Out of chaos, hope

Everywhere, democratic politics is in turmoil. When the confusion recedes, only the progressives will remain standing.

“Everyone knows that politics isn't working,” said Andy Burnham as he celebrated an emphatic return to the centre of British politics.

“Everyone can feel that the country isn't where it should be. Tonight could, just could, be a turning point.”

It was an unequivocal demonstration of the basic realities of modern politics: conservatives sell fear but progressives sell hope. Unless the parties of the centre-left understand that, they are lost. But if they embrace their history and their destiny, they will enjoy an ascendancy that, once, was reserved for conservatives.

Democratic politics is overshadowed by a sullenness and alienation among the peoples it is supposed to serve; but beneath that sullenness is a quiet, inarticulate yearning that politics-as-usual cannot comprehend or even hear. There is an appetite for hope, and for a politics with the leadership and intelligence to point the way to a better future.

In search of a saviour

Anyone who’s watched political life for more than a moment knows that there is no such thing as a saviour. That has never stopped the eternal quest for the one magical person with the charisma, the skills and the answers the country needs to make everything better.

The search is eternal, and eternally unrequited, but has elevated some of the worst people in the world and some of its least competent, to positions of massive power. When hope makes us uncritical, it becomes dangerous.

We live in a time in which unprecedented numbers of people are picking up a political trend and quickly dropping it before moving on to something, and someone, else. Millions of votes surge around as the relative stability of the past recedes in our memories.

The major political parties were formed out of profound social movements: the Labour parties to fight for worker rights and conservatives to represent capital. Each of those has become unglued from its founding ethos, diverted by electoral arithmetic that requires all parties to be all things to all voters. That pursuit of universal appeal has all but destroyed party loyalty.

The phenomenon is seen in most of the developed world. In Europe – with the notable exception of Sweden – votes in huge numbers move from one party, to another, to another.

At the same time, populations are trending more towards the progressive side of the spectrum. Over the past 30 years, the centre of gravity in Australian politics has shifted from moderate conservative to centrist with a mild leftist flavour. That persistent trend favours the centre-left at the cost of the centre-right.

In Britain, the National Centre for Social Research has classified voters into six categories. Apolitical centrists, it finds, are much less likely to vote at all. If we remove them from the equation, the left narrowly outweighs the right. The picture, again, shows a centrist electorate with a mild leftward lean.

A progressivist boom in the United States, and a fractured right, have both been supercharged by Donald Trump and the failure of conventional parties. The 21% support for populists – here, read Trump – could splinter in any direction, or all. All the progressives need is a decent leader and a party to represent them. So far, the Democrats have failed on both measures.

Politics in the democratic world has become much more polarised over the past couple of decades. People hold in contempt anyone with significantly different political views than their own. But the level of polarisation is not the same everywhere: in the United States under Donald Trump, it has soared, as it has in France and much of South America. But in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe, there’s a more civil polity. People still talk to one another.

There’s more to it. A study by the University of Cambridge’s Political Psychology Lab found that before the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-12, polarisation in the US flatlined but then rose.

“Most of this shift is down to the liberal side of the American public moving in a more progressive direction,” the study found. “Based on issues surveyed, the US left was 31.5% more socially liberal in 2024 compared to 1988, while the US right was only 2.8% more conservative.

“Although sentiment varies by topic, the American public has moved left on many issues during the 21^st century. This shift may surprise those familiar with the rightward turn of Republican leaders over the same period, as well as recent US headlines.”

“Right‑leaning Americans have remained fairly stable in their positions for the last 35 years, and may feel left behind as half the country has shifted towards an ever more progressive outlook on many issues.

“Part of the recent success of the US right may be their ability to tap into outgroup animosity for a perceived ‘woke’ left, rather than a firm belief in some of the more extreme right-wing positions adopted by the Republican leadership.”

At the moment, that’s not working for them. Trump has effectively taken over the Republican Party and bent it to his will. But that’s not the will of a majority of the American people, as the current polling averages show.

In Australia, most younger voters have abandoned the conservative Liberal and National parties, transferring their support to Labor in huge numbers. The long-running Australian Election Study has found the age-old dictum that people become more conservative as they age no longer applies. The Millennial generation, born towards the end of the last century, have maintained their progressive views.

“The portents for Australian politics and the party system are clear,” wrote the study’s authors. “Unchecked, the current levels and trajectories of party support revealed here point to Labor dominating federal politics for the foreseeable future.”

In Britain, it’s the same story. In the House of Commons, Labour now dominates utterly, with almost two-thirds of seats. Its tumbling in the polls since 2024 reflects a disenchantment with the party’s direction under Keir Starmer, rather than an underlying shift in ideology.

Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system is grossly unfair to smaller parties. But when we look at the shares of votes, rather than the number of seats, the centre-left still dominates.

Under a system of proportional representation which accurately translated votes into seats – as Burnham has promised – the Conservatives would have gained an extra 33 seats in the 650-seat house, the Liberal Democrats an extra seven and the Greens 38 more. The big winner would have been Nigel Farage’s Reform UK with 88 more.

There may be some worried apparatchiks in Labour headquarters. Under such a system, Labour would have had 192 fewer seats and no majority.

But although there would have been a more diverse House of Commons, the overall left-right split would have remained. When the parties of the left and right of centre are grouped, the only age group in which the right dominate is among the over-65s. Even there, it’s a fairly narrow majority.

Parked votes and shallow allegiances

How, then, can we explain the current state of the polls? The Politico average shows Reform with 25% support, Labour and the Conservatives with 18% each, the Greens on 15% and the Lib-Dems on 13%.

But polling numbers, particularly in mid-term, are given far too much credence. Now, more than ever, they fail to reflect real voting intention: rather, the polls pick up a protest vote that may vanish when people step into the booth on election day. Giving an answer to a pollster can be a safe way of registering disappointment without making any actual difference to who sits in parliament. It’s a fair bet that the 25% allocated to Reform contains an outsized share of people disappointed with the current state of the Labour Party that could be reversed when voters’ minds are concentrated by two realities: an actual election and a change in the party’s leadership and direction.

Despite the fears of many and the hopes of some, Nigel Farage is not headed for Downing Street.

In Canada, the centre-left Liberals, having narrowly beaten the Conservatives at the 2025 election to remain in office, have now surged to the front. Only a year earlier, the polls had them looking like losers, trounced by the Conservatives by two to one. But then Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank on England, took the leadership, winning the imminent election – just – but now scoring 50% against the Tories’ 34%.

When the left-of-centre forces are put together, they dominate Canadian federal politics. But there’s a lesson here. With imaginative leadership and a visionary agenda, progressive politics wins. Without those, it loses.

The same is true elsewhere. People in liberal democracies vote for hope, but only if the promise comes with credibility and inspiration. Keir Starmer failed because he could not inspire and because his credibility was shattered by a series of decisions – such as cutting welfare payments – that spoke to fear, not to hope. In Canada, the decade-old Liberal government of Justin Trudeau was in minority and facing heavy defeat, the eventual fate of all long-term leaders. But then Trudeau resigned, Carney became Prime Minister and the script was rewritten.

Leadership matters. Far-right populists thrive in a political vacuum: when leadership, hope and inspiration are missing, voters like to shake things up. But that represents no deep conviction in the policies or in the fitness of figures like Farage, Trump and Hanson, whose pitch is entirely negative. They can tear down but they cannot build. Their polling figures will turn into parliamentary seats only if the centre-left forgets that progressive parties exist to create a better, fairer and less unequal world; and without that vision, they have no purpose and will die.