Paphos Life

Dominic wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 11:45 am For that to happen they need a leader who is pro EU.

WHL wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 11:57 am ... what if a new center party was formed with the intention of rejoining the EU, what are peoples thoughts on this.

Lofos-5 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 12:22 pm

WHL wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 11:57 am ... what if a new center party was formed with the intention of rejoining the EU, what are peoples thoughts on this.

The Economist in today's edition has some thoughts about it:


Stuck in the middle with Vince: the Lib Dem struggle

A lame-duck leader is only one of the party’s problems

THE Liberal Democrats have a sense of humour, which is lucky. Each year at the party’s autumn conference delegates gather for a sing-song, with lyrics adapted to attack Labour, the Tories and, most of all, themselves. “No one knows our message /We’ll keep it under wraps /Except on maybe Brexit /Where we’ve policies on tap,” belt out tanked-up Lib Dems, to the tune of “My Old Man’s a Dustman”.

Britain’s third party is the weirdest in Westminster. The Lib Dems know they cannot win a general election, yet refuse to countenance a coalition with their rivals. Their leader, Sir Vince Cable, has promised to step down soon, but not just yet, and still insists he may be prime minister. The Lib Dems are in danger of becoming Britain’s first post-modern party: an irony-soaked parody of a political movement, sinking giggling into irrelevance.

Labour is marching to the left and the Tories to the right, which ought to be helpful to the Lib Dems, who claim to occupy the centre ground. Yet they have not capitalised. When other options are moderate, a vote for a third party is seen as low-risk, say party staffers. Division forces voters to pick a side, rather than cast a vote for a party with little chance of winning.

To tempt cowardly voters, Sir Vince has played up the Lib Dems as a party of ideas rather than a government-in-waiting. In some areas the Lib Dems do offer something unique. In 2016 their call for a “People’s Vote” on the final Brexit deal was considered eccentric. Today half of voters back it. The Lib Dems champion other unsexy but good ideas, such as replacing business rates with a land tax, and swapping inheritance tax for a levy on gifts.

Yet they are often not different enough. Brexit aside, the gap at the centre of British politics is not as gaping as it appears. In Sir Vince’s speech, sections criticising greedy housebuilders and tax-avoiding tech firms, and a promise to improve education for older people, would not look out of place in a speech by a Tory or Labour leader. Jo Swinson, Sir Vince’s deputy (who is tipped as his successor), declared that the “social contract is broken”, another common theme. In certain policy areas, British politics is rather crowded. “If you’re in the middle of the road, you have to be bloody visible,” says Sir Ed Davey, an MP. “Otherwise you get squashed.”

A plan to make it easier for new members to join and even allow non-MPs to stand for party leader has attracted some coverage. With only 12 MPs, the party faces a long march back to prominence. An outsider or a deluge of new members would offer a short-cut.

Experiments in party democracy can backfire—as Labour MPs, who accidentally let their members pick a far-left leader in 2015, can attest. But the Lib Dems have decided that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Politics is an attention game, as the careers of populists such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson show. The Lib Dems are trying to play it. Sir Vince, who rose to prominence as a sage of the financial crisis, was reduced to labelling the push for Brexit an “erotic spasm” during his conference speech. Instead, he stumbled over the words and called it an “exotic spresm”. The headlines came. If you can’t beat them, join them. Even then, you may still lose.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Stuck in the middle with Vince"

Happy in Cyprus wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 4:44 pm ...and John Major was not far behind He could pile peas on his fork like no other politician, before or after.