Le Rouge Journal

British voters prefer moderate Centrism... so why are Far-Right groups making gains?

2015-03-23T11:26:00.002-07:00

There has been much speculation over the years as to the dominant political attitudes of the British people. That debate has been reflected in the long term efforts of the Conservative Party to rebrand and modernise (Watt, 2015{1}). It has been the driving force behind movements within the Labour Party, such as Blue Labour (Berry, 2011).

The answer is, according to NatCen's British Social Attitudes Survey, that political attitudes in Britain appear to be very particularly Centrist and moderate (NatCen, 2015).

A recent study has shown that voters are Centrists who pull more to the Left, or more to the Right, to restrain the drift of the government in power (Watt, 2015{2}). These drifts to the Right, against Labour in 2010, and to the Left, against the Conservatives in 2015, tell us something very interesting about the electoral chances of the main parties.

The apparently determined Centrism of voters turns efforts to stay in government into a battle to stay in the middle ground, and to keep away the perception of drifting towards more extreme positions. The economic policies of the main parties - as demonstrated by the debates over last week's 2015 Budget announcement (18 March 2015) - despite being at apparent odds with one another, reflect this reality by all fitting tightly within the accepted economic consensus.

There is, however, something paradoxical in all this: the rise of the far right.

It has not happened in isolation. Across Europe and in the United States, Right-wing and Far-Right groups have gained a lot of ground. From the Tea Party in the US, to Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, there are anti-establishment protest groups springing up across Europe that have a distinct conservative overtone. In the UK and France, Right-wing parties UKIP and Front National have been the main benefactors.

These rising reactions - with their nationalist, religious and cultural overtones - seem to defy the analysis. While UKIP have yet to break through 10% of the popular vote at an election, in France Marine Le Pen's Front National look set to become France's largest party.

It is not impossible, though, to bring these events within the findings of the study. First to consider are the groups and movements themselves which seem to have two components:

First, an anti-establishment vote, acting in response to the government or political consensus of the day,
and second, the deep sectarianism to which these movements have frequently appealed.

Taking the assessment of the study as a starting point, it is possible to imagine - as others have done before (Bogdanor, 1983) - the mainstream of politics not as a struggle between Left and Right, but between the Centre and extremisms on all sides.

Most multi-party, majoritarian, political systems feature the Left and the Right revolving around a centrist, moderate (even liberal) core of voters, with those centrists swapping between the two options to Centre-Left and Centre-Right. Wherever these parties began on the spectrum, competitive politics pulls everyone towards a consensus - though not necessarily at the centre.

In Britain, and in Europe, the consensus is currently firmly within in the Centre-Right. In the face of the dominant forces driving that consensus - capitalism, globalisation, modernisation - the anti-establishment element of the Far-Right movement fits well within the expectations of NatCen study.

The harder to explain element is how the anti-establishment movement has fed the Far-Right, rather than the Left - as the study predicts. The answer to that lies, again, in comprehending the political spectrum in terms of the Centre and extremes.

With multiple parties, the emphasis is placed heavily upon taking a moderate course so as to have the broad appeal needed to catch the broad range of voters needed for a majority, or to present greater grounds for co-operation in the event of a coalition. While the system forces out extremism, it reduces political debate down to a few digits here and there in a fiscal plan.

In the UK, for example, the closeness of the main parties has effectively shut out alternatives. In 2010 the Liberal Democrats were seen as the alternative, not to Labour or the Conservatives, but rather to Labour and the Conservatives - as the keepers of the establishment. With the Lib Dems joining the ranks of the governing parties, alternative debate is closed down further still.

That exclusivity can breed alienation.

In France, it has been suggested that the concerns of the working class have been ignored - allowing the far-right to feed on their discontent. While the mainstream has focused on the politics of austerity, capitalism, modernisation and globalisation - forces alienating enough - the Left has focussed itself (so the assessment goes) on the plight of 'minority groups', leaving a section of white, working-class, men feeling 'left behind' (Willsher, 2015). The last US elections certainly showed that the Right had become deeply connected to a predominantly white, older and male, Christian voter base. That tendency is also reflected in UKIP's supporters (Goodwin & Ford, 2014).

Herein lies the dangerously effective power of the Far-Right narrative. Rather than a narrative of Right versus Left, it becomes a matter of this section of the people against the establishment - frequently depicted as a detached and privileged minority.

By calling out an establishment that is detached and corrupt, and deriding an opposition as being unconcerned or dismissive of the concerns of the majority, Far-Right groups are able appeal to people beyond those who would normally find the Right-wing brand of tradition, hierarchy and nativism. It feeds on alienation and discontent, and fuels it with stories of the threat posed by immigration and European bureaucracy to the 'traditions' of 'natives' (Skey, 2013).

In short, the very same political system that pushes extremism to the fringes, also fuels it with anti-establishment fodder when it fails to address the common good.

So can the establishment respond?

Both the Conservatives and Labour seem to think that the answer lies in moving further to the Right. Both parties have made efforts to step up their anti-EU and anti-immigration rhetoric (Watt, 2013; Sabin, 2015) and Labour has seen the internal faction Blue Labour argue that the British people are inherently conservative, and that Labour has to accept that and adapt (Berry, 2011).

However, this displays a misunderstanding of the social forces involved. The rising anti-establishment movement is being exploited by Far-Right sectarian, extremist elements, against the civic consensus - but it is not of the Far-Right. Moving to the Right would do nothing but reinforce negative attitudes and confirm conspiracies and suspicions about the motives and habits of the mainstream establishment parties.

The British Attitudes Survey tells us that voters in Britain are Centrist, and that they move Left or Right as a countervailing force to reign in extreme governments. This tells us something clearly: these movements are predominantly against the establishment and the predominant consensus, and Far-Right parties have merely been a way for, some, to express an opposing opinion in a system that has become closed to alternative voices.

An important lesson can be learned from the anti-establishment movements that have leaned to the Left - Occupy, Syriza, Indignados and Podemos. They have all carried a strong and positive message of inclusion and engagement. They have challenged mainstream narratives with the common good in mind, and have sought the decentralisation of government and the devolution of its power.

These ideas have to be at the heart of a reformed establishment if it is to retain its legitimacy as a facilitator of the common good in the face of an aggressive assault by Far-Right groups.

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References:
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Nicholas Watt's ''Praetorian guard' plan to save Cameron from being unseated after election'; in The Guardian; 20 March 2015{1}.

Craig Berry's 'Old, new, borrowed or blue... Has Blue Labour been duped by conservatism?'; on OpenDemocracy; 23 June 2011.

'Britain Swings Left'; on NatCen; 20 March 2015.

Nicholas Watt's 'British voters have shifted to the left since last general election, study says'; in The Guardian; 20 March 2015{2}.

Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983. [Buy Now]

Kim Willsher's '‘Abandoned’ French working class ready to punish left's neglect by voting for far right'; in The Guardian; 22 March 2015.

Michael Skey's 'Older, anxious and white: why UKIP are the English Tea Party'; on OpenDemocracy; 17 July 2013.

Matthew Goodwin & Robert Ford's 'White face, blue collar, grey hair: the 'left behind' voters only Ukip understands'; in The Guardian; 5 March 2014.

Nicholas Watt's 'EU referendum: In-out choice by end of 2017, Cameron promises'; in The Guardian; 22 January 2013.

Lamiat Sabin's 'Labour 'trying to out-kip Ukip,' says MP David Lammy over 'inflammatory' immigration leaflet'; in The Independent; 28 January 2015.

UK Budget 2015: Conservatives back down over austerity cuts - but only slightly

2015-03-18T09:24:00.004-07:00

In the run-up to the announcement of the 2015 UK Budget Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, stressed that Chancellor George Osborne did not have room to manoeuvre if he intended to achieve the Conservative target of a budget surplus of £21bn by 2020 (Wintour & Watt, 2015).

