What would politics in Britain look like with the break up of the old power blocks?

What might party splits do to alignment of political parties in England? There would be six parties with Parliamentary seats in England, but how long would that last before mergers began?

The threat of 'splitting the party' has rarely been thrown around in British politics more than it is these days. The rumours of a Labour split rumble on and now the threat of a split in the Conservatve party has returned - issued by the disgruntled Brexiter right wing.

Could we be on the cusp of some major realignment of politics? It's unlikely to be that easy.

The power of the status quo in British politics can not be overstated. While there have been major splits and political realignments before, they have still, ultimately, kept to a two-party form - with one broadly conservative and the other broadly progressive.

Historical Realignment

The biggest shift took a little over thirty years to achieve the new alignment. The beginning was the split of the Liberal Unionists from the Liberal Party in the 1890s, under the leadership of Joseph Chamberlain. The group banged a particularly patriotic and jingoistic drum, supporting Empire and colonialism and opposing Home Rule for Ireland.

Chamberlain's Unionists very quickly aligned with the Conservatives - forming a decade long government. But it was not enough to break the Liberals, who afterward led Britain up to the Great War. But as the Liberals did so, they helped laid the foundations for their own ousting from the two-party supremacy.

In the early days of the Labour movement, trade unionist candidates stood with Liberal backing. When the movement resolved to form a party, the Liberals supported it with an electoral pact that supported Labour into winning it's own seats and building a Parliamentary presence.

Following the Great War, the National Government that had led the country through the war - a coalition of Conservatives, Unionists and Liberals - finally broke up.

Having absorbed the Unionists prior to the war, the Conservatives were now the dominant force - especially as progressive voters being divided between two Liberals factions and the newer Labour Party.

There were a glut of elections in the subsequent interwar period. In them, the Conservatives remained the usually largest party. But the Labour party would win it's first governments as a minority during this time under Ramsay MacDonald as they became the second largest party ahead of the Liberals - even after the Liberals reunited.

However, the onset of the Great Depression split the Labour party as it split others and ushered in another period of Conservative dominance - which would complete a political realignment thirty years in the making.

Members of both the Liberals and Labour would support the Conservatives under a National Government banner that would last until the Second World War - splitting from their parties to become known as Liberal National and National Labour respectively - and led by the expelled Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald and his National Labour for four years.

The whittling away of the Liberals and the continued use of First-past-the-post (Fptp) voting ensured that, as the Consevratives absorbed their National allies, a new two-party system would emerge from the war years. A two-party, Conservative-Labour domination that has persisted since.

Contemporary Realignment

The splits threatened in contemporary politics, if they could actually break out of a mould that has lasted for more than seventy years, would split the Big Two parties into at least four parties.

These would be: a right-wing Brexiter party, the continuing and nominally centre-right Conservative Party, a centrist Pro-European party, and the continuing centre-left Labour Party - splits that would lean British politics rightwards.

Including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, politics in Britain would have six parties, just in England, with seats in Parliament. The obvious reaction would be for these new groups to try and form alliances under the present Fptp voting system. But if those efforts were frustrated, a move to some form of Proportional Representation might finally be contemplated.

Big questions remain, however. How many MPs would be prepared to actually make the leap to a new party? Brexiter Tories claim to have 80 MPs willing to rebel. And it is easy to imagine, from MP resistance to Corbyn, that a fair number might join a breakaway from Labour - if it were popular.

How many of the Pro-European moderate Tories would be willing to leave to join a new centrist party formed by Labour breakaways? And would the Liberal Democrats merge with such a party to form one big 'Democratic' party?

This last option is the one that, if it worked, might most drastically change the political landscape. But it feels like the moment for such a move has past - a chance not taken by Tony Blair when he had the power and popularity before the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More likely is a standoff between four factions as they try not to trip over each other and figure out who their allies might be in an election. The winner, perhaps, may be the party that manages not to split apart. As ever, the safety of the status quo is a powerful draw - even when it is ineffectual and mired by factional infighting.

For progressives, the desire is for plurality. For several parties that work constructively together for broader goals, even when they don't agree on priorities. If a split on the centre-left helps stop the bickering and sniping, it will be welcomed. If not, it could be a long time before we see a truly progressive government.

Macron appears to have consolidated power, but is there anything for 'centrists' to learn from his success? Not really

Macron's landslide was not quite what it appeared, exposing how neoliberal Centrism depends upon disinterest and abstention. Photograph: Emmanuel Macron campaign poster 'Macron President' in Paris by Lorie Shaull (License) (Cropped)

Nearly three-quarters of a year has passed since Emmanuel Macron took up the post of President of France. In that time he has seemingly managed to consolidate power (despite of some rocky moments). So: job done, new centrist model ready to roll out? Not so fast.

