The strange death of the center-left

How to explain the rejection by American Democrats and British Labourites of center-left strategies that recently proved so successful?

One explanation is that people are acting out of principle. Left-wing Democrats and Labourites love to hear candidates echo those of their beliefs they know to be unpopular with the wider electorate. (Right-wing Republicans love this too.)

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Another is that today these parties have not been chastened by repeated defeats. Republicans held the White House for 16 of the 20 years before Bill Clinton won; Conservatives held Number 10 Downing Street for 18 years before Blair did. Partisans were willing to accept half a loaf in those circumstances, perhaps less so today.

A third explanation applies specifically to center-left parties, including Dangerfield’s Liberals a century ago. They were bedeviled by demands from different constituencies — Irish Catholics, feminist suffragettes, militant union leaders — which their compromising tendencies could not assuage. Liberal Britain faced internal violence, Dangerfield argues persuasively, when it unexpectedly went to war in August 1914.

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