After accusations in autumn 2014 that Conservative cuts would take government spending in Britain back to the levels of the 1930s (Wintour & Elliott, 2015), Chancellor Osborne seems to have responded. The Chancellor confirmed in his announcement that the Conservatives were no longer aiming for a surplus of £23bn, but instead £7bn (Reuben, 2015).

That easing back on what the Conservatives are pursuing has left them with room for tax cuts, with Corporation tax falling to 20%, cuts to required national insurance contributions for under-21s and the self-employed - as well as a further extension of the Liberal Democrat's policy of taking the poorest out of tax altogether. There is also a small concession in the form of an increase in minimum wage, which offers an increase in income at a time when prices are falling, and in advance of an expected slow rise (Peston, 2015).

Big cuts are, however, still planned. £30bn will be cut by 2018, £13bn coming from government departments, £12bn from welfare, and a further £5bn from tackling tax avoidance (Osborne, 2015). But even with those concessions, that still leaves, between the Labour and Conservative spending plans, a gap of around £40bn.

And yet, the difference between Conservative and Labour positions - with the Liberal Democrats advocating something in between the two - comes down to one major difference: the balance to be struck between tackling the overall amount of debt and the amount of spending on providing public services.

That difference is primarily one of ideology. Or, at least, the perception of ideology. By spending more, Labour is able to give the perception that it is taking care of people. By spending less, the Conservatives can make themselves appear to be favouring those that stand on their own two feet.

However, whatever the party rhetoric, the budget is more about politics than finance. All sides, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour - as well as UKIP - are all committed to a general view of public finances that means more austerity cuts, and much lower public spending.

The concessions made by the Chancellor - that Vince Cable predicted that the Conservatives would have to make - did nothing to fundamentally alter the basic assumptions. The reality remains that no party is offering a comprehensive alternative to the dominant Conservative narrative.

For those on the Left, the fact that no one has seized upon those concessions by the Right - in the face of dissatisfaction with austerity - to present a more truly progressive alternative, will be a source of significant disappointment.

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References:
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+ Patrick Wintour & Nicholas Watt's 'Vince Cable: Osborne has no room in budget for pre-election bonanza'; in The Guardian; 13 March 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour & Larry Elliott's 'Osborne moves to cut spending to 1930s levels in dramatic autumn statement'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Anthony Reuben's 'Budget 2015: Chancellor reduces surplus target'; on the BBC; 18 March 2015.

+ Robert Peston's 'How Generous is the Minimum Wage increase?'; on the BBC; 17 March 2015.

+ George Osborne's 'Chancellor George Osborne's Budget 2015 speech'; from Gov.UK; 18 March 2015.

The Liberal Democrat Spring Conference - their last chance to define themselves

2015-03-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

The Liberal Democrat Spring Conference represents probably the last chance the party will have to present its own vision, on it own terms, before they face an election campaign that could result in massive disappointment (Perraudin, 2015). It is not, however, a problem with which the Liberal Democrats are unfamiliar. They are long used to being marginalised and struggling for visibility.

Since the party was established - in a 1988 merger of the old Liberal Party with the Labour Party breakaways the Social Democratic Party, after a decade long electoral alliance - it has struggled to make itself heard in the political arena. 2010 had promised a major breakthrough, but, yet again, promising surges at the polls and 23% of the popular vote did not ultimately translate into seats.

The decision that followed, to go into coalition with the Conservatives, and for the leaders of the party - though not the majority of its MPs or the party membership itself - to drop direct opposition to tuition fees, turned public opinion definitively against them.

The great surprise is the difficulty which has faced the Liberal Democrats in getting across to people what it is that liberalism represents, this despite - with the exception of the pretty significant blip over tuition fees - the fact that the party has otherwise shown remarkable consistency over time. The conference speech of Party leader Nick Clegg could as easily have been promoting the 1997 manifesto as it is the 2015 manifesto.

If there is anything that could save Liberal Democrat seats at a general election, that consistency is one of them - if they can finally make a breakthrough in getting across what being liberal really means. And getting to the bottom of that, means understanding what the party has stood for over time.

The modern party's origins are in the old Liberal Party, the classical liberal, free trade, small government party that believed in laissez-faire administration, where the government does not interfere. Yet by the beginning of the 20th Century they had evolved - through struggles with old Tory landowners, and in response to the revelations of the poor reports - into the party in government under Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith and Lloyd George (governments that included Winston Churchill) that pursued the liberal welfare reforms. Those efforts established a national insurance to cover sick pay and unemployment, introduced pensions, and expanded access to schools.

That work was later further expanded after the Second World War, when the ideas of Liberal Party thinkers like William Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes had a decisive influence on the work of the post-war Labour governments. While the Liberal Party itself was at the time riven by splits as a result of different views regarding the two wars and various coalitions, the ideas and work of individual Liberals still had huge impact. The work of Beveridge and Keynes were key in the expansion of government action to intercede against the instability of the market economy, and to create cradle-to-the-grave social security in the form of welfare, pensions and the NHS.

In the face of the emergence of a virtual two-party system, split between the Conservatives and Labour while the Liberals were divided, it took decades for the party to recover. When the Liberals recovered, they did so in an electoral coalition as the SDP-Liberal Alliance - alongside the Social Democrats (SDP). The SDP had broken away from the Labour Party, uncomfortable with the far left-wing and right-wing factions that were struggling with each other for control of the party. Senior Labour figures Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams - both former ministers, and in Jenkins a former President of the European Commission - were amongst those who defected to create the SDP, and who were later to become Liberal Democrats when the SDP-Liberal Alliance merged.

The Alliance enjoyed some success in the polls - polling as high as 50% in the early 1980s- but they continued to fail to win seats. Despite, in 1983, securing as much as 25.4% of the popular vote, they only received 23 seats in parliament. Having again struggled to establish themselves and make a breakthrough with voters heavily invested in the two-party dynamic, the Alliance elected to merge and form the Liberal Democrats.

Under their first leader, Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrats made their first big breakthrough in decades, by gradually increasing their seats in parliament up to 46 by 1997. During that time the party pursued a close relationship with Labour, with talk of coalitions leading up to 1997, and over the possibility of introducing proportional representation for elections (BBC, 1999).

Looking at the party's commitments in 1997 (Liberal Democrats, 1997), it shows a remarkably consistency in message over time. In the 1990s, under Ashdown, there were commitments to raise tax by 1p in the pound to increase education funding, with the priority put on early years. A commitment to increase NHS funding, and increase choice for care. Balance borrowing against public investment, and cut wasteful spending. Championing civil rights, supporting small businesses, investing in research, devolving power through reforms of the economy and the constitution, supporting Britain's place in Europe, and encouraging a fairer society - all of these policies could have represented liberal ideas anywhere from the 1910s through to the 2010s.

The next leader, Charles Kennedy, continued to push these priorities as the party finally became widely known. However, its rise in prominence seemed to come almost exclusively from its noted socially liberal stances. The party was celebrated for campaigning for civil rights and opposing the War in Iraq (BBC, 2004). While they continued to increase their representation in the House of Commons, up to 62 by 2005, they still failed to make a major electoral breakthrough - even with an aggressive strategy aimed at defeating the Conservatives head-on (Carlin & Sapsted, 2005). When Kennedy's leadership ended in acrimony in 2006, he was replaced in the short term by Menzies Campbell.

