I’VE just been writing The Herald’s obituary for Baroness Williams of Crosby, otherwise known as Shirley Williams, otherwise known as the woman who might have changed British politics in the 1980s but couldn’t, and it’s striking how different she feels to where we are now – she, and her values. Would someone like her thrive these days? What’s happened to the centreground she once occupied? And what on earth has happened to radical liberalism in Scotland?

In a way, it’s a little surprising that Shirley ended up the way she did. She grew up in a big house with servants in Chelsea and might have been expected to become a Tory; indeed, when she first started campaigning for Labour, she was accused of being a traitor to her class. However, her father, George Catlin, was a Labour candidate and pushed her to party meetings in her pram, and her mother, Vera Brittain, wrote about the pain and pointlessness of war in her memoir Testament of Youth. For Shirley, it was a kindergarten of radicalism and compassion.

But she was never really a socialist. She was a radical liberal. She was a social democrat and an internationalist. She was pro-European, anti-nationalist and anti-authoritarian and she was uncomfortable with the extremities of both the Left and the Right. At one end was the big-state socialism of Michael Foot and at the other end the free-market conservatism (and militarism) of Tony Blair and in the middle was Shirley. She was in the centre. She was a centrist.

We know now, of course, that the centre got squeezed when Mrs Thatcher’s fortunes recovered after the Falklands War, and the search for the middle ground goes on. In writing the obituary for Williams, I read some of her speeches and her guiding principles were clear: social liberalism, internationalism, a desire for equality, and concern about the authoritarianism of the right (imposed by the police, the army or the rich) and the authoritarianism of the left (imposed by government, unions and, arguably in 2021, identity politics).

Looking back, you can see that Williams was a voice of common sense in the middle of it all, but her death raises the question of why there is still no obvious home for people who agree with her, particularly in Scotland. For a long time, there was a tradition of radical, passionate liberalism in the Highlands and, in the cities, voters gathered round the party of Keir Hardie; there was also a vein of lower-case conservatism in the Borders and Aberdeenshire. But all of it, pretty much, circled round the same point: the liberal centre.

So where has Scotland’s centre gone? Many voters may feel it lies somewhere, deep down, in the bosom of the SNP but their record in government tells a different story. Where are the radical, or even effective, policies aimed at reducing inequality? Policies like the introduction of comprehensive schools in the 60s, which Shirley Williams helped steer through. There’s also an unpleasant authoritarian streak in the SNP that Williams would surely hate: the “named person” proposals, for example, or the Hate Crime Bill.

Ordinarily, voters who think like Shirley might find their home in some of the smaller parties and if you look at the policies of the Scottish Greens, there’s much for liberals to like: more powers for councils, an end to fox hunting, and an end to the so-called “war on drugs”. The same applies to the Lib-Dems and particularly Labour under its new leader Anas Sarwar, who speaks the kind of language Shirley would applaud: compassionate, internationalist, liberal.

But sadly the centre has been squeezed again. In the 80s, it was squeezed between Thatcherism and socialism and in Scotland in 2021, it’s being squeezed between nationalism and unionism. Vote for the Scottish Greens and get nationalism. Vote for the SNP and get nationalism. Vote for the Lib-Dems in a seat that’s going to be won by either the SNP or the Tories and get nationalism. Radical, internationalist liberals have no home. Who on earth do they vote for? Where on earth is the centre?

Forty years ago, Shirley Williams thought, or hoped, she had found the answer in the SDP. She was wrong, but perhaps there is some hope to be found in how her story ended. The SDP imploded, but its creation was the first chapter in the story of a different centreground: New Labour. The brand may be tainted, but the hope must be that something similar could happen in Scotland. Political extremes burn intensely, but they don’t burn for long. Perhaps the centreground in Scotland will grow. Perhaps, some day, it will re-emerge.

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