Well, let's look beneath the surface. The election landslides for Macron and La Republique En Marche were always going to provoke a response, especially with the near wipeout of the old centre-left Parti Socialiste (PS).

One small, but significant, reaction - an indication of how sizeable a reorganisation of French politics Macron has caused - is the reunification of the old Parti Radical with the breakaway Radical Party of the Left, as the new Mouvement Radical.

For years, the two radical parties - in former times a powerful party of government - were occasionally a crucial coalition partner of the larger parties. But they split from one another down the old left-right lines.

The Radical Party of the Left would partner with the Parti Socialiste and the centre-left, and the Radical Party would partner with the various centre-right parties. It appears that Emmanuel Macron has helped to settle the dispute between the two.

The reunification of the Radicals is a small thing, but also suggests that Macron's victory (and the collapse of PS) was big enough to put into abeyance the question of whether to partner with left or right. The radicals are happy with the centre.

That perhaps also says a lot about where Les Marcheurs lie on a political spectrum: European Federalist, social liberal, and for equality of opportunity (rather than of outcomes) within a free market.

Those were also the bones of Macron's pitch at the election. An election that left Macron with a severely weakened opposition, a a left-wing reduced to around 50-60 social liberals, social democrats and socialists, and a right-wing of around 130-140.

One potential problem Macron faced was if those with divided loyalties between En Marche and the social liberals and social democrats in opposition organise, Macron might face difficulty from a voting-bloc under his own left-wing.

However, the Left is still in disarray - and the Radicals seem set jump ship. The election was a disaster for the Parti Socialiste, it's bastion, who fell from 280 seats to just 30. Even their 2017 Presidential candidate Benoit Hamon has walked away.

Hamon has formed a new party, Generation.s, which has formed a tentative European alliance with Yanis Varoufakis and DiEM25. It had been hoped that Hamon might do for PS what Corbyn did for Labour in Britain, but now he will have to start from scratch.

There are also two separate far-left groups in the National Assembly, that have yet to find a way to work together - France Insoumise with 17 seats and Gauche Democrate et Republicaine with 16 seats.

With the collapse of the Left and, so far, no sign of a new rallying position, Macron has for the moment usurped the place of the Parti Socialiste in two-party system. Does this mean that the centre is saved and the model can be copy and pasted elsewhere?

No.

The hope for a centrist revival is not giving due credit the particular circumstances of Macron's victory - nor that both Macron and Les Marcheurs won, across the board, as the least worst option amidst raging disinterest. Not exactly an inspiring rallying call.

Macron's victory also has shadows of the upswell that took Barack Obama to  the US Presidency in 2008. Macron, undeniably a member of the party establishment, rode on the back of a movement that was then jettisoned when office was achieved.

The leading talents of that movement were absorbed into the government machinery, while the movement itself has been left without it's leading figures and central purpose. Will it survive or find a new role?

That Macron has succeeded in consolidating his position must still be put to the test at the ballot. As Obama learned, when you set high expectations, the movement will want practical changes it can touch. A legacy they can touch.

What Macron has right now is a governing majority. He doesn't even have a campaign machinery for himself or his supporters to sustain their agenda. Nothing has really changed over the past year.

Copy the En Marche model at peril. Macron's was a victory for charismatic leadership, but it's hollow inside. The future, never mind success, will depend on the support existing parties like MoDem and the Radicals, and the creation of some sort of plain, traditional electoral machinery for Les Marcheurs.

Macron's victory was a lesson in how to get into government, not in how to stay there. He made waves, a tidal wave, that upset the system and forced some realignment. But politics is fickle.

Alliances can seem unbreakable, until they aren't. Break ups are forever, until they aren't. Just ask the Radicals.

The Yellow Tide isn't what it seems: The neoliberal centre has depended upon abstention and prevails amid disinterest

Macron's landslide was not quite what it appeared, exposing how neoliberal Centrism depends upon disinterest and abstention. Photograph: Emmanuel Macron campaign poster 'Macron President' in Paris by Lorie Shaull (License) (Cropped)

The rise of Macron was met with a chorus of celebration from some corners for the resurgence of the 'Centre'. In France, we are to believe, the neoliberal Centre has recovered. But has the centre really found a new revitalising note?

In the presidential election, Macron prevailed as the neoliberal Centrist candidate thanks to a number of factors: the collapse of social democracy, repeated Centre-Right scandals, and because the Far-Right was sufficiently repulsive.

Now, even with the Left non-committal, Macron did secure the support of around 45% of registered voters in the head-to-head with the Far Right. But was the high water mark.

At the legislative elections Macron's party, La Republic En Marche, took a landslide majority. Yet it came amid a low turnout. While his party took 49% of second round votes, just 43% of voters turned out - giving them the support of only about 20% of eligible voters.