By the end of 2007 there was a fresh leadership election, at which Nick Clegg was elected leader. Nick Clegg defined the party as the exclusive representative of the radical centre (Stratton & Wintour, 2011):

"Lloyd George's 'people's budget' to make the wealthy pay their fair share and give a pension to all those who had worked hard. Keynes's plans to make our economy work for everyone and provide jobs for all. Beveridge's radical blueprint for a welfare state to give security and dignity to every citizen... We are the heirs to Mill, Lloyd George, Keynes, Beveridge, Grimond. We are the true radicals of British politics."

Although Clegg's leadership would be seen as a shift to the Right, the party continued to be perceived as a centre-left, 'radical alternative' to Labour. Students, in particular, aligned with the Liberal Democrats - with a little help from a pledge to abolish university tuition fees. Under Clegg, the party seemed to be on the verge of a major breakthrough. However, the strong polling numbers didn't turn into seats. When the election came around for real, a lot of voters seem to have retreated to their safe havens.

The disappointment of winning only a few seats turned first into consolation at entering government, for the first time in a century, and having the opportunity to implement policies. The second turn was to astonishment and despondency as the party was assailed over the decision of Lib Dem leaders to go against their own party's official position on tuition fees, and vote for them with the government (BBC, 2010). Public anger turned into media campaigns assailing the Lib Dem leader, and now Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg (BBC, 2012). That situation has persisted and the party is now struggling desperately in the national polls. Yet, even without being vilified for a broken promise, the Lib Dems might still be struggling.

Across Europe there has been a very definite struggle faced by liberal and centrist parties. The FDP in Germany, the long time Liberal alternative to the conservative CDU and the centre-left SPD, collapsed at the last election to less than 5% of the vote - and so didn't even qualify for a seat in the German Parliament. In Italy Scelta Civica - Civic Choice - was founded to support the technocratic Prime Minister Mario Monti. In 2013 it received 8% of the vote and 37 seats. However, at the European Parliament elections in 2014 the party received only 0.7% of the vote.

For all their liberal social policies, liberals and centrists are still largely struggling to find persistent support. Part of the problem is that they are still seen as being nowhere in terms of economic policy. They are perceived to be right-wing capitalists by those to the Left who believe in a policy of taxing, borrowing and spending, and too left-wing by conservatives on Right who preach the economics of austerity.

Despite a lot of consistency between liberal and centrist parties across Europe, and consistency of policies and priorities over time, they struggled to get their message out. When they do, it is often distorted to fit into the narratives of the dominant, mainstream political-economic spectrum.

At their Spring Conference over this weekend it was precisely this message that the Liberal Democrats made with their last chance before the 2015 UK general election to put out a controlled message out to the public, announcing who they are and what they stand for. In his speech to the conference, Clegg made one last pitch to the public, in a speech that was praised (Walter, 2015), identifying Liberals with a moderate, decent, and fair centre-ground that had been abandoned by the other parties:

"And here at home and across Europe, reactionary populism and divisive nationalism are on the rise, slowly moving from the margins to the mainstream... If we want to remain an open, confident, outward-looking society, it will only happen if political parties who believe in compassion and tolerance step up to the plate.

Instead, the opposite is happening. Labour and the Conservatives are deserting the centre ground. Compromise is treated like a dirty word. Everywhere you look there is blame and division.

It’s in the angry nationalism of UKIP, setting citizen against citizen as they pander to fear. It’s in Theresa May’s Go Home vans. In the glint in George Osborne’s eye as he announces that the working age poor will bear the brunt of the cuts. It’s in the red-faced bluster of the Tory right wingers who are determined to scrap the Human Rights Act and drag us out of Europe. It’s in the ‘us versus them’ scaremongering of the Labour Party, as they condemn every decision to balance the books as a betrayal and then make wild predictions about mass unemployment or the death of the NHS that they know are not true.

As the Conservatives and Labour veer off to the left and right, who will speak up for decent, moderate, tolerant Britain?

...We have shown that we are prepared to put the national interest first, even if it means taking a hit to our short-term popularity. And we will continue to put the national interest first."

The Liberal Democrats remain sanguine (BBC, 2015). They are placing their focus and their hopes on the positive response they are apparently receiving in those places where the Lib Dems have spent decades building up a local base of support (Wintour, 2015). It would be sad to see the parliamentary influence of liberalism diminish in Britain as elsewhere, as the influence of liberalism has been a force for good.

But whether or not the Liberal Democrats manage to get themselves across to voters, liberalism will continue play an important role. From Beveridge and Keynes and their ideas backing and underwriting social security, to the Liberal Democrats who opposed the War in Iraq, to those in government campaigning for civil rights - like the end of child detention or the moves to expose and end gender inequality in pay - liberals have shown that their ideas carry weight, and play an important role, regardless of the number of seats a particular liberal party holds, and whether or not they were doing their best work inside or outside of parliament.

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References:
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+ Frances Perraudin's 'Nick Clegg reassures party faithful on election prospects'; in The Guardian; 15 March 2015.

+ John Cleese's 'Liberal Democrats political broadcast'; 1997. From YouTube.

+ John Cleese's 'SDP/Liberal Alliance political broadcast'; 1987. From YouTube.

+ 'Blair considered coalition after 1997'; on the BBC; 16 November 1999.

+ Liberal Democrats' '1997 Liberal Democrat General Election Manifesto'; 1997. From Liberal/SDP/Libdem Manifestos.

+ 'Kennedy wins top politician title'; on the BBC; 11 November 2004.

+ Brendan Carlin & David Sapsted's 'Defiant Kennedy takes 'decapitation' strategy into Tory heartland'; in The Telegraph; 4 May 2005.

+ Allegra Stratton & Patrick Wintour's 'Nick Clegg tells Lib Dems they belong in 'radical centre' of British politics'; in The Guardian;

+ Matthew's 'Nick Clegg is right to aim for the centre ground'; at Thinking Liberal; 17 December 2013.

+ 'Tuition fees vote: Plans approved despite rebellion'; on the BBC; 9 December 2010.

+ 'Senior Lib Dems apologise over tuition fees pledge'; on the BBC; 20 September 2012.

+ Lamiat Sabin's 'Nick Clegg apologises for three-fold rise in tuition fees but defends coalition decision'; in The Independent; 17 December 2014.

+ Paul Walter's 'In full: Nick Clegg’s Liverpool speech'; on LibDemVoice; 15 March 2015.

+ 'Nick Clegg: Liberal Democrats 'here to stay''; on the BBC; 15 March 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Lib Dem polling brings hope of future coalition role'; in The Guardian; 19 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Lib Dems push through mandatory reporting of gender pay gaps'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

Italy shows the UK the dangers and difficulties involved in fixing a broken political system

2015-03-13T10:37:00.002-07:00

The UK has once again been forced to let out a rather despairing sigh of exasperation as yet another politician is caught with a hand in the cookie jar (Toynbee, 2015). It is the third such scandal in only a matter of weeks that has called political funding into question. There is an obvious need for wholesale changes in Britain's political process.

The trouble is, changing a political system is a delicate task that is never straightforward. Italy has been caught in this particular trap for decades, and the UK can learn some important lessons from that country's struggle. In short, this kind of cash-for-influence exposé is at its worst only the tip of the iceberg, and at it's best the top of a very slippery slope.

Back in 1994, virtually the entire Italian political party system collapsed around a similar, though ultimately broader, cash-for-influence scandal, known as Tangentopoli (Carroll, 2000). The arrest of Mario Chiesa of the Partito Socialista Italiano in 1992, on charges of Bribery, triggered the tumbling of a whole house of cards. When the party distanced itself from Chiesa with accusations of his being simply a bad seed, he began to provide damning information to investigators regarding the activities of fellow politicians.

Over the next two years, as the Mani pulite ('clean hands') Judicial investigation spread across Italy, more and more politicans were implicated. To try and stem the crisis, the Socialist Prime Minister Giuliano Amato attempted to use the power of decree to alter certain criminal charges for bribery, only for it to be seen as an attempt to extend an amnesty to corrupt politicians (Moseley, 1993).

