Our Brexit limbo has given us two new parties, but the same old politics

Imagine that, for some reason, you want to lose an election. You need a vote-repellent campaign, something really unsupportable. You would probably form the Establishment party – passionately in favour of the system, cheering for the status quo. Your candidates would boast of their credentials as career politicians. Their slogan would be “business as usual”.

This imaginary party is the perfect adversary, the most beatable thing in British politics – which is why real-life parties all want to run against it. Everyone claims to be the new politics and pins the despicable badge of oldness on their rivals.

The current state of British politics, trapped in Brexit limbo – committed to leaving the EU while failing to do so –, creates the perfect conditions for this game. No one voted for this in-between state. No party thinks it is desirable, and everyone can think of reasons why it is someone else’s fault. Leavers say remainers obstructed the EU exit; remainers say the door was wide open but leavers insist on trying to jump from the windows.

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The mess is attributable to an absence and an excess of Brexit. That paradoxical situation creates fertile conditions for the launch of two new parties, one demanding the project’s completion and one preferring its abandonment. Both claim to represent rupture from the old system, and both are half-right.

Change UK, the pro-European entity that launched its European election campaign on Tuesday, has a tough job selling itself as a radical insurgency. Its founders are all sitting MPs and its primary cause involves preserving something that millions of people want scrapped. Whichever way you spin it, to salvage Britain’s EU membership is to “remain” – a stodgy, nostalgic, sedentary kind of word. There is recognition of that branding obstacle in the party’s decision to foreground the very idea of change in its name.

It is easy to think of reasons why this new entity might struggle to achieve liftoff, but not all of political gravity is against them. There are plenty of people who think Brexit is a terrible idea. The two main English parties are led by polarising figures who are committed to taking the UK out of the EU. There are differences in emphasis, of course. Theresa May projects her pro-Brexit position proudly but incompetently. Jeremy Corbyn manages his with tactical servility, contriving different ways to avoid upsetting different audiences. But between them they have nurtured the cult of stubborn necessity in driving ahead with something that millions of people think it wise to reconsider.

The new party’s list of candidates for European elections supports its claim to be dissolving old allegiances. It includes defectors from the ranks of its rivals, including one former Tory cabinet minister and an ex-Labour MP. But that also sends a mixed message. It is hard to capture the future with too many “formers” on the rolls.

Then there is the problem of the Liberal Democrats. There might well be a market big enough for one pro-European, centre-ground party, but not two. Political conditions over the past two years should have been ideal for a soaring Lib Dem revival. That it hasn’t happened is partly down to undynamic leadership – opportunity knocked and Vince Cable didn’t answer the door – and partly the legacy of brand contamination dating back to coalition with David Cameron. The parliamentary founders of Change UK think the Lib Dems have been hogging the middle lane for too long. The older party naturally doesn’t want to pull over just because some upstart is hooting and flashing in the rear-view mirror without necessarily moving any faster.

There are technical reasons why ChUKs and Lib Dems are not yet in the same vehicle. Parties have rules, members to consult and candidates to promote. A merger isn’t legally or culturally straightforward, but the logic is already clear to some leading figures on both sides. It will become more obvious through the pointlessness of running rival European election campaigns on identical platforms.

There are multiple Eurosceptic options too, but Nigel Farage’s voice has a way of cutting through the chorus, and his new Brexit party has a very catchy tune: the UK is still in the EU despite promises that this would not be the case. Leave voters are justifiably cross about that. If hypocrisy could corrode Farage’s appeal, his anti-politics shtick might have degraded over 25 years as a professional politician. He is the oldest-established anti-establishment candidate in Europe. His profile did wane for a period – when the Tories had stolen his rhetoric, the government was dedicated to fulfilling his most famous demand and the opposition was not opposing it.

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But then Theresa May organised the perfect circumstances for a comeback tour – an election in which Europe is the dominant subject and in which the Tories have no conceivable campaign to run. They hate both the situation they are in and each other. There are Conservative activists, councillors and MPs who will vote for Farage. They welcome humiliation for their own side and hope that a purge of pro-European moderates can be whipped up in the aftermath.

The Tories were once proud to be the Establishment party, but that concept is so toxic that even the world’s most venerable governing party is refusing to campaign in defence of the government. It prefers to campaign against itself. This seems to be the new normal condition of British politics, where everyone must be the insurgent outsider. And who can blame them, given the rage and contempt that rain down on the heads of insiders?

But someone has to be on the inside. Someone has to take the decisions, negotiate the deals, make the unpalatable choices. Someone has to consider competing arguments, weigh rival interests, come up with a plan and defend it to the public. That is politics. It is the way that societies organise themselves and settle their differences without fighting. And there is no way to do politics without politicians. Some are good, some bad, some honest, some corrupt. But the ones to be most wary of – the ones who are most obviously lying – are the ones who pretend they are in a different business altogether.

• Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist