There’s a gaping hole at the centre of British politics where ideas used to be

theguardian.com:

What do Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer imagine is going on in Britain today, as crops fail, food bank queues lengthen, and profits soar? How do they understand the unique combination of social, economic and ecological crises in 2022, which is already wreaking havoc in many people’s lives? The truth is that we don’t really know, and perhaps they don’t either.

Truss, to be sure, has outlined a consistent ideological position – tax and red tape have restrained Britain’s economy from growing – but it is a thesis so easily disproved, so divorced from everyday lives, so obviously rooted in Thatcherite nostalgia, as to be worthless as an explanation of where we are. Sunak, who clearly believed he could waltz through a leadership contest with the same professionally managed Instagram set-pieces that elevated him there in the first place, may have been mugged by political reality, but the effect has been to lead him further towards the authoritarianfantasies of the Tory right.

And then there is Starmer, who has spent the summer in a series of battles with his own MPs over the right to stand on picket lines, and who struggles to define Labour’s position on some increasingly heated economic policy issues. Every time he or the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, takes to the airwaves, they encounter a barrage of questions on public sector pay, nationalisation and trade unions, which they respond to defensively and tentatively. They may believe (like Tony Blair) that such traditional Labour issues should not define a modern progressive party, yet they’ve not outlined any alternative vision. The contrast with Gordon Brown’s thoughtful interventions on the cost of living crisis has been plain to see.

If mainstream politics feels