Let us leave the ‘centre ground’

Maurice Saatchi says that the dull terrain of modern politics is the breeding ground of voter apathy and cynicism: the Tories must ‘climb the hill’ of idealism once more

All proponents of ‘the centre ground’ in politics take satisfaction from analogy with the game of chess. Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official world chess champion, on whose scientific principles chess is now based, said it was always good, on principle, to take an opponent’s centre pawn. In the geometry of the chessboard, control of the centre — the four central squares and the eight squares round it — takes precedence; control of the centre is needed to maintain communication between the two wings, enabling a player to bring unrivalled power to bear over the whole board.

The chess analogy proved attractive to politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, who decided, as a matter of electoral calculation, that they were better off in the centre. President Clinton made the opening gambit — a smart Left to Right move praising profit, tax breaks, the market economy, etc. Tony Blair copied the move. Eager to avoid contamination with what Marx called ‘the Spectre of Communism’, he invented New Labour, which would combine compassion with competition, freedom with fairness, etc. Between them, they won five elections in a row — a tribute, all agreed, to the power of ‘the centre ground’.

Fuelled by their electoral success, reinforced by the rise of globalisation (if barriers between countries could come down, why not between political parties?), symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall (so that there were no dragons left to slay) and endorsed by academic works such as The End of History and Beyond Left and Right, the myth of the centre ground was born and became the conspicuous feature of the age — the equivalent of a political law of gravity. The myth grew and grew until it achieved the level of dinner-party platitude in London and New York — as in the popular injunction: ‘You can only win elections from the centre ground.’

Even the Conservative party succumbed. Hurt by long years of condemnation for ice-cold brutishness, and anxious to avoid contamination with the Spectre of Thatcherism, it was relieved to shed its ‘nasty’ image with a simple move from Right to Left. Everyone hoped, like Jack Nicholson’s American president in the movie Mars Attacks, that if we could put aside our philosophical differences and come closer together, then perhaps, at last, we could all just get along. How much better, anyway, than insisting ‘My ideology is better than yours!’

Lenin and Mao were the dog-eared trump cards of those opposed to ‘ideology’. They remind us what happens when Utopian visionaries are let loose on the world, and that,

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

But if all ideologies are indefensible, then all ideologies are equal, and the centre ground becomes a moral void.

The first consequence can be seen in domestic politics. The last 20 years have seen a dramatic increase in public sophistication and awareness. People can now spot a Left/Right ‘positioning exercise’ a mile off. The motive for these moves is too transparent. Voters always suspected that politicians would say anything to get elected. Now they know it’s true.

Applied to politics today, the great Hollywood law, ‘Nobody knows anything’, should read: ‘Nobody believes anything’. One proof of this can be seen in public attitudes to UK government spending. Eighty-six per cent agree with the statement, ‘There is too much government bureaucracy and waste.’ But when asked which party is most likely to reduce government waste, the majority choose: ‘Neither’.

The same scepticism applies to the question of which party has the best economic policies. Labour has recently lost its 20-point lead over the Conservatives on this issue. However, the Conservatives have gained only two points. The other 18 points have gone to: ‘Neither’.

One direct result of this convergence on the centre ground is a super-cynical electorate and low turnouts at election time. The slowest to turn out — young people — are routinely criticised for moronic addiction to computer games and iPods. But theirs might be the most rational response to centre-ground politics. As one student said during the last election, ‘They tell you what you want to hear. There’s no actual ideology.’

With little difference between the parties on substance (which anti-ideologists would say is a good thing), image and appearance take over. So it is said that all that matters is how the politician ‘comes across’ on TV. Hardly the Athenian ideal of ‘democracy’, is it?

This absence of a moral vision may not matter too much in domestic politics. After all, nobody ever died of apathy. But inability to articulate a sense of great purpose matters more on the international stage.

Try this test at home. Which of these descriptions best fits Anglo–American society? And which best fits our enemies?

This: ‘Article of faith, conviction, moral certainty, unshaken confidence, take as gospel truth, take on trust, pin one’s faith on, take at face value, take one’s word for, buy into, be certain, have no doubt, have no second thoughts, no reservations.’

Or this: ‘Hard to believe, lack of conviction, under suspicion, credibility gap, hard to swallow, without faith, nobody’s fool, not born yesterday.’

Those are the Thesaurus meanings of ‘Belief’ and ‘Unbelief’.

The record seems to show that politics resembles war rather than chess. Generals say that the first principle of warfare is the selection and retention of aim. Generals say that you can’t win a war unless the aim is something good in the moral sense. The aim is not control of the air, or the taking of a bridge (they are ‘objectives’); the aim is the mastery of the inside of men’s minds, so that your troops believe they are fighting for a noble object.

Late in his life, Napoleon summed up how wars are won and lost. It was, he said, ‘Three parts moral. One part physical.’

Embroiled in three wars, and after many lives lost, Britain and America are still unable to express simply, in a few words, our war aim. ‘Democracy’ is sadly too abstract a concept for a world in which a British nurse on £15,000 a year is in the top 8 per cent of richest people on earth.

So what is required today more than air power, or financial power, or even manpower, is brain power; so that our ideas are more compelling, more penetrating and wiser, and all the world can see the splendour of our ideals.

If you want your country to be a ‘shining city on a hill’, then first you have to climb the hill. The centre ground is low and flat. From here you cannot see far. No man can see to the end of time. But if you climb to the high ground, there the air is purer and the sweep of naked eyesight much broader. To do that requires a certain idealism, a nobility of purpose, a marching tune that people can respond to; in other words, to be a vanguard force, not mere defenders of the status quo.

John F. Kennedy described himself, in a brilliant phrase, as ‘an idealist without illusions’. That is what is needed now to fight the War on Apathy at home and the War on Terror abroad. So come on, you Conservatives! Man the ideological barricades!