> No block size limit would simply result in huge blocks

The block size limit started out as more than 100x the actual demand in 2010, and was not hit until June 2015. For all effects, bitcoin did not have a limited block size during those 5 1/2 years. 

An 8 MB (or 200 MB) block size limit will *not* result in huge blocks. It will only let the actual block size grow together with the demand. The effect of raising or not raising the limit wii be felt only starting in mid-2016. If the 1 MB limit is upheld, the system will change drastically as congestion will be a daily routine. With an increased limit, there will be no radical change; only a slow and gradual continuation of the present situation (minus the "stress tests").

> and a much more centralised node network

The number of full non-miining nodes is bound to decrease even with a bounded block size. Every month a fraction of the nodes will go permanently offline for a variety of reasons, and that fraction will either remain constant or increase with time. On the other hand, the percentage of new nodes coming up each month will decrease with time, because the blockchain will grow at least linearly with time, and so the cost of setting up a node will increase too. So the "births" will increasingly lose to the "deaths".

The main cause of node death, it seems, is that there is no reward for full non-mining nodes. That is not a bug of the protocol, because such nodes were not meant to exist. The design assumed only simple clients and miners (which Satoshi called "nodes"). The concept of "full non-mining node" was invented nly because the miners became concentrated into a dozen operators, dominated by four Chinese pools. But that improvised remedy cannot work in the long term. The decreasing number of such nodes should be expected -- even with 1 MB blocks.

> To say it is a centrally controlled limit is wrong

Satoshi picekd 1 MB with no contestation because it was the same as "unlimited".  he could have set it at 500 kB or 8 MB just as well.  So there was no significant decision there.  But keeping the 1 MB limit in the code will change the character of the network  in mid-2016.  That change is a conscious decision by the current Core developers.  You cannot get mode "centrally controlled" than that...