Or, one deciding we no longer need strategic weapons when we’re on the precipice of a world war, and the other counting his back handers from his Russian handlers.
Actually they’d both be counting their back handers from their Russian handlers.
Political extremists terrify me which is why we need functional and electable mainstream parties. If you believe in mainstream centre left or centre right politics, we need both the Conservatives and Labour to improve, regardless of who you support.
In the age of Capitalism, we need, as you say, strong and reliable centre left and centre right parties. When one is in govt, the other needs to be strong in opposition, damping any move too far away from the balance that is needed by either side that’s in power so nothing strays too far to an extreme. This balance should make Capitalism work for everyone.
The most extreme ideas that should ever be seen are the nationalisation of public services on one side and strong immigration regulation on the other. With strong parties on each side, the ideal situation would be that both of those ideas exist at the same time.
Not oniy have we not got a strong opposition party, we haven’t even had a strong party in govt for a
long time. And the last few GEs have seen landslide victories in seat numbers for the winner, which should mean a strong bloody party in govt. but it’s been a far cry from that from both Labour and Conservatives.
No matter how bad Johnson and Truss etc. were, we should not be happy to see the opposition in tatters, like the Conservatives currently are, because a result of that is Reform gaining traction and the loss of that balance that’s needed across the moderate ground of politics. Their own fault entirely, granted, they were shit and we should be angry with them for fucking us over, but we should not be happy to see them broken as a party because it’s not good for politics in general.
Even if we would never vote Conservative, we should want a strong Conservative Party (or another centre right party, there just isn’t one out there, until there is a party called the ‘One Nation Party’ or whatever, a viable centre right party, we need the Conservatives to be functional and strong). A party that has strong politicians who will stop the leech too far to the right from their own side, and would be strong in opposition to a Labour Party (or another viable centre left party) in govt to stop them from leeching too far to the left. Likewise, Tory voters should always want a strong Labour Party for the same reasons the other way.
What we have instead is a mess of a political landscape.