Like most people who have been an MP, I will never forget the day I was elected to Parliament. For one thing, it was snowing in the Yorkshire Dales that cold February day in 1989, and the bleak landscape seemed to match the political fortunes of the Thatcher administration at the time.

More significantly, I was able to win a by-election – the last Tory to do so while the party was in government for a quarter of a century – because my opponents could not agree on a joint candidate. Together, the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Democrats received many thousands more votes than I did, but they were so neatly divided that I beat both of them. This mattered: the SDP disintegrated soon after that.

One might have thought that this disastrous experience of division among centrist parties would be etched into their memories as much as into mine, but evidently they have learnt nothing, even from such recent history. In no election in modern times has it been more appropriate, more convenient and more imperative for apparently moderate parties to put aside their differences than in the unloved but imminent European elections. Yet last week they each unveiled their separate lists of candidates, bearing a closer resemblance to a political version of Strictly Come Dancing than a serious effort to transform British politics.