Sordid confessions of a Centrist Dad

I have a shameful secret. I’ve been watching these… videos online. Amazing what you can get in a couple of clicks these days. Being what the Corbynistas deride as a Centrist Dad, I have taken to seeking out short films of taboo figures like Tony Blair and Barack Obama, talking about current affairs and being pained, maturely -analytical, and thrillingly reasonable. If Brexit is your problem, Mr Blair asks, if parliament can’t decide between two or more -different flavours of Brexit and lots of people think the flavours on offer are worse than no Brexit at all, doesn’t it make sense to ask the question directly in a referendum rather than muddling it with a raft of other issues in a general election? Ooh. That’s the good stuff right there. Usually, of course, just when I’m really getting excited, I hear my wife or kids coming up the stairs and I have to alt-tab guiltily to another window so it looks like I’ve been watching donkey porn.

It’s the political equivalent of listening nostalgically in the car to those compilations of 1980s power ballads on radio -stations your teenager wouldn’t be seen dead tuning into. But don’t you thirst, just a little, for those days? For grown-ups thinking difficult problems might have solutions you could work out by thinking and talking rather than shouting? That acknowledge muddle and compromise and complexity? That don’t just shout ‘get Brexit done’ or ‘smash capitalism’ or ‘abolish transport’, and denounce their opponents as fascists or war criminals or apologists for terrorism, but try to set out a sensible path from here (wherever here is) to there (wherever there is)?