The Tiggers might not be the answer but they are posing the right questions

I rarely write about British politics and, by the end of this, a few of you might be grateful for that. Writing about Westminster feels toxic and drawing every word like preparing a poison pen letter for a vulnerable friend who will soon guess it was you and will no longer consider you a friend. It takes a degree of naivety, foolishness, or downright cruelty to play that game.

And perhaps it’s only because I’m currently in my sickbed having enjoyed one-too-many sips of the fruity Benylin that I’m willing to join in the fun. Yet, had I not already been suffering from a cold that’s refusing to budge, I might have taken to my bed for other reasons. Today I saw politicians do something I’ve not seen politicians do for a very long time. I saw British politicians abandon the old party two-step.

Well, okay. I’m not quite that won over by the words of Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen as I might sound. I understand there’s a degree of hypocrisy about their defection, coming as it does so deep into the Brexit endgame rather than when austerity bit the hardest. I’m also too old and cynical to think that a solution to our broken politics will come quite so easily or absolutely as The Independent Group. Yet there’s something about this moment which I can’t help but admit I find exciting.

Part of what defines my politics is a belief that ideologies don’t work, or, if they do work, they don’t work for very long. It’s like Newtonian physics that break down at the point where relativity kicks in and how even Einstein’s greatest hit gets a bit wobbly once things get the size of Boris’s ego or as small as a Corbynista’s fuse. In other words: theories are great so long as you don’t put too much faith in them…

There was, of course, a time when many conservatives thought the same. That’s what “conservatism” meant back when Jacob Rees-Mogg’s tailor was still knee-high to a top hat. Remember Edmund Burke? Remember the politics of slow change, “evolutions not revolutions” (or was that Tony Hayers speaking to Alan Partridge)? Remember when good manifestos were thin and only radicals wrote long treatises promising to pull everything apart?

It’s rare that you hear these old attitudes expressed these days but no doubt they still chime with a few Tories. It’s why it was hardly a surprise and a considerable relief when three MPs quit the party yesterday, following fellow splitters who quit Labour on Tuesday. I’m not yet certain what they stand for or what broad categorisation this new group falls under. Is this some classical liberal, neo-pragmatic, happy and clappy, wishy and washy centrism? I don’t know what the hell to call it, so in the spirit of the kind of spongy thinking I’m sure you hate, I’ll just call it after how it makes me feel. These are politics that don’t make me so ashamed of being political. They don’t make me want to hide out writing about American politics rather than dealing in the doubletalk of politics here at home.

Most of all, they don’t make me ashamed of believing that society has an obligation to help the weakest, the poorest, and less able, while also holding the almost paradoxical belief that society imbues us with a moral right to pursue our individual goals. Because, if I had to break this down to one fundamental problem, I suppose I’m saying I’ve grown tired of being asked to pledge loyalty to either the individual or the state. Because, that, after all, is what our politics has become: one party fetishizing the “I”; the other fetishizing the “we”.

Must I choose? Can’t I simply be loyal to both?

Brexit was another name we gave this bifurcation or, at least, the name we give the argument that has finally broken it. On the one hand, we’ve been offered something that has fixated on a fundamental form of individualism; this idealised British identity that can stand alone in the world and survive all tides because it needs no supra-government to sustain it. Yet on the other hand, there is that belief in that European model of being in it all together. I’m a Remainer (Yes, I know. Sorry!) so you’d expect me to pick the former over the latter but, in truth, I’ve always seen the appeal of both. I read and admire writers on both sides because I’m sympathetic to each. All I’ve really wanted is Britain working hard inside Europe, Europe succeeding because of Britain.

But let’s not go there. Not now. Not until I’ve finished the cough syrup.

Instead, let me steer towards an end by saying that, yes, of course, this is all about Brexit. The mistake, however, is believing that it’s always been about Brexit or it will continue to be dominated by the European question. Brexit has made the point of fracture obvious but I doubt that it ends with Brexit. Whisper it quietly but Brexit was also a little bit about austerity. It was a little bit about the sanctimonious lie of the Big Society. It was about attitudes in Westminster towards the provinces. It was also about public transport (a reason why, much to many people’s surprise, Jeremy Corbyn will do better than predicted in elections), as well as education, mental health and the problems of homelessness. It also had a lot to do with the personalities of David Cameron and George Osborne. It also had a bit to do with Corbyn’s opposition to globalism.

Brexit also came about because of the failure of two great political doctrines. The first and most influential of the two was shaped in the 1970s yet still burdens us with ideas that are both brilliant and naïve. They were the ideas that turned the Conservative Party into the party of Margaret Thatcher. Like many great ideas, they were ideas that were eventually taken too far. Thatcherism has been consuming its host party for too long. The wisdom of having smaller government became a craze for government that is too small. The brilliance of the idea that it’s individuals who make society has become a dull mantra that maintains that the only important bits are the individuals and that we no longer need society. The magic of trickle-down economics ended the moment the trickle stopped and a stagnant pool of retained wealth began to form.

Whilst these ideological spurs hardened on Tory heels, it was the nation that felt the pinch. Their discomfort allowed Tony Blair to claim the centre. He then broke it, leaving it vacant when we needed it the most. By then, the Third Way had become a new dogma. It was the magic stuff of New Labour but, once they’d proved it worked, its exponents stopped checking to see if it was still working. Instead, they broke it on Iraq; they broke it with a cynical approach to politics; broke it through their need to close down debate (especially around immigration). Most of all, they broke it with their endless faith in spin.

The result: two parties now veering into their own ideological cul-de-sacs, defined by stark opposites – the Tories championing the individual and Labour back to being fixated on the state. Did anybody really believe the answer was one or the other when it was more pragmatically likely to involve both?

It won’t end here, of course. These arguments about the individual and state are eternal, running through Cicero to Jefferson and beyond both, forward and back in time. With so many things broken, it’s also hard to believe that the events of this week are a fix. The history of new parties certainly doesn’t favour the chances of The Independent Group. What this is, however, is something new and a chance to restate important questions. This is a route out of the lamentable state we’re in. It won’t lead us to any promised land and perhaps the best we can hope for is a little space on higher ground. But we are, at least, moving forward. And that, at this moment, feels a bit like liberation.