It was a Saturday morning and the concert arena at the Ministry of Sound was packed with students, graduates and Tik-Tokers all waiting to hear from the line-up of high-profile politicians about to come on stage; the political equivalent of Glastonbury festival in which Travis Scott and Chapelle Roan are substituted for Zack Polanski and Michael Heseltine. The renowned central London nightclub didn’t immediately strike you as the most natural stomping ground for the latter speaker – a former Deputy Prime Minister and one-time Tory leadership contender who orchestrated the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. But such is the eccentricity of British politics that here was a 92-year-old man addressing a room full of teenagers about the future of democracy. I couldn’t help but notice however the sobering indifference to his presence on stage among the audience and, even, a blanket confusion as to who Heseltine even is. Never mind the plea in his speech that ‘this country plays a full part’ in restoring the rule of law to ‘a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Europe’ – what the audience really wanted was for the next speaker, Zack Polanski, to waltz on stage and rally the crowd behind a series of scathing attacks on the ‘old establishment’. This is what politics looks like in 2025 Britain.
The counter-position between Polanski and Heseltine may seem somewhat trivial but their relationship is symbolic of the wider dynamics that now operate in our political sphere. On the one hand, a 92-year-old man synonymous with a brand of conservatism that is virtually non-existent anymore and on the other, 43-year-old Polanski who has branded himself an ‘eco-populist’ and caused Green Party membership to overtake the Conservatives at 126,000. What’s striking is that while coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum, Polanski’s call for an end to the ‘old establishment’ could have been said in a political rally by Nigel Farage or Donald Trump. This speaks to a wider paradox of recent political discourse; just as the left and the right have diverged away from the centre to ever-increasing extremes, simultaneously there has been a convergence in their respective ideologies as to how the state is broken and how only by dismantling the ‘establishment’ can this dilemma be rectified. Polanski is not alone in driving this new lurch to the extremes. Half a million people signed up to Corbyn and Sultana’s Your Party within 3 days and Reform UK membership now totals 230,000. In this, the difference between left and right has never been more stark and yet more similar in direction at the same time.
In my view, Heseltine’s proximity outside the poles of the political spectrum provides us with unique insight as to exactly how the centre ground should fill the vacuum left by the flocking of Gen Z to the extremes. Unfortunately, the need for a new radicalism from the centre ground has become as banal and vague a term as the phrases ‘delivery’ and ‘modernisation’ are thrown around in political circles. The challenge is to inscribe this term with meaning. For decades the centre ground has been seen as the point in which the difference between left and right is merely split. What’s ironic however is that far from splitting the difference, the centre ground has the potential to be the space where the most radical solutions are conceived while exposing the façade of radicalism espoused by the hard left and hard right. Take the issue that has driven the biggest wedge through the left-right contours of politics this last decade: immigration. Left and right seem obsessed by the issue of immigration while scalable solutions remain elusive. For the right the answer has simply become mass deportations while slashing all foreign aid and assistance which stops people becoming displaced from their home countries in the first place. And on the other side, the left seems to have conflated being pro-immigration with denying the problem of uncontrolled immigration as a legitimate issue for voters at all. Both perspectives have no purchase on the real world. Centrists must, for example, show that rewriting the ECHR is a superior alternative to leaving it altogether – a policy which has become a silver bullet for the Conservatives and Reform. But crucially, we must make the case that the only way to stem irregular migration flows in the long-term is to tackle the root cause of displacement in the developing world; an absence of stable and efficient systems of governance. This is where Heseltine put forward his solution; a 21st Century-style Marshall Plan coordinated by European nations to raise levels of economic development in the Global South. That policy was the most radical and far-reaching proposal I had heard anyone suggest in the immigration debate. But who paid attention to it? No one. Instead, all anyone could talk about was Polanski’s insistence on ‘social, racial and environmental justice’ as if that in itself was a policy.
Examining Heseltine’s legacy as an operative of the centre ground and a blueprint emerges for how moderates can reclaim the narrative in a harsh climate of polarisation. While the rest of Thatcher’s cabinet wanted to let Britain’s Northern cities face managed decline during the 1980’s, Heseltine earned the title of ‘Minister for Merseyside’ as the brainchild of Liverpool’s generation. He fought for Liverpool’s place in the country despite conventional right-wing orthodoxy at the time deeming the city a lost cause after clashes between the government and its militant Labour council. His understanding that Britain’s second cities are too big to fail is a political cause that still demands unafforded attention today and is perhaps the best example of how the centre ground can create new space on which radical solutions can be fostered. We just need the politicians to do so.