In the years before the 2008 financial crisis, it was sometimes said that Labour’s David Miliband, the Conservatives’ David Cameron and the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg could plausibly belong to the same party. All shared a metropolitan world-view and commitment to economic and social liberalism, and to traditional foreign and defence policy. Though differences endured (such as on EU integration), what united them was more important than what divided them. Those who stood outside this consensus – the Labour left and the Tory right – were derided as irrelevant and outmoded.
The new Independent Group, consisting of eight former Labour MPs and three former Conservatives, is many things: a vehicle to oppose Brexit and socialism, an expression of solidarity with a Jewish MP (Luciana Berger) against anti-Semitism, and a Burkean assertion of the primacy of “representatives” over party delegates. But perhaps above all, it is an attempt to revive the UK’s dormant centre after multiple humiliations, including Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide leadership victories, the 2016 Leave vote and the Liberal Democrats’ electoral routs.
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