Labour is currently espousing a new centre-ground. But how useful is this notion, asks Peter Kellner

The centre-ground is like the square root of minus one. It is extremely useful, but there is a strong case for saying that it does not actually exist beyond the minds of those who use it.

Consider the proposition that elections are normally won and lost on the centre-ground. There is a sense in which this is obviously true. Labour was unelectable in the 1980s because voters considered it too leftwing. The Conservatives were doomed to defeat between 1997 and 2005 because they lurched too far to the right. Both parties became electable again when they regained their reputation for moderation.

But what do ‘centre’ and ‘moderate’ actually mean? Suppose a complete stranger to British politics were to arrive here and seek to make sense of these terms. How would we define them? The answer, I suggest, is that we would first have to define ‘left’ and ‘right’ at any given moment. ‘Centre’ can then be defined as the political location roughly halfway between them.

This approach has an important implication: that the centre has no independent identity of its own. As ‘left’ and ‘right’ alter their meanings through time, so does the concept of the centre. In economists’ parlance, it is a price-taker, not a price-maker.

This matters because it condemns any party that claims to occupy the centre-ground to a rather sorry condition: that of letting others define the terms of political debate, and triangulating its way to the political location that may be electorally appealing but which is philosophically barren. Who was it who said, back in 1980: ‘A centre party would have no roots, no principles, no philosophy and no values’? Ah yes, Shirley Williams, who went on to prove her point by helping to set up a centrist party, the Social Democratic party, which flared briefly but lasted only seven years.

Why, then, does the centre-ground hold so much appeal to politicians? Because, like ‘i’, the square root of minus one, it has real practical value.

From time to time, YouGov asks people where they place themselves on a seven-point scale, from very leftwing to very rightwing. Leaving out those who say ‘don’t know’, a large majority always plump for one of the three most central locations: centre, or ‘slightly’ left- or right-of-centre. Unsurprisingly, they tend to prefer parties and politicians that they suppose share broadly the same place on the left-right scale. One of Tony Blair’s great achievements was to persuade a large slice of the electorate that he was as moderate as them.

So, when a leading figure such as Liam Byrne says Labour must occupy the centre-ground to win the next election, he is, at one level, simply saying that Labour must so conduct itself that most voters regard it as on the same political wavelength as themselves. And he is absolutely right to insist on this fundamental truth.

That, however, is not the end of the matter. A party that has ‘no roots, no principles, no philosophy and no values’, and merely replays voters’ attitudes back to them will be seen for what it is: a shallow, cynical election machine.

In other words, perceived extremism will ensure defeat, but perceived centrism does not on its own guarantee victory. Other ingredients are needed. Complex polling analysis leads to the same conclusion as practical experience and plain common sense: victory requires a reputation for competence, strength of purpose, trustworthiness and the sense that a party’s leader is ‘on my side’.

That is where Labour and Ed Miliband need to concentrate their efforts. They are not in the same position as Labour in the early 1980s. Few people today fear that the left threatens to take over the party, and the few who do think that are never going to vote Labour anyway. But not enough people think a Miliband government would be competent and strong. The swing voters that will decide the next election broadly think Labour understands their lives better than the Tories do, but they are not sure Labour can be trusted to convert laudable sentiments into effective action.

Labour’s main task is to provide that reassurance. This means moving beyond triangulation and painting a picture of what Britain in the Miliband era would look like. Labour needs to develop and then describe clear policies on issues such as welfare reform and public services in an era when money is tight. These policies need to be detailed and able to withstand rigorous examination.

That is not to say that voters will crawl over such policies with a fine-tooth comb. They won’t. People whose votes are up for grabs tend not to follow every twist and turn of policy formation. They form broad judgements about parties and their leaders. Think of the process as like bringing out, say, a new BMW model. People buy BMWs because they trust the brand, but they trust the brand because the company has developed a deserved reputation for outstanding engineering. It is not that more than one in a thousand BMW drivers knows or cares about, say, the precise alloys used to make the engine, but they do care that the company knows what it is doing.

Labour’s task is much the same. It must do the ‘political engineering’ – the policy development – to the very highest standard. It then needs to achieve a reputation for rigour, and convert this into Labour becoming, once again, a trusted political brand. Being regarded as a centrist party plays a vital part in the process, just as the square root of minus one plays a vital role in meteorology. But there is far more to being a successful politician than being a centrist, just as there is far more than ‘i’ to forecasting the weather.

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Peter Kellner is president of YouGov