As the conference seasons gets into its stride, we hear a lot from politicians and commentators about the centre ground of politics.There is a class of politician which sees it not just as the safest place to be, but the point from which all political wisdom flows. They see the right and left wings as extremities to which nutters journey without hope of ever seeing power. And to centrists power is everything.
There is another way of looking at things and one favoured by this blog. This holds that there is no power in the centre at all. It is all in the wings. You cannot have a political centre without wings any more than you can have a town centre without a town. In a capitalist democracy there are two competing engines of power. Capital and labour. For the society to work fairly and for the economy to prosper at all levels, the two must be approximately balanced in terms of the energy they can bring to bear. Either can exercise power, depending on the choice of voters, but whichever does, is held back from excess by the opposing power of the other.
The Left promotes the interests of labour. By that we mean all those who earn a living in a job vital to the running of a civilized state which can never make them rich. A nurse, a teacher, a bin man, a care worker, a train driver, a power engineer; the list goes on and on.
The Right promotes the interests of capital. Capital includes those with property and wealth but above all represents those whose incomes have no glass ceiling, because what they do has less connection to the public good and more to do with individual achievement. It may involve financial risk and includes the fabled entrepreneurs. They always class themselves as the wealth creators. They are but they are not alone because labour creates by its toil far more, but it shares it out among the many. Capital organises itself so that as much wealth as possible is held in the hands of just a few.
Politicians, good ones, spring from either of these two wings, disciplines or convictions, call them what you will. Dull and uninspiring politicians who come without any conviction, other than the advancement of their own careers to wield power, prefer the centre. That is why they should be left there and ignored.