There is no doubt that there is considerable goodwill in the community towards the Bermuda Democratic Alliance, especially among swing voters who are tired of the divisive politics that have characterised debate between the Progressive Labour Party and the United Bermuda Party for too long.

So there was considerable interest in the party when it launched itself last week. Some of the early signs are promising that the BDA will transform Bermuda politics.

It would appear that the party is well integrated and that its overall membership is younger than is typical in either of the two main parties. All of that is good, especially if youth also means a reduction in cynicism.

And the party's core values and early policies are hard to dispute; indeed many of them are inarguable.

That is part of the party's problem. The UBP and the PLP could well claim many of those same values as their own. The challenge for the BDA is to differentiate itself in policies and in personality from either party.

To do that it must provide more detail on its policies and present strong new leaders and candidates. And it must become a little sharper too; launching the party on the same day as the UBP leadership vote reduced the party's exposure while the close similarity of the party's logo to Pepsi's new branding, whether deliberate or not, makes them look slightly amateur.

In pure political terms, it must be acknowledged that at least part of the reason for the formation of the BDA is to create a grouping that can defeat the PLP and take government, if only because political parties exist to exercise power and the PLP is the party that holds power. As such, the formation of the BDA reflects the perception that the UBP cannot achieve that goal.

That's partly because there are many voters who are disillusioned with the PLP and its current leadership but cannot and will never vote for the UBP.

So to become viable, the BDA must do two things at once. It must attract dissatisfied PLP voters by making it clear that it is not the NewBP or UBP Lite. And it must show traditional UBP supporters that their party cannot win and that they should switch allegiances, but with the understanding that supporting the BDA does not mean leading the BDA.

That's not an easy task, and because the new party's founders all come from the UBP, the PLP has already begun to attempt to paint the party as the UBP in BDA clothing.

The new party's other main goal is to attract independent or disillusioned PLP supporters into its leadership and as parliamentary candidates.

Only by doing that, in conjunction with developing policies that are different from both the PLP and the UBP, can it hope to be viable.

The main parties have an easier task in some ways because the usual means of breaking a third, centrist party is to squeeze it out of existence by moving into the central ground.

Only if the PLP was to move to the left and the UBP to the right would the BDA have a chance. This is essentially why the National Liberal Party failed; the PLP moved to the centre and displaced it.

Of course, in the Bermuda context, race is as critical as whether a party is perceived as being liberal or conservative. And even in proclaiming that it is a non-racial party, the BDA is playing a small part in that.

However, if the PLP comes to be seen as a party that can only define its policies and programmes through the prism of race, while the UBP comes to be seen as a purely white party, then the BDA has a real chance to succeed – as a party that is not defined by race.