The neoliberal Centre is holding on to power, but it doesn't seem to be the result of its own arguments. If anything, it seems as if the Centrists are standing still as the turbulent waters wash around them. As protest votes and popular dissensions of the Left and the Right ebb and flow, the stagnant Centre appears to rise or fall.

Just look at Italy. Despite losing a crucial referendum in December and resigning as Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi won back the leadership of the Partito Democratico in a landslide. And judging from the polls, he will likely return as Premier at the next election.

If he does, it would be explicitly at the head of a party of Renziani Centrists and neoliberals, looking to replicate Macron's success. That comes thanks to the Left-wing of the party going through with its threat to leave if Renzi won back the leadership.

Under former party leaders Pierluigi Bersani and Massimo D'Alema, the Centre-Left walked away to work towards concentrating all of the many Left factions - including their own Democratici e Progressisti vehicle - under a single progressive banner.

This move leaves Renzi as the undisputed leader of a definitively Centrist party. Matteo Renzi again proves himself to be - in the years of turmoil created by Berlusconi finally, if only partially, falling from grace - pretty much the last man standing.

But what else does Renzi have? Other that his political skill that earned him the nickname 'il Rottamore' - the scrapper. He lost the constitutional referendum on which he staked his Premiership and the Renziani approach has alienated the Centre-Left and driven them out of the party - much as the Hollande governments did and Macron risks doing with his programme.

Furthermore, it was his political skill - not electoral success - that saw him rise to the position of Premier, after a succession of resignations when the Democrats under Bersani failed to gain enough support to govern with it's Centre-Left platform in 2013.

While the Democrats had consistently polled well under Renzi, up on 2013, their lead has slipped and the recent turmoil has seen them fall into a neck and neck race with the populist anti-establishment party Movimento 5 Stella (M5S).

The sum of this is that in Italy, the 'third way' Centrism - blending social democracy and neoliberalism - may return to power with Renzi, but it's unlikely to do so with sweeping triumph. Again, the waters are moving and the Centrists are not the ones moving them.

In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte celebrated his party remaining the largest and the halting of the Far-Right advance. But the figures tell a different story. Between the coalition partners - the Centre-Right liberal-conservative VVD and the Dutch Labour Party PdvA - they lost 37 seats and 24% of the vote.

For Rutte's VVD, it was the failure of an alternative to muster sufficient support from a fractured and plural political landscape that has kept him in power: they remained the largest party with just 21% of the vote.

It will take an across the spectrum alliance of at least four parties to keep Rutte's VVD in office. While that kind of pluralism is a positive thing, it's not exactly evidence of a great Centre revival.

In Britain, the failure of the Liberal Democrats to increase their share of the vote reinforced the point.

By succeeding in getting people to engage with politics, to turnout and vote, Jeremy Corbyn shut down what appears to be the main avenue along which the neoliberal Centre has travelled: abstention.

If this is the case, it makes the pitch made by the Lib Dems over the last few elections and the New Labourite obsession misguided. Pitching to be the party of faceless bureaucrats, the party of government, the party of business, only seems to work if people have lost interest.

Could a new British party of the centre have done better than the Lib Dems? A party of economically neoliberal social democrats, uniting Labour MPs with some liberals and even some Tories, and pitching to as broad a base as possible, under a leader like Yvette Cooper?

The numbers don't really support it. Even with the Tories and Labour getting their largest vote share for some time, abstention was still the largest block. The reality is that Centrism doesn't seem to have a convincing story to tell and so stands still as events move around it.

Macron was the rallying point to see off a threat. And while Justin Trudeau did indeed lead the Liberals to a huge comeback and landslide majority in Canada in 2015, he did so with the support of just a quarter of eligible voters - the gift of an electoral system - against the waning power of an ever more rightward leaning government.

If Renzi wins back to the Premiership in Italy with effective power, it will also be likely thanks to an electoral system. And, in the Netherlands, Rutte held on thanks to support being fractured across the plural options.

While the Right rallies an angry minority around a crude nationalism that makes wild promises and the Left assembles behind a hopeful interventionism, the Centre mostly benefits from disengagement. The the relative recovery of the Centre comes to look more like a holding pattern.

This isn't the sign of a recovery - it's the absence of one.

The Centre remains with a hand on power because disengagement remains a real issue and neither a Left Alternative nor the angry Far Right have, so far, won over enough support with the broader public.

While this does seem to toll the bell for neoliberalism, Centrism need not necessarily follow it. There is a place for Centrism, but right now it seems like the Centre is struggling to understand itself.

The Centre is supposed to be about balance. About inclusion. That is not the same thing as 'equidistance'. And the occupation of the centre ground by neoliberalism is more about 'received wisdom', the present consensus, than the ideals of the Centre.

In a pluralist society, Centrism has an important role to play. It pursues a stake in society for people on all sides and tries to maximise the utility of the society - to ensure the maximum number of people enjoy the benefits.