In the 1994 elections that followed, the four largest pre-scandal parties collapsed and all but disappeared. That year also saw the rise of Silvio Berlusconi and his Forza Italia party. Out of the ashes of the old discredited order rose the populist power that has since dominated the last 20 years of politics in Italy - with more than its own fair scandals.

As Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia were symptomatic of Italy's political sickness, so Nigel Farage and UKIP are a symptom the UK's, and Marine Le Pen and Front National are a symptom of France's (Peston, 2015). These kinds of scandals embed themselves within political systems and eat away at its legitimacy. When the cracks show through, and the rotten core is exposed, it leaves access open to an exploitable opportunity. These populist groups - with their simplistic message and solutions, and often scapegoats - seize the initiative.

Since the scandal, in response to the general public outcry, Italy has attempted to redraw its political system several times (Pastorella, 2014).

The first major reform attempted to make individual politicians more accountable, and to introduce more stability to Italy's fractious parties and coalitions, by scrapping proportional representation in favour of first-past-the-post. The second was to give the largest party, in terms of the popular vote, a prize of 55% of seats regardless of the actual size of the majority they had won (Garovoglia, 2013). The first system, led to party fragmentation and frequently collapsing coalitions. The second was ruled unconstitutional in 2013 - essentially for misrepresenting voters by handing out a large electoral prize to the biggest party, or electoral coalition, even when it had won far less than a majority.

A third major attempt is currently under way, but that has already faced criticism across the Left - including from former Partito Democratico leader, and former Prime Minister, Pier Luigi Bersani (La Repubblica; 2015). It proposes to reduce the majority prize, but also to reduce the power of the Italian Senate - a move designed once more to address the fractious nature of Italian politics - and groups on the Left are objecting to this centralising of power and diminishment of oversight.

Despite these attempted reforms, despite the investigations and the political transformations, Italy is still mired as before in the same kind of corruption allegations (Barber, 2013). There are similar concerns about connections between private business interests and political parties, and with the government through the state held ownership stakes. There are even concerns surrounding some of the same figures who were connected to Tangentopoli in the 1990s.

Italy's struggle to reform, against the influence of a tight network of vested interests, is an important lesson for the UK. Failure to reform means feeding a rising populist anti-establishment feeling, that can and may be exploited in ways that threaten both justice and liberty. Attempting reform means taking on wealthy and powerful people, embedded vested interests who have a lot to lose from changes.

The first steps to reform are clear though, even if how to achieve is not necessarily as obvious. A realistic alternative needs to be found for party funding, and outside business interests for elected representatives has to come to an end. The example of Italy shows clearly: if the UK fails to pursue - as a first step - these ideals of political independence, with greater reform to follow, it could leave the country mired in populism and scandal for decades to come:

'The danger in all of this is that if sufficient people conclude that there is nothing in the conventional political process for them then they may opt for more simplistic and extreme options on offer. I remain an optimist. But across the mainstream political spectrum there is a candid recognition of the danger.'
(Mr Charles Kennedy, 2006)

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References:
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+ Polly Toynbee's 'Yet another cash-for-influence scandal. No wonder voters are enraged'; in The Guardian; 12 March 2015.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Lib Dem Ibrahim Taguri steps down as candidate after donation claims'; in The Guardian; 12 March 2015.

+ Rory Carroll's 'Italy's corrupt elite are reborn as victims in rewriting of 90s scandal'; in The Guardian; 2 December 2000.

+ Ray Moseley's 'Italy Writhes In Revolution Against Corruption'; in The Chicago Tribune; 14 March 1993.

+ Robert Peston's 'The power of Le Pen'; on the BBC; 13 March 2015.

+ Giulia Pastorella's 'Italy’s new electoral law proposal is unlikely to make Italian governments more democratic or stable'; on the LSE Blog; 24 January 2014.

+ Matteo Garovoglia's 'The electoral law which will be used in the 2013 Italian elections is radically different from any other electoral system in Europe.'; on the LSE Blog; 12 February 2013.

+ 'Riforma Senato, la Camera dà l'ok. Berlusconi: "Fi compatta sul no, basta protagonismi"'; in La Repubblica; 10 March 2015.

+ Tony Barber's 'Italy’s scandals echo the ‘tangentopoli’'; in the Financial Times; 21 February 2013.

+ Charles Kennedy's 'How we lost people's trust'; in The Guardian; 4 August 2006.

More on Italy's most recent attempt at constitutional reform (in Italian):
Alessio Sgherza's 'Legge elettorale, ecco l'Italicum'; in La Repubblica; 20 January 2014.
'Renzi: "Sul nuovo Senato puntiamo al referendum. E Italicum non cambia"'; in La Repubblica; 8 March 2015.
'Riforme e minoranza Pd, il documento dei 24: "Renzi riapra confronto o ognuno per sé"'; in La Repubblica; 10 March 2015.

Gender Inequality, Laissez-faire and Positive Action

2015-03-09T10:10:00.002-07:00

Last week, in the run-up to International Women's Day, there were efforts made in Germany to tackle inequality between the genders in the workplace. While a new law was passed for gender quotas to be introduced to the boardrooms of large companies (The Guardian, 2015), there was still ongoing resistance to legislation aimed at exposing, and ultimately undoing, gender inequalities in pay (Osborne, 2015).

The fact that these moves are necessary in a wealthy and developed country like Germany - or in the UK where the Liberal Democrats have been pushing for similar moves for some time, particularly in the face of a failure of the Conservative 'voluntary' reporting system (Wintour, 2015) - highlights the scale of the problem. Quotas, in turn, represent the practical response to the continuing inequality (Saul, 2015).

And yet, resistance remains to levelling the playing field. There is an insistence in the Western world upon trusting in laissez-faire - removing the obvious formal institutional obstacles and letting the world right itself. That attitude is not helped much by gender quotas being considered an imperfect solution (White, 2015).

However, the world is uncomfortably unequal. In the face of plain unfairness, the simplistic, and false, answer to the struggles of others is victim-blaming (Burkeman, 2015). There is a determination, witnessed in the wider struggle against inequality, to shift the responsibility for unfairness from the established order and those who benefit, and to turn it into blame to be placed on those who aren't succeeding (Seabrook, 2014).

The facts are pretty clear: matters can't just be left to right themselves (Topping, 2015). It was true for the poverty and desperation in Victorian England that led to the collapse of the old Laissez-faire economics, and made way for the gradual rise of social insurance, pensions, welfare and the public healthcare. It is true now tackling gender inequality. The world needs a helping hand to combat problematic institutional biases (Dudman, 2015).

The feminist rallying-calls of public figures like Emma Watson is a reminder of how to tackle these great challenges (HeForShe, 2015): positive thought and positive action, in the pursuit of progress.

In the pursuit of social progress, the old ways of thinking have to change. The 'let alone' attitude is not good enough, particularly when the solutions of negative liberty - simply keeping people free from outside interference - don't, and can't, bring meaningful equality of opportunity, or offer the people the path to the better, and more fair, lives they want.

There is a pressing need to demand a more positive liberty. Affirmative action, in this sense, is about acting to make the principals of fairness in a free society a fact. That burning heart of feminism, is the same one that beats in the breast of all struggles for equality and fairness. Quotas may not be a perfect solution, but they are a positive and practical solution in a world that is imperfect and unfair.

==========
References:
==========
+ 'Germany passes gender quota legislation for the boardroom'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

+ Louise Osborne's 'Plan for 'equal wages' law in Germany meets with strong industry opposition'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Lib Dems push through mandatory reporting of gender pay gaps'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

+ Heather Saul's 'International Women’s Day 2015: The shameful statistics that show why it is still important'; in The Independent; 6 March 2015.

