Meet Me Halfway

Questions for the Centre of our political scene

“Oh, they hate us.” Third-year Georges Toulouse laughed, leaning back in his chair with his half-finished coffee. “We’re seen as rather limp, we’re not as defined. I’ve never heard someone here say ‘Oh, you’re a centrist? That’s great!’”

“People who aren’t particularly in the political sphere, they talk about [Centrism] with a lot of disdain,” third-year Buster Van der Geest told me. He poured more Earl Grey into his teacup and took a sip.  “I’d like to think the Liberal Democrats can drag it back out of the gutter, but it won’t be an easy process, and certainly not a short-term one.”

I’ve met with Toulouse and Van der Geest, President of the Liberal Democrat Society, because both students call themselves ‘centrists’ — supporters of ‘moderate’ policy. What does ‘moderate’ even mean? How do you justify centrism in St Andrews, where everyone wants you to pick a side? And how the hell can you have a political movement for the status quo?

“It’s not fair to have a system where the right and left are entirely exclusive,” Toulouse told me.

“[Centrism] seeks to find a compromise,” Van der Geest added. “It acknowledges that society is fractured and encompasses many different groups — it tries to find a middle ground. I believe there’s a great misconception that centrism means ‘apolitical’, which is absolutely not the case. Instead, it seeks to be the mediator.”

Often, centrist political outlooks combine the social liberalism associated with the ‘left’, and fiscal liberalism associated with the ‘right’. Through talking to both students, however, I learned that being a centrist isn’t just as simple as staking yourself to the ‘middle ground’. Democracy is about ‘we’ more than ‘me’ — centrists must convince their peers to join in on the middle ground-staking. 

“I’m quite frustrated with centrism because it’s not fully politically viable, nobody is passionately centrist,” Toulouse said.“The centre isn’t clearly defined like the left and right are, which is why I’ve grown slowly disillusioned by the structure, even if I still identify with it.” 

I asked Toulouse if he thought being a ‘mediator’ stops centrists from acting decisively. He did — “The centre is best as a supporting force rather than a governing force. Having a clear political line is necessary, and the centre has never been able to define a clear line as it means everything and nothing [...] I’m not sure I’d want a moderate leading, as much as supporting or participating in governance.”

Van der Geest gives a different answer: “Being a centrist doesn’t mean you’re constantly flipping between two ends of the spectrum. Centrist politicians and parties have defined agendas of their own. [....] Obviously, I’m a little biased, but I feel that we stick to this integrity more than other [groups].”

During my interviews, it became clear that centrists are tough to pin down. Why is that? “It’s difficult to make the centre exciting,” Toulouse said. “It’s kind of sad to be a centrist. If your personal convictions, like mine, lead you to be more central, you’re faced with the reality that it isn’t popular. It’s depressing.”

Toulouse frets that centrism is too dull, while Van der Geest tells me it’s alright if politics is a snooze-fest at times: “The left and the right can make promises they can’t keep. They can dog whistle, they can be populist,” he says. “The centre of politics is more about finding solutions to the problems that matter. Sometimes, those solutions are boring [...] but it does mean we get stuff done.”

Toulouse and Van der Geest find common ground over one thing: their disdain for how the non-centrist socs are running things. “Opinions are bouncing around Aikman’s cellar and don’t get anywhere,” Van der Geest said. “A political society doesn’t have to be a rowdy bunch of drunks, which, let’s face it, certain political societies here do tend to be. The political scene here doesn’t have a good image. There was a better image when I joined, and as the years have passed it’s gotten worse and worse.”

If the current polarised political culture in St Andrews has grown stale, can centrist societies like the Liberal Democrats freshen it up? 

Toulouse is pessimistic. “I find an issue with youth political organisations. If you’re willing to join one, there might be something wrong with you,” He says. “There’s quite a lot of navel-gazing, especially at debates, plenty of postulating. [...] It’s a lot of wind for nothing. I don’t think anybody listens to our views beyond St Andrews.”

Van der Geest, however, is cheerier. “We’re privileged enough to have a member of our committee that sits on the local [Liberal Democrats] committee for Fife,” Van der Geest told me. The Liberal Democrats society has only been established this year, but its president is optimistic regarding its future and our future. The best place to start is showing up, he tells me. “If people are willing to join any political society, I’d say to attend their events, ask questions that haven’t been asked, and spark this change,” he says. “We don’t want to be a copy of the other societies. We want to foster healthy, mostly sober discussions, invite politicians in for discussions [...] It starts from below within political societies, and it’s something I can support on either side.”

Photo: Creative Commons