On The Move!

A report from the Legatum Institute shows that voters are strongly disenchanted with capitalism, calling it greedy, selfish, corrupt, divisive and dangerous. Voters heavily favour regulating business and capping executive pay, and are overwhelmingly in favour of nationalising utilities, while they are also willing to pay higher taxes to fund things such as increased spending on the NHS. A YouGov poll shows that a majority of people identify themselves as centrists politically while locating Labour well to the left of centre and the Conservatives well to the right on the political spectrum.

There is certainly space for a new centrist party and there are many MPs who would abandon their current party, both on the left and right. They are only lacking a leader.

Mrs May would be perfect: her views match those of the voters, she works by consensus and she is captive to her own party's Brexit headbangers.

Sadly, this solution seems unlikely. Mrs May is loyal and too unimaginative to see how much good she could do by stepping out. Moreover, it would be asking too much of the Labour rebels to accept her as their new leader.

Mr Johnson would do it if he thought that he would win the general election, but he would end up in a party of one. Apart from him there appears to be no one with the ambition and the will to risk rolling the dice.

It would be interesting to run similar polls in France, where a new party has swept to power, headed by a young and untested leader and having many députés who have spurned their former parties. Mr Macron worked in government and in business before he formed En Marche!, including some time in the post of Minister of Economy and Finance. However he never stood for office until his presidential bid.

What Britain needs now is someone like him, someone who will take the best ideas from our current political establishment and filter out the dated doctrine. Mr Macron's example gives hope to centrists. We aren't restricted to shuffling the political pack. The time is right for someone new.