Agree peregina. I'm going to quote the much loved pete north on this for a reason.
Pete North @ petenorth33
1. So what will this new party be? It's all far too predictable. The ultra remainers will jump aboard, along with a few z list political failures and shitbird politicos who think their brand of lefty bollocks is centrism.
2. Polly T and Teh Grauniad will praise it from a distance but never endorse it. It might attract a couple of lame duck MP detectors and the remain-o-mongs will describe it as "a blow against the establishment". We will all laugh because it WILL be hilarious.
3. They will spend a shit load of money on full page ads in newspapers nobody reads and will have a bus of their own because, you know, we plebs just can't resist a political bus. We will laugh some more. It will then split the vote nine different ways IF they can even mobilise.
4. Candidates will be buck toothed Lib Dem types and #FBPE crusaders who have no idea how to relate to working class northerners. They'll waste a boatload of money on things they think won the referendum but actually have zero effect.
5. The basic problem is it will be modelled on Ed Miliband's Labour - wailing about austerity and how that was really what caused Brexit. Basically a party of yesteryear's nonentities who want to wind the clock back to 2010 as though new Labour never left office.
6. The message will be completely tone deaf but utterly convinced they are in tune with the masses - but will have no movement behind them, no real plan and though they will get boat hours of BBC time, nobody real will take a second look at them.
7. At that point the investors will realise theyve recruited a bunch of drongos and will slow funding while they all fight like rats in a sack, one of them is done for embezzlement and somebody senior outed as an antisemite/paedophile - and none of us will be remotely surprised.
8. That's if the party even makes it off the drawing board - which it probably won't because we're still leaving the EU and there's a major reckoning on the horizon. NOBODY wants a bunch of virtue signalling Waitrose liberals and patronising europhiles in charge of anything.
The fundamental problem is right here.
If its a 'liberal' party that virtue signals and can't cope with language like Norths it won't work. For it to work, it'll have to be a party that believes in the consensus building party of liberal democracy. And thats going to require a certain amount of 'nose holding' and a willingness to compromise. Whether that is even possible up against competition from the LDs and Labour I do wonder. To have any chance of working, it would have to have a leader from the north because its a matter of trust and appearances.
As desperate as I am for a new centre, I am hold similar concerns (though I certainly wouldn't phrase like North). Could you be in a party with people like North, is the big question. If you don't think you could then it highlights the intrinsic problem over how society really has divided. The fundamental issue is being able to see past where someone is a dickhead and be able to admit where they have a point despite how they presented it.
(Fundamental issue with the whole 'all leavers are racist' thing, when you can't see the validity of other arguments even if you disagree with them and think they are fundamentally flawed.)
Are we in a place where consensus building between middle class remainers, liberal leavers and left of centre working class northerners (who are both remain and leavers) is remotely possible? Cos I think thats what it would have to be.
I think the appalling manner North makes the point, highlights the underlying problem even more.
Im not feeling it, from this article. Hope im wrong.