Anže Logar, the former foreign minister, has ended months of speculation by declaring his intention to start a new, big tent party by the end of the year, having quit the opposition Democratic Party (SDS) after more than 25 years as a member.

Addressing reporters on 10 October, a day after resigning as an SDS member, Logar said Slovenia needed a "third political pillar", an "area of broad cooperation" in an indication his ambition is to overcome the polarisation between the right bloc as represented by SDS leader Janez Janša, and the left.

Previously seen as a potential successor to Janša, Logar first fuelled speculation that he might start his own party after he lost the run-off presidential election to Nataša Pirc Musar in 2022 but won strong popularity as an independent candidate. "We are on the verge of something big," he said at the time.

He then went on to start a new platform, a debate club of sorts, to discuss Slovenia's key challenges in May 2023 along with some prominent figures who had been affiliated with both the conservative and the liberal blocs in the past.

While he had been insisting his activities in the forum would not interfere with his job as an MP for the SDS and he was not planning to start a new party, there was growing unease within his own party.

In December last year the SDS issued a statement saying there was no longer any doubt Logar was forming his own party, so from now on his public appearances should be considered as views of an emerging party.

Refusal to sign loyalty statement

The row escalated further in February when the party urged its MPs to sign a loyalty statement pledging to continue to serve as the party's MPs and members of its deputy group until the end of the term and Logar, along with two other MPs failed to do so.

The SDS, known for its party discipline, retaliated by removing the trio from all parliamentary working bodies and moving them to the back benches in the National Assembly chamber.

On 9 October the party confirmed that Logar had quit with SDS leader Janša expressing the expectation that Logar would step down as MP and meet his other obligations under the contract he signed with the party before running in the April 2022 general election, suggesting it was the SDS which made his winning an MP seat possible.

Logar came out the next day to say he would leave the SDS deputy group but was not planning to give up his seat as MP, which would have meant the SDS member further down the slate would get his seat.

"It's the voters who give you a seat in parliament," he said, noting that the Supreme Court has ruled in a case of another former SDS member that any contractual relationship is not with the party but with the voters.

It is not clear whether the other two rebel SDS MPs, Eva Irgl, and Dejan Kaloh, will quit the party as well or whether they might join Logar, which would mean the trio could form a new deputy group. Irgl is part of his Cooperation Platform and may well join him.

Centre-right politician shunning extremes

Logar said he was not founding the new party on his own but did not name his allies. However, Romana Jordan, the former member of the European Parliament for the SDS, and Jernej Pikalo, who served in the past as education minister for the Social Democrats (SD), appeared together with him in a video accompanying his social media posts. Both are among the founding members of his Cooperation Platform.

He did not clarify what the party's position on the political map would be, but said "I have made it clear on several occasions that I am a centre-right politician, a supporter of the European People's Party by mentality".

He has "no problem working with individuals or groups on one side or the other, as long as it does not come to extremes", he said, adding that every party, especially a new one, contested elections in order to win.

A direction was indicated in his online posts where Logar said they would like to "put a successful economy at the heart of a victorious Slovenia, keep youth at home [in Slovenia], secure a safe future and make citizens trust institutions again".

"Let there be no mistake about it - what we're going to create together will not be a political centre without an identity. It will be political breadth with a range of scents and tastes. But ones that do not 'neutralise' each other. This is the path Democrats take," he said, explaining this did not mean necessarily the new party will be named Democrats.

Asked whether his party would be "an SDS satellite", he said Janša's response to his resignation indicated this had not been made in agreement with him.

There has been some speculation whether the row between Logar and Janša was acted out in order for Logar to eventually help Janša win over the centrist electorate that is unreachable to his party, yet pundits say this is unlikely considering the internal polling has shown that Logar's party would take the most votes away from the SDS and Christian democratic New Slovenia.

If Logar's party could win over centrist voters, though, it could then act as a kingmaker for either a left- or right-leaning government and would even make it possible to build a grand coalition of the kind Slovenia has not had since the governments of late leader Janez Drnovšek (1950-2008) in the 1990s.

Logar hinted at such a possibility himself in an interview with the late night news show on TV Slovenija on 10 October: "I think Slovenia is ripe for a grand coalition next term." Slovenia is due to hold the next regular election in 2026.