This month the Tory Party are having their leadership election, and it could be a game changer. Both surviving candidates are from the right wing of their party and that suggests that they believe the place to win elections these days in our not terribly fair first past the post voting system is somewhere right of centre. But how far? What ever happened to the centre ground being the place where you had to be in it to win it? What happened to ‘One Nation’?

Moderates

With the traditional ‘moderate conservatives’ now out of the running to be their next leader many Tories are relooking at their ‘one nation’ tradition. That’s the centre ground where they venerate traditional institutions but at least have a go at a social welfare position so that everyone looked like they might be able to benefit from a trickle-down hand me down economy. Out the window it seems. So much that many ‘centrist’ Tories are looking elsewhere. Maybe to the Lib Dems, who attempt valiantly and vainly to occupy that position, by the dubious method of being all things to all people. And in recent years by actually being in coalition with the Tories. And bringing in the last period of austerity.

Centrists

Or will it be to the new centrist Labour Party of Keir Starmer? You’d have thought with the massive majority in Parliament that ‘New’ New Labour was an attractive proposition. But already, in their own rush to the right they look like dangerously missing the centre spot and landing somewhere much further to the right. The opposite of Jude Bellingham, which is who they need to model themselves on.

Blinkered

The threat for the Tories is the hardly inexplicable rise of ReformUK. A far-right positioned party whose vision of ‘one nation’ appears to be ‘one nation, that’s us, never mind the rest’. And that’s a dangerous position to take. Slightly over the boundaries and therefore somewhat out of touch. But this resonates with large chunks of the public roused up and riled up by angry shouty Farages on the terraces spouting stuff you always wanted to hear but never thought could actually happen. And it’s this ‘one nation our nation’ blinkered vision that has spooked the Tories into thinking they need to retake that dubious ground and forsake the centre.

Vision

But what does that mean for the rest of us? Likely it means the new centre ground is there for the taking. Socialists, often excluded from Newer than New ‘New’ Labour are suddenly sitting as independents because they call for obvious caring things as maintaining the winter fuel allowance for all and the lifting of the two-child benefit cap, and that Israel might not be doing such a great peacekeeping job in the Middle East. Then there’s Greens, with a long-term vision of a world that we might still want to exist when we are dead and gone and Trades Unionists, fighting for justice at the heart of working-class communities, all with a different but similar vision of ‘one nation’. And that’s based on solidarity and community and standing up for what’s right. A ‘one nation one world’ vision. Because when it comes down to it, that’s what we are and probably a nicer way of looking at things it is too…..