"Need to reinvigorate the centre"
There is at the minute, an effort being undertaken by the ghosts of recent parliamentary history, to insist that what is required in not only British, but global politics, is a revamping of what is typically labelled 'the centre ground'. Tony Blair appeared on the Andrew Marr show two weekends ago, arguing for this pretty much verbatim, while Nick Clegg, in his dead-man-walking role on the increasingly comical Newsnight, ended his showpiece on the Brexit deal with footage of him listening to a small group of sixth-formers, each declaring a wish for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives to 'get their act together', to 'offer people something fresh and different' in order to stop people going 'extreme left or extreme right'. It's clear from this language that the self-styled centrists have learned nothing at all from the last one, five, ten or even twenty years. Firstly, the idea of politics as a shopping mall: a place consumers gather in to pi