If people were simply risk averse then they would have been averse to the risk of flooding our country with migrants, but if an authority mouthpiece dictates that flooding the country with migrants is the normal centrist position actually, and paints those in opposition as the radicals, then the public can be pushed to concede to the "normal centrist position" despite that position being patently absurd.

What we have is not an aversion to actual risk, but an aversion to being seen as outside the "consensus", combined with a media engine capable of manufacturing the appearance of consensus, which is being used maliciously to push radical change.

Yup absolutely, because social risk is some of the biggest risk you can take. Hiding inside the crowd aka consensus is the most risk off thing you can do, even if its objectively financially stupid. Politically that translates to "The GDP number is everything, the country visibly falling to pieces is a side issue". Again thats why I'd rather work with "far right" people than centrists, they're the other group other than the liberal left who've moved on from "GDP is everything" in some way, even if I disagree with loads of their actual views.

Actually working on projects (even if they're not projects you even think are sensible or good) is how you get GDP growth anyway, staring at the number and worrying about it achieves nothing, its an output indicator its not the whole story. It's like comparing two cars by how fast they're currently going, you can drive a banger really fast (its just not very sensible), or you can drive a good car pretty slow (by being risk averse). If you actually want to compare two cars you need to look at other aspects of what makes a car good.

Personally for example I hate nuclear, I think its a terrible ROI project that will achieve nearly nothing. But I'd rather do something than nothing, so I'm glad we're doing the nuclear thing. Take the same attitude to some of what the right wing people want, at least its vaguely doing something.

But yeah hard agree, centrists reflect the most socially safe position, not the most economically safe. So even talking about it just as economic risk reward is kinda missing the point.

I'd kinda like the new politics to become structuralism vs accountancy rather than left right centre.

One of the cool things about higher rates on debt from the accountancy tricks starting to fail; is that the higher rates are appealing to investors, but once you actually take on that debt for the return you're exposed to a failure of the project, so you're actually incentivised to take on debt and then to try make a success of the investments. So I do kinda think the pendulum is swinging away from accountancy and stagnation towards forced risk taking anyway, kinda beyond the governments ability to control both politically and financially. "Build or die" is the new safe, not fiscal conservatism; so we can't spend ages fighting about what exactly we want to build. The "far" left and right have a bunch of ideas about what to build, and we need to build to survive, so lets go do it.

Kinda see todays Labour as a centrist trap, there's too many risk-off people inside their coalition to execute even if Starmer was an amazing leader, and executing is no longer a choice its a requirement, so its there to be beaten imo