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DEBATE: Is the timing now right for a new centre party like the Independent Group to flourish?

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Is the timing now right for a new centre party like the Independent Group to flourish?

Ben Kelly, commentator for Reaction, says YES.

There is no doubt that the odds are stacked against a new centre party, but it’s a case of “if not now, when?”.

The far left has completed a successful top-down takeover of the Labour party, and the Conservatives are gripped by Brexit mania. The European Reform Group is acting as an English nationalist party within a party, and all potential leadership candidates are already playing to the gallery of Tory members.

Centrists and liberals have been left feeling sidelined and politically homeless, and there is an electoral constituency for their values.

I doubt whether a new centre party can have the rapid rise and success of Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche in France, but if it is able to get itself properly established before the next election, it could win a few seats, prevent the Corbyn mob from getting into Downing Street, and exert influence over the government.

This would be a successful first step on a much longer journey to becoming a major political force.

Oliver Wiseman, editor of CapX, says NO.

The message delivered by the seven MPs who resigned from Labour on Monday was a powerful one.

A stark conclusion united their frustration at Jeremy Corbyn, who has overseen a lurch to the far left, consistently failed to deal with the party’s problem of institutional antisemitism, offered woeful opposition on Brexit, and cannot be trusted on national security: this is not the party I joined.

But when three former Conservative MPs joined their ranks on Wednesday, the waters were muddied. Suddenly the Independent Group looked less like Labour in exile, and more like a catch-all shelter for the politically homeless.

The unifying issue is Brexit. It might be all anyone in politics is interested in at the moment, but it is hard to see how the Independent Group will succeed in their mission to stop it from happening.

Once we leave the EU, these MPs will realise just how little they have in common, and voters will struggle to understand what gap in the political market they have filled.