What that can't mean is accepting conservative narratives on the economy, the trap that the heirs of New Labour have frequently fallen into. That centrism, of neoliberalism, has become like a technical government, a bureaucratic caretaker while we await something better.

Those that values the ideal of the Centre - inclusion - need to wake up. The revival of the Centre is not what it appears. The politics of management is offering nothing and standing still. People are ready to move. Centrists need an answer as to where.

French Legislative Elections: Macron's ascent asks a tough question of social democrats and social liberals

Macron's ascendancy consumed the parties of social democrats and social liberals, reducing them to a sliver of seats. Will they be represented in his En Marche majority? If Macron doesn't give enough thought to them, the Left opposition will look to build progressive alliances under his left-wing.

Emmanuel Macron has completed what he set out to do. He has won the Presidency and an Assembly majority riding the crest of his new movement 'La Republic En Marche'. However, the poor turnout suggests all is not yet what it appears.

Macron and En Marche won a landslide, yes. But the wave of disaffection was greater still. In the two rounds of voting, just 49% and 43% of the people voted. Macron has a majority in the Assembly, but not yet in the country. Far from it.

That disparity will only make it harder and more desperate, not easier, to win people over. The pressure is now tangible. Macron has to deliver - and not just his own programme. He has to deliver it in a way that meets with public expectation.

People are already disaffected, with turnouts low, and the call for people to rally about the Centrist candidate has not exactly been answered - regardless how it has been portrayed by those excited by a pro-European Centre revival.

Macron's Centrist success also came largely at the expense of the Centre-Left, practically wiping it out save for those who aligned with En Marche.

Leading figures in the social democratic 'Parti Socialiste' lost their seats as the the party was nearly wiped out, reduced from 280 to just 29 seats. The Left-wing Presidential candidate Benoit Hamon and Assembly leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis were defeated - though former Premier Manuel Valls survived, standing as an independent.

Social democracy also managed to take social liberalism down with it. The 'Parti Radical de Gauche', their social liberal allies, lost all but three of their seats, though their leader Sylvia Pinel survived. It is worthy of note that three more radicals survived under the En Marche banner.

That poses an interesting question. How much of these ideologies was carried over to La Republic En Marche? Progressives will be watching closely for the answer.

In the mean time, there are questions of how to go about forming a progressive opposition. The main opposition will be the Centre-Right 'La Republicains'. They also suffered a defeat, though less damaging, and along with their allies dropped to 131 seats.

In opposition on the Left, Social democrats and social liberals are now present only in small numbers - in terms of their traditional, recognisable forms. Their supporters may be forced to look to En Marche and their MoDem allies in government for representation.

There is now, though, the possibility of a clear democratic socialist caucus in opposition. If the Socialists stick to the agenda that Benoit Hamon presented for the Presidential election, there is a possibility of forming a largely coherent DemocSoc group.

While the Socialists hold more seats, the leading voice of that group would be Jean-Luc Melenchon - who performed well at the Presidential election from the Left as the outsider candidate.

His movement 'France Insoumise' gained seats, and with what remains of the PS, along with the support of the PCF (Communists), there is a core of fifty seats with which to build an opposition group. That is enough, perhaps, to put pressure on Macron - and maybe enough to act as the beginning of a new Left alignment.

Macron's new movement - his new party of government, created just for that purpose out of the ashes of social democracy and social liberalism - has work to do.

That work has been described as Nordic in style, mixing controls on spending and cuts to regulation, with public investment and a strong social safety net - shifting the public role from keeping people in work to supporting them when they're not.

But to do that, he must first pull down the intensive labour institutions and the DemocSoc Left will not take that lightly. Expect protests on the streets and, if they can organise, a Left bloc voting against him. They will also resist plans aiming to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.

Caught in the midst of these struggles will be the social democrats and social liberals - both those within Macron's caucus and those in small numbers outside. They will have a difficult choice over their relationship to the Presidential majority.

Macron will likely have some of his greatest difficulties dealing with the threat of social democrats and social liberals pulling to the Left, if he tacks too far to the Republican Right, and threatening to vote with an organised DemocSoc bloc - perhaps giving both groups more influence than their initial numbers might suggest.

However, right now, Macron has the numbers. If he and his Premier move with energy, the most controversial elements of his approach might be completed early enough that En Marche can ride the wave. But the longer he waits, the harder change will get.

One last note. As a reminder that the far-right is far from beaten, Marine Le Pen was among a handful of Front National deputies elected to the National Assembly.

As Macron and his Centre-Right Premier Edouard Philippe lead the Assembly, they should keep Le Pen's deputies in sight. They represent the cost, for France, of failure to deliver on public perception. En Marche must deliver to France a tangible fresh start.