+ Michael White's 'In politics and boardrooms, quotas – wrong in theory but right in practice – are no panacea'; in The Guardian; 16 January 2015.

+ Oliver Burkeman's 'Believing that life is fair might make you a terrible person'; in The Guardian; 3 February 2015.

+ Jeremy Seabrook's 'Why shame is the most dominant feature of modern poverty'; in The Guardian; 30 September 2014.

+ Alexandra Topping's 'Gender pay gap will not close for 70 years at current rate, says UN'; in The Guardian; 5 March 2015.

+ Jane Dudman's 'The 10 best and worst countries for female public leaders – in charts'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

+ 'HeForShe Conversation with Emma Watson on International Women's Day 2015'; from HeForShe on YouTube; 8 March 2015.

Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek's lasting legacy of hope

2015-03-02T10:15:00.003-08:00

The sad passing of Leonard Nimoy (Lambie, 2015), gives cause to consider the actor's legacy. Of the performances and contributions left behind, the by far most well-remembered will be his role in Star Trek.

Star Trek, before it received a flashy reboot, had long since become a lazy shorthand. When a scriptwriter wanted to let the audience know a character was "geek" or a "nerd" in the most rudimentary stereotypical way possible, they were always a Star Trek fan. However, underneath that simplistic surface impression, there was a show with a virtually unmatched optimism. Through the medium of science-fiction, it celebrated science, peace and reason.

The show was set in an aspirational far future where humanity had finally gotten beyond its penchant for violence and destruction. At the centre of it all was Leonard Nimoy's Spock, a near-human alien from a people who abhorred violence and cherished logic. Regardless the danger, the threat or the crisis, he always remained an island of calm and reason.

Nimoy's character, and the crew of the USS Enterprise around him, were frequently cast as heroes. Yet, in contrast to so many others shows, the mission of the protagonists was one of exploration and diplomacy. The stories still stand apart today for the positivity of its outlook (with the possible exception of Parks and Recreation).

The crew of the USS Enterprise were often faced with impossible choices, and their heroism was in their willingness to stand for up for peaceful resolutions. They were great for their skills, for their knowledge, for their humanity, and for their diplomacy.

In a pop cultural field that, at times, seems only to revel in darker and grittier stories, and in cynicism lightened only by beautiful aesthetics, those geeky, nerdy, stories championed a peaceful humanity exploring space, and trying to uphold noble ideals. A TV show that finds room for hope can be like a beacon in the dark, and Leonard Nimoy will remain a part of that legacy.

==========
References:
==========
+ Ryan Lambie's 'In memoriam: Leonard Nimoy'; on Den of Geek; 27 February 2015.

Second jobs for MPs, conflicts of interest and separation of powers

2015-02-27T10:35:00.002-08:00

In response to the recent lobbying scandal, Labour took the opportunity on Wednesday, 25th February, to test the government by making a motion in the Commons to ban all Members of Parliament from holding second jobs (BBC, 2015). However, squabbling between the two main parties as to what payments or sources of income are considered a conflict of interest - Labour focussing on consultancies and directorships, the Conservatives on the trade unions - killed the chances of the Labour motion passing.

Under the present rules MPs are allowed to have second jobs, with the majority of those taking advantage being Conservatives - although two of the three highest earners are former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Respect MP, and former Labour MP, George Galloway (Moseley, 2015). Yet, support is low for MPs juggling their time between public and private commitments (Shakespeare, 2015). There are understandable fears of corruption and conflicts of interest.

These problems are exacerbated by the fact that conflicts of interest are virtually built into the Westminster system of government used in the UK. The Prime Minister is also an MP, the Ministers in the Government are MPs, the Speaker is an MP, the members of the committees are also MPs.

In the Westminster system the executive branch - the government, that carries out the business of state - is formed by members of the legislative branch - the parliament where laws are subject to debate and vote. Theoretically this ties the everyday business of governing to the will of the people as embodied by the parliament, in what is known as responsible government.

In the UK, however, this creates a situation where MPs, elected by constituents to represent their interests in debates regarding lawmaking, are caught between various allegiances, ambitions and duties. They are conflicted between the interests of their constituency and their office, whether just an MP or a Minister in the government; the interests of their constituents, their office and their political party, from which stems the opportunity to take office; and between the conflicting duties of the parliament, to make laws, and the government, to administer and enforce them.

Furthermore, the system creates a conflict of interest between Parliament and the Government. The Government cannot govern effectively without the majority support of the Parliament, and yet if majority support is given the role of the Parliament is significantly reduced. These pressures have, over time, changed the Parliament into more of a factional power-base for Government action, than a body of representatives, itself carrying responsibilities on behalf of electors.

With the private and financial interests of MPs placed on top of these conflicts, inherent to the system, Parliament becomes mired in competing interests. The Labour Party's attempt to ban certain additional roles for MPs is just the latest, with previous attempts at restricting various outside political interests including a government-sponsored lobbying law drawing heavy criticism (Mason, 2014).

In other countries, and other systems of government, there have been attempts to avoid the inherent conflict. The separation of powers has been used, by dividing the functions of government into separate branches - typically known as executive, legislative and judicial - to, at once, ensure that the different branches might hold each other to account, and keep separate the different functions that might result in conflicted allegiances.

That idea of separation, used to address the inherent conflict, might also be applicable to our thinking regarding the public and private interests of MPs.

While serving as Members of Parliament, these elected individuals are representatives with functions, responsibilities and duties, which they carry on the electorate's behalf, in the public service. For the carrying out of their role they are compensated, to the amount of £67,000, plus expenses (White, 2015). The aim of paying these elected representatives is to ensure that they were able to devote their full time attentions to the role, and to ensure their independence.

There are understandable and reasonable arguments for a public representative to be grounded in the working realities of the world outside, or to be able to keep themselves in practice in technically complicated professional fields, such medicine or law (Wintour, 2015). Whatever the fears of the emergence of a class of career politicians, it becomes problematic for those representatives to continue to pursue - beyond some limited practices - their own financial interests while in office.

There must be a middle ground, with some room for compromise and compensation for individual service, that maintains the independence of public bodies. However, while there are no straight forward answers, it is clear we need to keep competing interests separate. As we need to remain wary of letting the powers and functions of government merge, to ensure oversight and avoid corruption, we also need to keep the private interests of individual representatives separate from the public interest which they serve.

==========
References:
==========
+ Frances Perraudin's 'Straw and Rifkind deny wrongdoing amid 'cash for access' claims'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

+ 'MPs reject Labour's call for a ban on second jobs'; on the BBC; 25 February 2015.

+ Tom Moseley's 'What MPs do as second jobs'; on the BBC; 25 February 2015.

+ Stephan Shakespeare's 'Voters support ban on second jobs for MPs'; from YouGov; 25 February 2015.

+ 'MPs' second jobs: What are the rules?'; on the BBC;

+ Rowena Mason's 'Lobbying bill passes through House of Lords'; in The Guardian; 28 January 2014.

+ 'Lobbying Bill to become law after Lords rebellion falters'; on the BBC; 28 January 2014.

+ Michael White's 'Straw and Rifkind were loose lipped but MP salaries are part of the problem'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Straw and Rifkind scandal renews questions about MPs' outside interests'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

Labour warns against splitting the Left, but there could a greater danger in not taking a risk for a better future

2015-02-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

With the 2015 UK general election looming, the Labour Party has begun its attempt to shore up support amongst its fringe voters. With polls suggesting that it will be a close run thing, the fragmentation of support across the Left is a threat to the Labour methodology.

