Suneil Sharma: The political centre should build a new independent movement

The answer is not as much as you think.

Yes, we are murdering each other, we have some shiny new buildings, we have Irish language programmes on TV and we have elected a bunch of mediocrities to manage/not manage a political system that at best is designed to deliver inertia and at worst managed decline.

My beef is not with Sinn Fein or DUP — you get what you vote for, ethno nationalism with a dollop of fairy-tale populism — but with the visionless political centre.

Firstly, the SDLP, a party in organisational, political and intellectual disarray, that needs to be a lot less green and a lot more pink.

Let me explain what this means; pluralist at your core, progressive in terms of public policy and social cohesion as your goal. Speaking to issues that will impact on all our futures and not always through the prism of Irish unification.

The UUP, an incoherent bunch of largely nice individuals who have been flailing about in the political wilderness trying to find a new identity and purpose.

Since the decline of the Protestant hegemony, the UUP have been unable to reposition themselves in the new political landscape. Let me try and help.

The word Union means a fusion, uniting or a coalition. So, do what your name suggests, minus the ‘ist’ and build a coalition around ideas that act in the interest of all citizens and engage with confidence and intellectual rigour around what you would want a future 32 county Ireland to look like.

The Alliance Party have failed to build a compelling political narrative other than to say “we are not them”. This is clearly inoffensive but ineffective.

The party needs to reinvigorate its core values. Needed is a policy platform that excites and a political strategy that taps into the concerns of the millennials and the challenges that face this Province. Please, no more Mr Nice guy.

The so-called middle has singularly failed to reposition itself since the 1998 accord and have become ‘political mush’. Parties that are not pro-choice, do not espouse secular education as core values are neither centre left or liberal.

So, kill the myth that working-class William and Seamus have nothing in common and create a new independent movement with eyes focused on the future with a new mantra “Your Future Our Priority”

• Suneil Sharma is a businessman and former Policing Board member