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For well over a century, centre-left politics has been the engine of progressive change in Britain – building the welfare state, championing civil liberties, advancing social equality, and managing the economy with both competence and compassion. Yet today, many who hold these values find themselves politically homeless, watching as the very ground beneath their feet shifts inexorably rightward.
The centre has moved. And if you haven’t noticed, you might be standing further right than you think or indeed want.
Consider where we are. The Labour Party, once the champion of social democracy, now operate within a narrower fiscal envelope than Gordon Brown ever contemplated. Keir Starmer’s Labour speaks the language of “fiscal responsibility” that would have made Alistair Darling blush, eschewing transformative public investment in favour of incremental managerialism. The Overton window on economic policy has shifted so dramatically that proposing the levels of public spending normal in the 1970s now marks you as a dangerous radical.
One Nation Conservatives – those who once believed in noblesse oblige, social cohesion, and the careful stewardship of national institutions – find their tradition hollowed out. The party of Macmillan and Heath, which built council houses and accepted the post-war consensus, has given way to a harder edge. What passes for moderate Conservatism today might have been considered extreme Thatcherite radicalism forty years ago.
Even the Liberal Democrats, historically the conscience of British liberalism, have trimmed their sails. The party that once championed radical constitutional reform and robust social investment now positions itself as merely “sensible”, a tepid alternative rather than a transformative force.
The ground shifted in 2008
This isn’t coincidental. It’s structural. Since the 2008 financial crisis, austerity’s intellectual architecture has reframed what’s considered economically “responsible.” The collapse of Corbynism discredited anything smacking of traditional social democracy. Brexit pulled the entire political conversation rightward on immigration and national sovereignty. And the cost-of-living crisis has been met not with bold state intervention, but with means-tested and mean-spirited incrementalism.
The result? Policies that would have been uncontroversial centre-left positions twenty years ago substantial investment in public housing, progressive taxation, robust workers’ rights, meaningful climate action, constitutional reform, are now treated as an outrageous infringement on sovereignty, freedoms and rights, not merely a radical departures from “the centre.”
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: if the centre has moved right, and you’ve moved with it, you’re no longer centre-left. You’re centre-right with a social conscience hopefully intact.
What are the values and aims of the centre?
This is why we need something different – not another political party destined to replicate the same compromises and drift, but a movement. A Moderate Centre built on the principles of “common ground for common sense,” drawing from the best insights of the ‘Third Way’ while avoiding its pitfalls.
The Third Way, for all its flaws, understood something crucial: that pragmatic policy isn’t about splitting the difference between left and right, but about using whatever tools work to achieve progressive and cooperative ends. Blair and Clinton were right that markets could be harnessed for social good, that aspiration and solidarity weren’t contradictory, and that evidence should trump ideology. Where they failed was in accepting too readily the constraints placed on them by vested interests and in not challenging the underlying power structures that perpetuated inequality.
A Moderate Centre movement must be more ambitious. It should:
Anchor itself in established centrist liberal values; individual freedom, tolerance, pluralism, and dignity—while remaining ruthlessly adaptable on policy. These principles don’t shift rightward or leftward with political fashion; they provide a fixed point from which to judge the drift.
Champion pragmatic radicalism; be willing to use state power boldly where markets fail (housing, healthcare, education) while embracing market mechanisms where they succeed (innovation, efficiency, consumer choice). This isn’t centrism as cowardice; it’s centrism as clear-eyed problem-solving.
Operate outside party structures; remaining free from the tribal loyalties and electoral calculations that force parties rightward. A movement can say what parties cannot: that the emperor has no clothes, that the centre has moved, and that genuine centre-left politics requires reclaiming ground that’s been surrendered or abandoned.
Build coalitions across party lines; bringing together Labour members uncomfortable with timidity, One Nation Tories dismayed by their party’s direction, Liberal Democrats frustrated by marginalization, and the politically homeless who recognize that the current choice is no choice at all.
Educate and agitate; making visible the rightward shift, naming it, and refusing to accept that today’s “realism” is anything other than yesterday’s conservatism repackaged.
Cooperation is the key
This isn’t about nostalgia for some social democratic golden age. It’s about recognizing that the political centre is not a fixed point in space but a contested territory constantly being redefined by those with power and resources. If centre-left individuals don’t actively fight to define where the centre is, others will define it for them and so far they have, consistently, and ever rightwards.
The Moderate Centre offers an alternative: a politics that is radical in its ambitions but moderate in its methods, uncompromising on principles but flexible on policy, comfortable with markets where they work but unafraid of state power where they don’t. It’s the politics that says you can be both pro-business and pro-worker, both fiscally prudent and socially ambitious, both realistic about constraints and determined to change them.
Eyes right, centre left. Not because that’s where you should go, but because that’s where you need to look to see how far you’ve drifted. The question is whether you’ll notice and whether you’re prepared to do something about it.
A Moderate Centre: Common Ground for Common Sense.
Andrew MacGregor is a former Liberal Democrat councillor who is now a Liberal Party activist.
