Watching Nick Clegg, Nicky Morgan and David Miliband sort of launching what might one day become a sort of new centre party amid a granary-full of Tilda rice in Essex, I realised why we still need the Labour party. Despite their equation of themselves with rationality — Sir Nick’s office advertises itself online under the name of Open Reason — the moderates are a bit crazy. They are centrist Bourbons, who have forgotten nothing about how they all, in their different ways, fell from power, yet have learnt nothing about why. How could they possibly think that the key to the future of our country is to be found in membership of the European Economic Area? I think I can see the chain of reasoning that got them there, but the conclusion is irrational nevertheless.
What makes them think that millions could ever rally to this banner? The last time something like this happened, with the invention of the SDP in the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher privately scorned the idea that it could succeed.
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