Bernard Ingham: Party united only against Brexit is last thing we need

The nationalists – Scots, Welsh and Irish – are queing up with the Liberal Democrats and Europhile Labour and Tory MPs to make life difficult for Theresa May and thereby help those on the Continent disposed to be awkward about our departure.

And the UK Independence Party (Ukip) will do its best to justify its continuing post-Nigel Farage existence by trying to hold the Government to a hard, tungsten reinforced, Brexit

The truth is that the conspiracies against Brexit hide the abject poverty of political discourse in the country today.

Jeremy Corbyn knows what he wants: a socialist government red in tooth and claw but presented as Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs’ only reliable friend. He is as near to the acceptable face of Momentum’s hard line Trots and Len McCluskey’s Unite as you can get.

But Labour is deeply split and the Tories are fractured, too – and not merely over Brexit.

Mrs May is saddled with her once-stated view that the Tories are “the nasty party”. Her response on entering No 10 was passionately to aim to raise up the working man in terms a Labour moderate would have found more or less acceptable, if you ignore her daft idea of putting workers on boards.

If you want to find out how nasty a government can get, elect Corbyn and McCluskey at your peril.

In short, Brexit is concealing probably the most arid ideological desert we have seen in Britain since the Second World War. The only response coming out of Westminster is the idea of forming a new national central party perhaps called the Democrats.

It would be a curious title for a bunch led by Remainers who reject the decision of the people in last year’s referendum.

The last thing we need is a new centre party united only in opposition to Brexit. Do we really want to rescue the Liberal Democrats and their political pygmy leader, Tim Farron, when they are neither use nor ornament?

Such a Democratic party would by definition be extremist, not just because it wants to overturn the EU referendum result. It would in fact be a fifth column working to end Hugh Gaitskell’s “one thousand years of history” by sinking the UK in a federal United States of Europe.

I fully accept that Brexit is going to preoccupy our politicians for the next two years. It is important not merely for the UK but also for Europe and the world that we get a deal that is generally seen to be reasonable.

But I venture to suggest that the health of our democracy over the medium term will turn on how well our parties can use the time between now and 2020 when the next election is due, assuming Mrs May does not need to secure an earlier mandate, to fashion a practical, appealing and distinctive philosophy.

Labour has the harder task. To start with the hard Left is probably in control of a majority of its constituencies and there is no new Neil Kinnock around to clean out this Augean stable again. But the moderate majority of its MPs in Westminster are not merely in fear of being de-selected: they are simply confused about what they stand for.

Moreover, a “centrist” combination of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did nothing for the party’s reputation. Going to war in Iraq under false pretences and leaving a record budget deficit of £153bn savaged those “centrist” pretensions.

Labour has much to live down before it can come up with a new appeal. Does it want to go on fighting the class war or liberate the people to work constructively for a better future. Does it want people to get on or not?

The Tories need to maximise their advantage in economic management, assuming they get the nation out of the red. But that is not enough. We need to know how the professed drive to help those “just about managing” will be reflected through a thriving economy in a viable NHS; a welfare system that works; an education system driven by learning not by social engineering; law and order based on a new discipline from nursery school to ripe adulthood; and a defined role in the world.

We don’t expect Utopia from any party but it would be refreshing to feel we know what guides them.