Labour's approach has long been about claiming control of the establishment and propping up it up, in order to use its power in support of their goals. Those electoral aims, of propping-up and shielding, are fundamentally contradictory. They leave no room for external compromise or co-operation that might challenge the establishment they hope to use and so requires, and demands, comprehensive majority support. As David Marquand (Bogdanor, 1983) put it about Labour theorist Anthony Crosland:

"Crosland took the traditional structure of the British state for granted, and failed to see that the centralist, elitist logic underlying it was incompatible with his own libertarian and egalitarian values."

Yet, even as it demands monolithic solidarity from voters, the party continues to be blatant in its hypocrisy by remaining as twisted by internal intrigue as ever. Former Brownites, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, struggle amongst themselves, with former Blairites, and also with the more socially conservative voices in the party (McElvoy, 2015). They argue as to which populist policy to throw out next, in an attempt to shore up its wavering support (Ratcliffe, 2015), and they argue over what socialist economics really ought to look like:

"In truth, Balls and Miliband do have different visions of what a progressive economy should look like. Miliband has a fundamentally less approving view of the way markets work than many in the Labour centre ground (a whiff of the idealism of an American east coast seminar room is never far off). Balls takes a more pragmatic view that the best way to advance progressive goals is to allow the markets free reign and cream off revenues to use for social gain." (McElvoy, 2015)

In 2010, Labour warned of the risks of a split vote, caused by those who thought of leaving the party to look for brighter alternatives elsewhere. In the run-up to that election, the Liberal Democrats had appeared like a fresh voice, which spoke of an active and hopeful step forward. Labour, in turn, offered only a stable conservation, centred on the establishment - and they lost a lot of voters, though fear succeeded, at least temporarily, in quelling the tide before it became a flood.

Those warnings from the party and from commentators, in the face of a fragmenting political order, have now turned against the Greens. Former Labour minister Peter Hain has called for the party to come up with policy proposals that will allow the party to cover any potential threat to the solidarity of its support that the more radical Green Party might pose (Wintour, 2015).

In the light of the pressures being placed on the Greens, it is unsurprising that a lot has been made of the apparent announcement that its support for a Citizen's Income will not be in its 2015 election manifesto (Riley-Smith, 2015). In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Green MP Caroline Lucas said that:

"The Citizen's Income is not going to be in the 2015 general election manifesto as something to be introduced on May 8th. It is a longer term aspiration; we are still working on it... The Citizen's Income, as I've explained, is not going to be a red line."

Its apparent absence from the Green Party's campaign was revealed over a series of interviews where the policy was heavily criticised with regards to its cost (Findlay, 2015). While Lucas attempted to play down the party's intentions regarding Citizen's Income, other senior Green Party members have reaffirmed their commitment to putting the policy into the 2015 manifesto (Cowburn, 2015).

However, some of those among the Greens, such as MP Caroline Lucas, seem to be responding to the party's election possibilities with pragmatism. They are looking for the party to gain enough seats to take part in a left-wing coalition, and are setting out, ahead of time, where they draw the line for coalition talks (BBC, 2015).

"What we are going to do is to put forward some radical and visionary ideas which this political system needs so badly. What we are also going to do, with a handful of MPs, is to push Labour in particular to be far more progressive."

That means leading with their more modest aims, to give them the best chance of achieving an agreement. It also means learning from Liberal Democrat mistakes and not committing to things ahead of time, which they may not be able to achieve come May.

However, while the Green Party are making compromises to be a progressive force alongside, and not necessarily instead of or opposed to, the Labour Party, Labour continue to be pushed towards their standard, monolithic, pragmatic response: give us your vote unswervingly and we will save people from cuts and inequality.

The SNP too is now on the receiving end of whispered warnings (Rawnsley, 2015). The rise of Scottish separatism, and of the SNP as a left-of-centre alternative, has Labour scrambling to find a response that allows them to protect the establishment they deem so precious to their goals, while wooing back their disaffected supporters.

Labour remain clinging to their hopes of power in a dead system. They hang on to their two-party, us and them, polarised dynamics, and try to squeeze out the rest of the Left, with negative tactics on the one hand, and populist appeals on the other, and warnings of a need to act practically in response to the system's iniquities, even as they fail to press for reform of those same iniquities.

They encourage a resistance to radicalism within the Left, feeding the fear of loss; the fear of losing the ground claimed inch-by-clawed-inch, year-by-painful-year. Those tactics have motivated continued support for Labour, even as they have failed to secure those hard fought victories with constitutional or economic reforms.

Voters continue to point to the dangers of stepping outside of the safe routine for fear that the selfish other might sneak in and conquer. But there is a longer term danger of failing to reach, than in reaching and falling short. While the Left has hidden away in its Labour bastion, it has been suffering a slow creeping loss. The Left allowed the momentum, the initiative, to be taken by conservative and reactionary forces. The Left, in their fear, have succumbed to a slow shifting, slipping, seeping surrender to an agenda set by the Right.

The question is, after 2010 brought a fresh voice against Labour's stable conservatism, will people fall back into Labour's drudging march, or will they keep looking for new hope with the Liberal Democrats, or with the Greens, or the SNP? Or, can Labour finally turn over a new leaf after one hundred years where each radical step has been accompanied by a conservative one: civil liberties with authoritarian policing, public health with privatisation, devolution with centralised control, popular power turned into an obsession with establishment power?

If Labour is truly committed to the best interests of the Left, it has to learn to co-operate. The support for the Greens, SNP and Lib Dems, as left-wing alternatives, represents various kinds of idealist hopes for the future, all of which have been strangled within a political system that the Labour Party has persistently used against these left-wing oppositions to its own agenda.

Labour need to overcome that bad habit and get behind political reform, to reshape politics so that the Left, in all of its wonderful and diversely fragmented forms, can work side by side.

==========
References:
==========
+ David Marquand, in Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983. [Buy Now]

+ Anne McElvoy's 'The clash of two Eds raises the ghost of Labour past'; in The Guardian; 22 February 2015.
+ Rebecca Ratcliffe's 'Would £6,000 tuition fees be a vote winner for Labour?'; in The Guardian; 16 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Labour needs to be more radical to counter Green threat, says Peter Hain'; in The Guardian; 22 January 2015.

+ Ben Riley-Smith's 'Greens ditch citizens' income from election manifesto'; in The Telegraph; 2 February 2015.

+ Joseph Finlay's 'What Natalie Should Have Said - How to Fund the Green Party's Citizen's Income Policy'; in The Huffington Post UK; 1 February 2015.

+ Ashley Cowburn's 'Green deputy leaders contradict Caroline Lucas: Citizens’ Income will be in the manifesto'; in The New Statesman; 9 February 2015.

+ 'Green leader Natalie Bennett backtracks on terror groups'; on the BBC; 3 February 2015.

+ Andrew Rawnsley's 'Voting SNP is more likely to hand power to Cameron than to Miliband'; in The Guardian; 22 February 2015.

Syriza's negotiation with European Leaders is a reminder that we need to take Europe back, not abandon it

2015-02-16T10:04:00.001-08:00

Greece's anti-austerity party Syriza may well have surprised many with their decision to sit down with European leaders to hash out a deal that would keep Greece in the Eurozone (Monaghan, 2015). After their strident attacks on European economic policy, in an election campaign where they pledged to end those policies in Greece (BBC, 2015), for many a Greek exit from the Euro must have seemed sure, soon and swift.

So if Eurozone austerity is so unbearable, why would Syriza bother to stay and negotiate?

Italy, which has been treated as Europe's economic case study because of its own debt crisis comparable to that of Greece, has resisted austerity and is trying to dig its way out of debt (Traynor, 2014). In that task Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi actually wants the European Central Bank to lead, encouraging the institution to lead the way with its latest round of efforts to boost growth by pumping money into the European economy (Treanor et al, 2015).

