So you can imagine how delighted I was to come across the term “far centre”, which was coined by Prof Jonathan Clark, the leading British historian of the Enlightenment, in a recent lecture. Prof Clark has put his finger on something I have been thinking for a while but struggling to name: it is the centrists who have become much more extreme than the Right. Hence their deeply weird enthusiasm for porous borders through which tumble tens of thousands of young, undocumented males from misogynist cultures so alien to our own. (The migrants don’t know Latin either, but they’re not white so can be forgiven!)
Ditto that bunch’s keen support for telling children they can be born in the wrong body, and prescribing life-changing medication for vulnerable and confused adolescents. Normal people know instinctively that persuading a 15-year-old that it’s a good idea to have a double mastectomy so she can “live her best life”, while taking testosterone which will shrivel her vagina and ovaries, probably rendering her infertile for life and denying her sexual pleasure, is a simply terrible idea. It requires the unsullied purity of the progressive mind of a far-centrist for such mutilation to be considered acceptable, even desirable.
Those people are the extremists, folks, not us. In them we glimpse what happens to the human mind when it becomes untethered from objective reality and common sense. They can, for instance, claim with a straight face that there is a £22 billion black hole in the British economy while, at the same time, allocating £22 billion to a “carbon capture” plan, which may or may not do something to get us to net zero. Still, all the people in the Any Questions audience will feel a warm glow of virtue as pensioners are defrosted, which makes it all worthwhile.
One of the redoubts of the far centre is The Rest is Politics podcast, presented by Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell. This week, the pair were discussing the child-rape gang scandal and Stewart, who not that long ago fancied himself as a Tory prime minister, revealed his shameful ignorance. He appeared to think the attacks happened in only two places, Rotherham and Rochdale (actually it was up to 50 towns and cities), and it was men abusing girls aged between 13 and 16 whom they paid for sex.
Er, no, Rory, it was usually young girls aged 10 to 14, and they weren’t paid – they were the trafficked objects of sadistic sexual torture. I suppose very little can be expected from a pundit who declared with such sublime self-confidence that “I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably” despite those puzzling opinion polls – far-Right conspiracy theories, dontcha know.
Tony Blair’s former spinmeister then chipped in, saying that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick had repeated calls for a national inquiry because they were “jumping on the Elon Musk bandwagon”. I hope, Campbell said, that “this is just the start in terms of actually beginning to tackle the poison of the far Right as it is amplified through what has become a very personal megaphone for a megalomaniac”.
This reflexive progressive response to any unwelcome proof that their creed of multiculturalism has harmful side effects – deflect, deny, divert – is no longer working, because most people know the centrist dads are talking out of their posteriors. They come across as out-of-touch prats. Most people want a national inquiry into the rape gangs: it’s not far Right, it’s just the right thing to do.
Biden’s far-centrists were rejected in the US just as Starmer’s will be here. They look increasingly ridiculous. Offhand, I find it hard to think of any big issues – from phasing out petrol cars to pronouns to immigration – on which the majority of the population currently agrees with Labour. Failure to even acknowledge people’s concerns explains why Reform is up 10 points since the general election and Labour has plummeted nine with more humiliation to come.
Two of my good friends texted separately over Christmas to say they had joined Reform. They are far from the crude, knuckle-dragging stereotype of the “far Right”: one is a GP, the other a banker. Both said they wanted to DO SOMETHING to push back and help their country. They are even thinking of standing as candidates. According to Alibhai-Brown and her patronising, snotty class, such people are Right-wing bigots who support misinformation and “destabilising society”. Like hell they are. The days of the deluded centrists are nearly over – they went too far. Far too far. Now, the Right must pull us back from extremism. Any Questions should heed their answers.
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