Grand

Martin Kettle has a point, and such arrangements have long been normal in local government. Labour and Tory activists do not hate each other's parties in the way that they both hate the Lib Dems, a sentiment returned with interest.

But they should not stop, even if they started, at a coalition. They should merge. Within the next 10, possibly five, years, they will merge.

That would create the space for the re-emergence of a movement whose priorities included the Welfare State, workers' rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, and a base of real property from which every household could resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State. While having a no less absolute commitment to the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled importation and immigration, and a realistic foreign policy.

And it would create the space for the re-emergence of a movement whose priorities included agriculture, manufacturing, and small business. National sovereignty, the Union, economic patriotism, local variation, and historical consciousness. Traditional moral and social values, the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West, close-knit communities, law and order, and civil liberties. Academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework ("King and People" against the Whig magnates), and conservation rather than environmentalism. A realistic foreign policy, the Commonwealth, the constitutional and other ties among the Realms and Territories having the British monarch as Head of State or other such constitutional links, the status of the English language and the rights of its speakers both throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and the rights of British-descended communities throughout the world. The longstanding and significant British ties to the Arab world, support for the Slavs in general and for Russia in particular as the gatekeepers of the Biblical-Classical civilisation, and a natural affinity with Confucian culture. And exactly as much central or local government action as is required by these priorities, with a profound suspicion of an American influence and action characteristically defined against them.

A coalition between those two, or the existence of them both in and as the same governing party, would be ideal. Such a party could and would also include historic Liberalism's concern for local communitarian populism, the indefatigable pursuit of single issues, the Nonconformist social conscience, the legacy of Keynes and Beveridge, traditional moral and social values (again), conservation rather than environmentalism (again), national sovereignty (again), a realistic foreign policy (again), the Commonwealth (again), the peace activism historically exemplified by Sir Herbert Samuel, redress of economic and political grievances in the countryside, and the needs and concerns of areas remote from the centres of power both in the United Kingdom and in each of its constituent parts.

These are the priorities of the moderate, mainstream middle of British public opinion, so that they comprise the true "centre ground", whereas other views, while not necessarily illegitimate, are nevertheless extreme and eccentric.