550 British MPs out of 650 are liberals

Rod Liddle in the Spectator today says something I agree with. He is a lifelong Labour voter and a party member, by the way, or was before they recently expelled him.

There is an appetite for a new political party, without doubt, one which might represent those who are not enamoured of austerity and quite like the idea of nationalising the railways, but are pro-Leave, pro-nation state and rather less convinced about the intersectional obsessions of race and gender which plague our four main parties. A vast section of the population which puts its faith instead in the traditional family as the cornerstone of society and which values community and the notion of ‘doing the right thing’.

That’s where the crucial distinction lies in the country, surely. Whatever convinced those seven MPs that we need a new liberal centre party, when those views are already represented by about 550 of our sitting MPs, is a mystery. Chagrin at the appalling Corbyn, I suppose, which is understandable, but far from a clincher in electoral terms.