Only a majority in Parliament can change the UK. Bringing together hundreds of MPs takes work, compromise, and a common belief in the necessity of slow, hard grind. Since Boris Johnson won’t manage that... who will?
It won’t be Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, about as competent at healing divisions as it has been able to translate the gobbledegook of a Labour Brexit.
There’s a huge political space and millions of stranded voters. Defining that space and making it stand for something positive could be an opportunity to redraw the map of 21st Century politics. On Thursday night, Chuka gave that possibility a fresh boost. Yet just as his decision is necessary, it’s also nowhere near enough. A liberal majority in Parliament is the new measure of success.
Can that really be done? Can the Liberal Democrats really win a General Election? There’s a lesson from history here. In fact last week saw an unmarked anniversary. On the same day we remember D-Day, there was also another, older and more peaceful milestone in the history of liberal democracy and internationalism. This turning point took place on 6 June 1859, when a disparate group, perhaps strangely like Chuka Umunna, met to form the Liberal Party.
At the time their factional differences looked more important than the bigger issues which united them. Nevertheless, liberal-minded business people, moderate conservatives and activist radicals met together to form a new political party. That progressive movement went on to bring in universal education, votes for women and the beginnings of the modern welfare state.
You might say today’s politics is totally different from 160 years ago, and that a Liberal government is a historical irrelevance. But right now in 2019, the polls actually support the possibility. For the first time in over a century, the Lib Dems have soared to first place in voting intention for a General Election.
And there’s more support to be found. A 52% majority across the UK now support remaining in the EU, according to the latest overall poll-of-polls from NatCen Social Research.
Europe isn’t everything either. Education, aspiration and privilege are seen through a liberal lens. We live in a socially liberal country, with landslide majorities in all the polls for equal marriage, human rights and freedom of expression.
All those years ago, the broad alliance that would become the Liberal Party formed as opposition to a Conservative cabinet which had “lost all weight in the Councils of Europe” and “was not fit to be any longer entrusted with the conduct of our foreign relations”according to The Times the next day, in an article that almost magically mirrors their interview this morning with Chuka.
It’s an amazing parallel. But today’s situation actually calls for even more urgency. Brexit risks not just a marginalisation in European politics, but a destruction of Britain’s global reputation, an attack on free and fair trade in favour of captive, corrupt and insular capitalism. Collective madness in the Conservative Party could cause a new age of austerity, and a new mood of intolerance.
If the public is liberal, why isn’t politics? What has failed? This isn’t a matter of blame or changing fundamental beliefs. It’s about redirecting and combining a natural alliance into a tangible political force.
There’s no point just hoping for a realignment of politics. It has to be done. I’m talking to conservative moderates like you Rory Stewart — soon to be homeless in the Boris Brexit Party — and socially liberal, internationalists like you Ruth Davidson. It means centrists expelled from Labour like you, Alastair Campbell, and social democrats like you, Mike Gapes.
Of course you can work together. You can’t just sit and hope. I’m also talking to you, Jo Swinson and Ed Davey, because being a leader of a liberal movement will take guts. You’ll need to take risks and make mistakes, move fast and lead with imagination. Realignment of politics is going to take leadership from the centre too.
But it can be done, it’s been done before, and one day it will happen. So why not now? When has the opportunity been greater? When has the need been more urgent? The UK’s real leadership race is a race to channel ambition into a bigger goal, to put people across the country before party lines and a new liberal alliance before personal plans.
Liberalism is alive. But it’s time to wake up, time to turn an inclination into a movement. It’s time to make liberalism of all flavours into a combined party of government.
Thursday’s news was about one MP, Boris Johnson, and his assault on Downing Street. Friday’s is also about one MP called Chuka Umunna, who’s shown how fast things can change if we want them to.
The real question is: can tomorrow’s headlines be about hundreds more? And will we have to wait another 160 years to see it happen?
Adam Kirby is a member of the Liberal Democrats