If some of the anti-Jennifer Smith dissidents within the Progressive Labour Party are unhappy with her leadership style, many also say that she and her Cabinet are not doing enough for the underprivileged in the community - the very people the PLP was founded to serve.

This is a conundrum that all centre-left parties face, from the Bill Clinton Democrats to Tony Blair's New Labour to Jennifer Smith's New Bermuda PLP.

Having been kept out of political power for generations, the liberal/left moved to the centre out of necessity, giving up elements of their doctrine in order to capture the middle class, middle ground, swing vote.

That this strategy has been an electoral success is unquestioned. But if US Democrats had to give up "tax and spend", Labour had to give up nationalisation and the PLP had to give up Independence and income tax (at least in the last election) in order to gain power, not all of their supporters are going to be happy as a result.

At the same time, there may also be a sense, in the words of Rolfe Commissiong in Monday's paper, "that Bermudians are continuing to feel, even more so over the last couple of years, that they are somehow losing control of their own country".

The question is whether another leader can address that feeling and at the same time keep the middle of the road vote on the PLP's side.

Thus Ms Smith and her Cabinet - since collective responsibility applies to any decisions taken by the Government - have been "pushed" to give their supporters a sense of control over their destiny and "pulled" to maintain the economy and to keep the middle of the road swing vote.

Evidently, there is a feeling that there has been more pulling than pushing going on. But can another leader achieve the balance that is necessary to keep the economy going and to address the social needs of the electorate that put the PLP into power? That is the question that Attorney General Dame Lois Browne Evans and Independent MP Trevor Moniz posed in yesterday's newspaper. Both said that Ms Smith had delivered most of what the PLP promised and both suggested that any alternative to Ms Smith would be worse, although possibly for different reasons.

The question that the dissidents have to decide on is whether another leader who better addresses the concerns of the underprivileged can do so without "putting the Country into a mess", as Dame Lois put it, or without losing power at the next Election.

Mr. Moniz put the question more bluntly. Can a leader who puts more of an emphasis on race than Ms Smith has successfully lead "one Bermuda" which is made up of more than one race and could that person keep the PLP itself together when MPs like Dale Butler have already expressed their concerns about the racial agenda of some of his PLP colleagues?

It's one thing to get rid of one leader, and it is quite another to find someone who can enunciate a vision of a new new Bermuda.

Any leader who wishes to gain and hold power needs to enunciate a vision of where they want their society to go. Ms Smith has not done that recently in a way that goes beyond generalisations and platitudes, but nor have any of her would-be rivals managed to do so.

And that's the big problem the PLP faces.