The Curse of the Comfortably Middle
The middle doesnt feel as comfortable anymore...or, why I wish I wasn't a Centrist Dad.
The Personal Confession – ‘How I Ended Up Here’
I should start by saying that I am not a political expert. I’m not an activist, I’ve never been out leafleting, and I don’t spend my weekends angrily posting about the state of the world. But I do have political leanings—I’m a Labour member, though I sit comfortably on the right of the party and have no real appetite for activism.
More than that, I’ve realised that my instincts have always pulled me towards the middle. Take my news consumption. Two years ago, I had a moment of self-awareness—I realised I was stuck in a bit of a silo, mostly reading The Guardian, nodding along in agreement. So, in what felt like a huge personal shift at the time, I started reading The Times. It was a conscious effort to break out of my bubble, to make sure I wasn’t just reinforcing my own views. And, in hindsight, it was also the most centrist dad move possible.
Since then, I’ve expanded further. I read UnHerd, The Spectator, The New Statesman, and Novara Media. But even as I’ve tried to push myself, I’ve noticed a pattern—if I read something from the left, I balance it with something from the right. I don’t just take in different perspectives; I instinctively counterweight them. It’s like I have an internal scale that won’t let me lean too far in either direction. And that, more than anything, tells me just how deeply embedded my centrist instincts really are.
The same thing happened with podcasts. I was an early adopter of The Rest is Politics, and I still enjoy it. I like how Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart try to have grown-up conversations rather than shouting matches. But the more I listen, the more I wonder if the whole thing is a symptom of the problem—people like me, clinging to the idea that it’s still the late 1990s, that politics can be fixed by competent people finding sensible compromises. I want to believe that, but what if those sensible compromises are part of the reason we’re in this mess in the first place?
If I’d thought about this ten years ago, I probably wouldn’t have cared all that much. But then I became a dad. And that changed things.
How Becoming a Dad Pulled Me to the Right—And Then the Left
Having kids makes you inherently more conservative, at least in some ways. Not necessarily in the ‘Daily Mail-reading, worried-about-woke’ sense, but in the risk-averse, stability-over-everything way. Before Violet was born, I was happy with a smaller place. I owned my own flat from the age of 26, and it was enough. But after Violet arrived, Elsie and I bought a much bigger home, and with that came all the things that make you start thinking differently: schools, house prices, catchment areas, and long-term security. When you’re responsible for a child, you stop thinking in big, abstract political ideas and start focusing on the day-to-day. You just want things to work. You want competent people in charge, and you don’t have time for grand ideological battles. That’s where centrism pulls you in—it promises stability, reasonableness, a way to make the world function without everything having to be torn down and rebuilt.
But then you think about your child’s future, and suddenly, centrism feels… inadequate. Because what if the future we’re heading towards isn’t one where things stay the same, but one where they get worse? What if your child grows up in a country where they can’t afford a home, where public services are threadbare, where opportunities are worse than they were for your generation? That’s when I start to wonder: is centrism just a way of managing decline while pretending everything is fine?
The Problem: Has the Middle Failed?
Here’s the thing: for most of my life, British politics has been pretty centrist. Blair’s New Labour, Cameron’s ‘compassionate conservatism’, even the Coalition years—it was all broadly moderate. And yet, where has that left us?
Housing is unaffordable. Public services are crumbling. Inequality is rising. Climate change is worsening. If sensible, moderate, pragmatic politics was supposed to steer the ship responsibly, why does it feel like we’re sinking?
If I only cared about my own life, I could probably shrug and move on. I’ve been lucky enough to get on the housing ladder. I have a stable job. I can afford a comfortable life. But then I look at Violet and think: what about her?
What about all the other kids growing up now? Will they ever be able to buy a home? Will they have the same security that my generation did? Or are we heading towards a future where everything just slowly gets worse, and we call it ‘normal’ because it happens gradually?
That’s what unsettles me. Maybe the reason radical politics is on the rise is because people can see that the centre isn’t actually solving anything. Maybe centrism, for all its talk of competence, has been more about keeping things tolerable for people like me while failing to offer anything better for the future.
What’s the Alternative? (Or, What Do I Do With This Realisation?)
So where does that leave me? I’m not about to start marching in the streets. The idea of burning it all down and starting over doesn’t appeal, partly because I suspect it never works, but also because, as I said, I’ve got a mortgage and a school catchment area to think about. And that, if I’m honest, is exactly the problem. The system might be failing, but for people like me, it’s still just about livable. Maybe that’s why centrism persists—because for the people in charge, things aren’t bad enough to justify real change.
At the same time, I understand why the right is attractive. It offers a clear, simple vision: security, order, tradition, responsibility. There’s something reassuring in that, especially when the world feels chaotic. And then there’s the left, where I often agree with the broad goals—fairness, equality, opportunity—but find myself exhausted by the culture wars, the moral purity tests, the constant demand to prove you’re on the right side of history. There’s a part of me that wants to say, "I care, but I also have a job and a kid, and I don’t have the bandwidth to fight over terminology every five minutes."
So where does that leave me? Probably still in the middle. But I don’t want to just sit here passively. If I’m going to be centrist, I’d at least like it to be an active choice, not just a default setting. Maybe centrism needs to stand for something more than just ‘not being extreme’. Maybe it needs to be bold, not just sensible. Less about compromise for the sake of it, and more about actually fixing things—properly, not just enough to keep things ticking along.
Conclusion – Still Stuck in the Middle?
I haven’t come to any grand conclusion here. I started writing this thinking I’d either talk myself out of being a centrist or double down on why it’s the best place to be. Instead, I’ve just ended up questioning it more. Which, of course, is the most centrist thing I could have done.
So for now, I suppose I remain where I started—somewhere in the middle. But at least I’m thinking about it. And maybe that’s a start.
Or maybe its all that I don't like the Centrist Dad cliche!
