What do we mean when we talk about centrism?  its a hard definition to pin down, perhaps deliberately so.  Centrism is essentially an attempt at political trans-partisanship, a means of becoming politically non-binary.  Any attempt to pigeon-hole the centrist will therefore be resisted because if the centrist nails his colours to the mast he ceases to be a centrist, by definition.  He is like the particles observed by quantum physicists who change position when observed. 

This has unfortunately lead to the common misunderstanding that centrists have no firm principles, that they represent a mushy compromise between left and right, but this is not actually the case.  Centrism is basically a form of pragmatism but pragmatism should not necessarily be seen as a synonym for cynicism.  In the Pulitzer-prize winning ‘The Metaphysical Club’ (2001) by Louis Menand we learn that the philosophy of pragmatism emerged in the aftermath of the America civil war, largely in response to its senseless waste of human life and potential.  The moral that pragmatic thinkers like John Dewey and Oliver Wendell Holmes garnered from that war was that complete certitude leads to dogmatism and that dogmatism can lead to violence. 

This moral also characterises the thinking of the modern political centrist after the disaster of 20th Marxism became fully apparent and impossible to ignore.  This wisdom was best expressed by Isaiah Berlin in ‘A Message to the Twentieth Century’ in New York Review of Books (25/11/94)

Centrism then is an attempt to take the sting out of politics by removing its ideological edge.  Reformism rather than radical change becoming the watch-word.  The centrist candidate does not stake his claim to political office based upon the fact that he is a representative of any particular political ideology as such but instead based upon his level of competency. 

Centrist politics therefore is essentially a *technocratic* form of politics.  The competency of the centrist is indicated (in part) by his professionalism which, in turn, signals his *insider* status and, as a corollary, his continuity with the current way of doing politics.  Centrism then, viewed correctly, is inherently a *conservative* form of politics, in the true sense of the word, as opposed to the party political sense.  Reformism in theory can quite often become perpetuation in practice. 

The bete noire of centrists everywhere is the populist.  Populism flips the logic of centrism on to its head and exploits the centrist where he is most vulnerable.  The centrist makes an appeal to the public based upon his *competency.*  To this end he presents himself as slick, professional, media-savvy and polished.  He looks and sounds just like you would expect a politician to look and sound like, without a sound-bite or a hair out of place. 

Whereas, the populist, on the other hand, rips up that rule book and bases his appeal to the public instead on his *authenticity* – think of the uncombed hair of Bernie Sanders and Boris Johnson, the lack of a “proper suit and tie” (David Cameron’s words) in respect to Jeremy Corbyn, the cigarette-smoking and beer-drinking of Nigel Farage or the unusual language (for a politician) of Donald Trump – which serves to align the populist with the non-politician and assert his identity as a *common man.*  This serves several more purposes, which we will now explore.