British politics needs an Emmanuel Macron of its own. Why can't we find our voice for the voiceless?

If nothing changes then we are about to be run over by a proto-Ukip steamroller driven by Theresa May. All we stand for will be lost for a decade

French presidential election candidate Emmanuel Macron has found a way to tap into the populist wave. Why can't British Remainers find their own alternative? (EPA)

“Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the moderate voice, that never have spoken yet.”

With apologies to GK Chesterton and his poem The Secret People: Listen carefully and the sound you hear is the rumble of the tumbrils on the cobblestones.

What has amazed, puzzled and frightened us these last three turbulent and revolutionary years, is that it has not been those inhabiting the shrinking, bewildered, terrified circle of conventional politics who have changed things, but the angry beast circling it menacingly outside. It is people’s movements who have changed things, not political parties.

And yet, true to form when an election is called, we still pull out our magnifying glasses and examine every hair twitch and whisper inside the political circle, ignoring what is happening in the wide circle of the millions outside it. Just like Edmund Burke on Marie Antoinette, we examine the plumage but ignore the dying bird.

Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Ukip, the SNP, Alternativ für Deutchland: they are ubiquitous, all pervasive, in many cases irresistible and – to conventional politicians, at least – utterly, utterly terrifying.

Theresa May is no exception. If May did not want Brexit, then she is its true, if illegitimate, daughter, frog-marching our country out the exit door of Europe in this election.

Only Emanuel Macron seems, we hope, to have found an answer to them.

The new voiceless and excluded are not the hard left or the nationalist right, both of which are now more than adequately represented. The new voiceless in Britain are the millions of those who are as angry as I am, as frightened as I am, and as keen to change things as I am, but who have not yet found a way for their voice to be heard and make a difference.

Of course I want these new excluded millions to vote Liberal Democrat on 8 June, and many now will. A strong force of Lib Dems in the next Parliament is very necessary. But it is not sufficient. It is not good enough just to reduce the Tory majority. What we need now is to start building a force that can hold this government to account in the next Parliament and replace them at the one after that. Labour cannot do that, and the Lib Dems cannot do it alone.

Meanwhile the millions outside the political circle who believe as we do remain voiceless, scattered and broken, waiting for a lead. But they are not getting one.

So far, from the progressive parties and the progressive voices within parties, there has been chiefly silence. Some braver souls, like would-be teenage lovers at a dimly lit party, have reached out, furtively seeking fingers to touch across the divide, only to pull back for fear of rejection or discovery if the lights go up. And so nothing happens.

If nothing continues to happen then we are, all of us, about to be run over by a proto-Ukip steamroller driven by May. All we stand for will be lost for a decade. Dr Johnson used to say that the prospect of hanging in the morning sharpens a man’s mind wonderfully. But it hasn’t. We, who should be calling the progressive forces of our country to arms, remain stuck in torpor and uncertainty.

And thus will the Government of Britain be handed over, for the first time since the Great Reform Act, not to the moderate voices who represent the true political centre of gravity of our country, but to those who would divide us into extremes, isolate us from our neighbours and perhaps even break up our United Kingdom as a consequence.

What we need now is a British En Marche. What we need is a Macron for the UK. The problem is, we haven’t got one. Given what is at stake, is it really the case that sensible voices inside and outside the political circle cannot find the way to make this happen?

The only way to stop this election resulting in an elected dictatorship under a hard-right, hard-Brexit Tory Party is to turn it, as Macron has done, into a clear choice, powerfully advocated, between an open, liberal, internationalist Britain and one based on nationalism, division and isolation.

Hands up who’s up for the fight?

Paddy Ashdown is former leader of the Liberal Democrats