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Okay, so this one is a straight up masterpiece, and it may help to understand that the author has a book about the Joy Of Centrism, and is also the son of former Home Secretary Charles Clarke...
Column about not applying incautiously broad labels to politicians has headline that says centrists are “sensible”: check. Immediately lumping together wildly different far right and left wing politicians: check. An auspicious start!
Yes: it shows that they will maintain their popularity over their Sensible rivals with the full support of the country’s top-selling newspapers, who will press them to impose measures that will force the public to expose themselves and others to a deadly virus.
More accurately, many internal critics were regarded as active collaborators with Britain’s extraordinarily right wing press, seeking to secure their own party’s electoral defeat because they lacked the skill or flexibility to win back control without massive media support.
Was that not true, like.
A good example here: the things Gapes and Soubry shared was an incredible belief in their own wisdom and right to lead, despite showing no aptitude or ability whatsoever, as well as an active willingness to let everything burn rather than do anything which risked helping the left
If noisily advertising your own Sensible Moderation between what you view as extremes is electorally idiotic, then we have just reduced the entire electoral pitch of Sensible Moderates to cinders, because they have little else to sell and almost nothing to say.
You know what else was a gift to populists? A totally unforced howler, voluntarily and repeatedly emphasised by Phillips herself?
Forget the part about the Sensibles striving for objectivity - can anyone think of valid, entirely non-ideological reasons why, say, the left might view the British press as enemies, while the Labour right doesn’t.
It’s not that the product is shit, it just needs a snappier title. So let’s use one and also, let’s avoid the stereotype that the only centrist alternative is to be “a sharp-suited believer in nothing” by replacing a left wing leader with... Keir Starmer.
The problems we face are far beyond our ability to resolve, requiring radicalism and appreciation of complexity, and we are the very best it’s ever going to get.
And that’s your lot. The Sensible Moderates, ladies and gentlemen - you’ve gotta love em because if you don’t, they’ll lay waste to everything in a bloodcurdling rampage of revenge, then tell you that it’s your fault for provoking their very reasonable response.
Coda, from the dude’s book: I can’t say I feel visceral hostility for these people myself - they give me more of a deep, enervating sapping sensation in my soul, and every new pronouncement is like someone spraying more black paint over my picture of any possible positive future.
Anyway, the main takeaway is that it is literally inconceivable to the moderate Sensible centrists - the edges of the concept cannot even be vaguely imafined - that they are offering a shit product that is unequal to the task, and is in large part responsible for our predicament.
(Further news about the political pedigree of the author, who was presumably given a column by the Times on pure talent and merit alone).