As for others in Europe, the reality is that reforming Europe's institutions, rather than simply abolishing them, with Europe working together within a better system, is preferable to a return to isolation and handling these crises without support. Those feelings are reflected around Europe, and demonstrate a positive vision of what Europe could be: a co-ordinating body, a network supporting solidarity between member states.

Right now though, Europe's institutions are in the hands of bartering and deal-making national interests. Those forces have co-opted what was once a juxtaposition to their aims - a broad body looking at the greater community interest rather than narrow nationalisms - and re-centred it on a commitment to the national conservative economics of fiscal austerity and privatisation (Jones, 2015). But, if reformed, Europe could do so much more.

The European Union was once the middle road between the American capitalist and Soviet communist super powers, looking to co-operation over American competition or Soviet collectivisation. It supported co-operation between members of the community of nations, and between labour and management. It supported new member states in getting up to the same speed as existing members (Feffer, 2015).

That path to successful integration and co-ordination followed on from a long succession of plans dating back to the Second World War. During the war, the countries of Europe had taken on huge debts that made post-war reconstruction a daunting task. In response, the United States drew up the Marshall Plan, an Act of Congress - with Bipartisan support - that authorised a huge financial investment in rebuilding Europe's infrastructure.

That plan played a large role in rebuilding the UK, France, Italy and West Germany. East Germany, which had been under Soviet control, would only join a reunited Germany in 1990. By that time, the East was in an economic state that lagged far behind the West. Germany responded with massive deficit spending to rebuild the East and accelerate its ability to catch up with the rest of the country (Feffer, 2014).

The European Union of today has its own version of these functions, but it is not employed to nearly the same degree. It is particularly telling that Europe, in the face of the financial crisis, rather than collaborate and pursue a co-ordinated spending program aimed at helping the member states back up to an even footing, individual member states were expected to find their own individual response, to their own crises.

The 2008 financial crash and the Great Recession that followed, essentially caused by reckless capitalism, was initially tackled through the bailing out of private debts by the public treasuries. That private debt, as a result, became public debt (Bellofiore, 2011). The matter the public has been faced with since, is figuring out how to deal with the crushing weight of the debt that was taken on.

One thing has been obvious in the last seven years of crisis. Individual countries, alone, can't manage the accumulated debts that were inherited from the private sector, not least without massive sacrifices. Despite the crisis clearly being interconnected, and global, with debts comparable to the outcome of another great war, this time there has been no concerted collaborative response.

It is in this case, as much as any other, that Europe's fragmentation and disunity has hurt the most. Europe, as a whole, could have shouldered the weight. Instead, the individual countries have been forced to cut and cut and cut. Instead of a Europe that recognised its common bonds and pulled together, we have a Europe of many interconnected parts, acting like parts alone rather than as the parts of a whole.

That disunity is symbolised in the fact that the European currency is not fully underwritten by the political unity which could have brought with it the capacity to hold debt and to lend against the full weight of European wealth (Bellofiore, 2011). Instead, each individual member is using austerity, cutting back its spending in an attempt to surmount and reduce their individual debts.

That comes with a heavy price (Inman, 2015). That austerity effort has attacked market demand by putting a huge strain on personal incomes. As welfare and public sector work is cut back, the amount that people can spend falls and their insecurity increases. At the same time the cuts have also tightened access to credit, squeezing lending to business and making the possibility of finding alternative forms of security and livelihood in the private sector slim.

The absence of cheap credit puts further pressure on the private sector, leading to demands for more 'labour flexibility' - which, in lay terms, means lower pay, shorter hours and less secure contracts for workers - in an effort to cut costs. Those efforts have only squeezed personal incomes and security further still. The whole effect is compounded for future generations, as young people are suffering through colossal levels of unemployment and lack of training opportunities.

The result has been political turmoil in each member state as they find themselves caught between responding to the debt, under pressure from other nations and private sector interests, and an increasingly hostile public response on the other, from people angry about being expected shoulder all of the fallout from the crisis. That has led to huge protests, democratic rejection of mainstream parties and a dangerously rising nationalism and connected intolerance - people, feeling insecure, afraid and under attack, are circling the wagons.

Some of the larger and more prosperous countries have fared better than others, as the economic policies pursued have suited them, or at least their ideologically dominant parties. However, Europe is bound together. The manufacturing regions are bound to the agricultural regions, and they to the commercial and the financial. So, even for prosperous and powerful Germany, there is no escaping the interdependence.

Germany's neo-mercantilist policies have made them dependent upon exports to the surrounding countries, and to the United States (Bellofiore, 2011). As such, it relies upon the spending power and trade deficits of its neighbours, who over time have responded to their trade 'partnership' with Germany by rearranging their economies. That has meant a decline in their own internal production, and an economy steered ever more towards imports from Germany, the service industry and the US-UK system of speculation on inflated capital assets (such as housing) along with propping up spending with consumer debt.

When austerity was applied, cutting back public sector work and public services, and with no strong internal economy to fall back on, it led to stagnation and decline in their own economies. That, in turn, has led to a broader stagnation as countries, like (predominantly) Germany, now have fewer partners to trade with. It has become a destructive cycle.

Italy and its political and economic crisis, as the country that most resembles a microcosm of Europe at large, has become the case study for solving the crisis in Europe as a whole. Both sides, the Right and the Left, have attempted to justify their solution to the Italian crisis, which represents to both sides a core example of what is wrong with European economics.

On the Right, there is an idea that the root of the problem in Italy, and Europe, is a lack of 'competitiveness' (Sinn, 2014). Prices are too high, so the cost of doing business is too high. The solution for the Right, amongst other efforts at depreciation, is to reduce the protections surrounding labour, so wages can be decreased and hours and contracts be made more 'flexible'. With these things achieved, businesses would start to grow again and employment would increase, spurring growth - although with admitted carnage along with the way with households going bankrupt. For their efforts in pursuing this painful direction, former Prime Ministers Silvio Berlusconi and Mario Monti have been praised, and electoral politics has been criticised for getting in the way of the brutal necessary.

The left takes the opposite tack. If Europe's financial bodies would step up to tackle national debts, and to invest towards creating more employment and stronger wages, then:

'If internal demand and production increase more than productivity, the consequent higher employment could ground consumption on income rather than on debt.'

New sources of funding, more jobs and higher wages - supported by Europe as a whole tackling the matter of the collective debt - could lead to a way out of the crisis through the empowering of labour, of individualism, rather than the curbing of it. Public welfare could be funded to shield people during the harsher times, rather than cut to pay off debts. The problem of prices could be handled in moderation during stronger economics times, not least through the increased competition created by a recovering economy.

The debate between Right and Left becomes a matter of cutting debt, cutting spending, and cutting wages; or to borrow in order to prop up spending and up prop labour. Force what would effectively be an economic recession to lower wages and allow private investment to reboot, at the cost of private debts and hardships; or let the co-ordinating whole take on the burden for everyone at the cost of additional debt in the short term.

For the Right, it becomes a matter of nation-states handling the matter internally, alone, through cuts that place the heavy burden on individuals. For the Left, the nation-states would act in common, pursuing the European ideal of the self-governing communities standing together in solidarity, supporting welfare and investment that finds a path out of the crisis that takes the burden off the shoulders of the individual.

That role, looked for by The Left, is a vision of what Europe could be, and why Europe is so important. The European project marks the ultimate point, for the people of Europe at present, of overcoming the divisions that our differences create between us. It means reaching across those differences to find commonality, solidarity and potential.

And yet, Europe is faced with resentment and hostility by Far Right nationalist movements; an economic and political crisis eating away at its individual member states; and the mistrust and scorn of people caught under the weight of austerity promulgated through Europe's institutions. Europe is held in the grip of a system of bartering national conservatisms, which prevent it from playing the sorely needed co-ordinating role, with a view to the broader community welfare.

