on.
The largest, the SWP, came about in the 50s because a group took view that the USSR was State Capitalist rather than a “degenerate workers state” which was the orthodox Trotskyist line. They were expelled. The SWP themselves are no better. It’s all quite absurd.
Having said this, Starmer has tightened things up a lot. The PLP is a largely a bland collection of ‘yes’ men and women. The dissident personalities of the past such as Dennis Skinner and Tony Benn are no longer there. Starmer has expelled the left and is attacked on two fronts. He’s never going to cope with that.
In the 80s the alliance was centrist and roy Jenkins said it was the radical centre between two extremes of Labour and Conservatives. They were seen as class based and Labour is a socialist based class envy party that doesn’t like private property or families saving a bit of money for themselves. What is wrong with being centrist?
@ David : “In the 80s the alliance was centrist”.
As a Liberal parliamentary candidate in 1983, David, I can tell you that it wasn’t. We had Keynesian economic policies in the campaign. In the words of Max Boyce, “I know ‘cos I was there”.
What I will concede is that some of the SDP were to the right of those of us who were Liberals.
Thanks David r for your comments. I was an SDP member and mistakenly viewed them ad being some mid point between rampant Bennite socialism and hard-core toryism. The tragedy of 1983 was that the alliance just failed to come second and could have replaced the stale and socialist labour party.
I’m not sure I fully understand this article. To me the centre ground is the place of compromise, balancing and fairness. You can’t please all the people all the time though you can please most people some of the time. It is certainly a risky place to be though that’s no reason not to embrace the challenge.