Progressives, from Italy to Greece and onwards, want to reform Europe, but frequently find their efforts running up against a brick wall. The continental institutions are in the hands of conservative groups that unwaveringly push their agenda, and struggle between the reformers and the establishment results in a stalemate.

The answer to breaking the deadlock is to take back Europe. Movements like Occupy and Indignados, Syriza and Podemos show us the means. Radical democracy, conducted through new parties founded on new principles, with more direct involvement and engagement by and with the people. Among the primary aims of these groups has to be the reform of Europe's institutions around those principles.

If these new movements are to achieve progressive ends, however, they cannot be like-for-like replacements for the old parties. Instead of top down, patronising leaderships, they need be the co-ordinators of Europe's fragmented communities. The spaces where people can meet and debate, and where they can find solidarity in their struggles.

That too is a role that a reformed Europe could play. The place where Europe's fragmented communities come to discuss, debate and act in common, and where they come to find solidarity. The beginning of the road to achieving it, is to rebuild our political movements along the same principles.

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References:
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+ Angela Monaghan's 'Greece braced for crunch talks with eurozone finance ministers'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ 'Greece election: Anti-austerity Syriza wins election'; on the BBC; 26 January 2015.

+ Owen Jones' 'We must stop Angela Merkel’s bullying – or let the forces of austerity win'; in The Guardian; 28 January 2015.

+ Ian Traynor's 'Italian PM seeks austerity relief in return for Juncker backing'; in The Guardian; 17 June 2014.

+ Jill Treanor, Graeme Wearden & Larry Elliott's 'Italian PM: ECB can ‘help give Europe a message of a new economic direction’'; in The Guardian; 21 January 2015.

+ John Feffer's 'The European Union May Be on the Verge of Collapse'; in The Nation; 27 January 2015.

+ John Feffer's 'The Costs of Reunification'; at JohnFeffer.com; 21 August 2014.

+ Riccardo Bellofiore's 'A crisis of capitalism'; in The Guardian; 21 September 2011.

+ Phillip Inman's 'GDP growth masks a broken eurozone'; in The Guardian; 13 February 2015.

+ Hans-Werner Sinn's 'Italy not alone in failing to recognise its competitiveness problem' in The Guardian; 26 August 2014.

+ Riccardo Bellofiore's 'Why Italy’s stagnation could be the future for the entire eurozone'; in The Guardian; 30 August 2014.

Some further reading on alternatives for Europe's future:

+ Etienne Balibar's 'A new Europe can only come from the bottom up'; on OpenDemocracy; 6 May 2013.

+ Bo Strath's 'A social Europe must be a political Europe'; on OpenDemocracy; 8 May 2013.

+ Sandro Mezzadra's 'As Europe is provincialized: a reply to Etienne Balibar'; on OpenDemocracy; 13 May 2013.

+ Niccolo Milanese's 'Europe after Europe: the other Europe in waiting'; on OpenDemocracy; 20 May 2013.

+ Srecko Horvat's 'The easiest way to the Gulag is to joke about the Gulag'; on OpenDemocracy; 31 May 2013.

{Some errors were edited on 23 February 2015}

HSBC scandal shows the disturbing connection between wealth and political influence in the UK

2015-02-12T06:38:00.000-08:00

Over the last week there have emerged allegations of massive tax evasion amongst wealthy individuals, facilitated by the international banking concern HSBC (Tran, 2015). The most disturbing elements of the story have been the connections drawn between the bank, those evading tax, and the UK government.

There has been an alleged failure on the part of the treasury to pursue and prosecute, while authorities elsewhere across Europe have co-operated to secure prosecutions and recovery of moneys (Syal & Garside, 2015). There have been extravagant donations from those dodging tax to political parties here in the UK - £5m to the Conservatives, and as much as £2.5m has been connected to Labour (Leigh et al, 2015). The former chair of HSBC, Stephen Green, is even a government minister (Garside et al, 2015).

Prime Minister Cameron has thus far issued the same kinds of denial that he made in relation to the scandal surrounding his former director of communications Andy Coulson, even as Labour have tried to press home the connections between the Conservative Party and the perpetrators of this latest scandal (Watt & Wintour, 2015). Other political figures have even been quick to suggest that light avoidance, though not necessarily outright evasion, is normal in British society (Wintour, 2015).

As with the hacking scandal that brought Rupert Murdoch before a parliamentary inquiry, the extensive connections between wealth and political influence are disturbing. Money-making capitalist enterprises have been allegedly helping the wealthy break the law for a profit, all while both groups are closely connected to UK government ministers and political parties.

We are reminded once again of the need for vigilance. But sometimes even that isn't enough. When powerful institutions are shrouded in secrecy, hidden by their wealth and influence, we need something more. We need greater transparency, in both the public and private sectors, along with comprehensive political reform to ensure that justice and democracy can't undermined for a price.

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References:
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+ Mark Tran's 'The HSBC files: what we know so far'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Rajeev Syal & Juliette Garside's 'HSBC files: tax chief 'confident' civil servants told ministers about data'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ David Leigh, James Ball, Juliette Garside & David Pegg's 'HSBC files show Tories raised over £5m from HSBC Swiss account holders'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Juliette Garside, David Leigh, James Ball & David Pegg's 'Ex-HSBC boss Stephen Green: the ethical banker with questions to answer'; in The Guardian; 9 February 2015.

+ Nicholas Watt & Patrick Wintour's 'Ed Miliband attacks 'dodgy' PM for failure to answer HSBC tax questions'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Lord Fink: tax avoidance is normal in British society'; in The Guardian; 12 February 2015.

Australia's leadership challenge is just the latest embarrassment for the two-party majoritarian system

2015-02-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

Last week Australian politics found itself thrown into crisis, as once again the position of Prime Minister was turned into the subject of an internal party squabble. Tony Abbot, PM and Liberal Party leader, has had his leadership challenged following collapsing ratings in the polls (Jabour & Hurst, 2015).

This is just the latest embarrassment for the old two-party system. That system - which revolves around two monolithic groups, with machine politician leaders, using cheap popular appeals and sound bites to build workable majorities, or to struggle over control of them - in the end merely demonstrates its own weakness.

By centralising power around individual figures, the focus is put on the squabbles for control over the establishment. Those squabbles, over often marginal differences, only leads to an increasing detachment from reality that alienates voters and shuts down open political discussions. The disaffection of voters and the narrowing of choice reduces politics to little more than a stagnant and unstable popularity contest.

This is not the first time that Australia has faced this particular kind of crisis (Howden, 2015). Both major parties, Liberal and Labor, have had a number of so called leadership 'spills', where the party leadership is challenged, over the last half decade. The Labor Party suffered through four contests in just four years, as Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd repeatedly clashed between 2010 and 2013 (Phillips, 2012; Pearlman, 2013).

Coming into power on the back of that Labor Party squabbling, the Liberal leader Tony Abbott was elected offering stability (BBC, 2015). And yet, even if Abbott survives this challenge, his time as leader is limited. His rivals are circling and his authority, or popularity, has been undermined (Massola & Kenny; 2015).

In his desperate attempts to ward off those challengers, Abbot has been telling the same old story, warning Australians, and his own party, to be wary of turning leadership into a Game of Thrones (Pearlman, 2015). But it's a tired tale, used to justify centralised and unchallenged leadership. Justifying centrality and authority, not on their own merits, but as a ward and bastion against chaos.

It is the same story in the UK, where a free political choice is suppressed by the two major parties, Conservative and Labour, who cling to power by scaremongering against third parties, warning against split votes, hung parliaments and coalitions (BBC, 2010). These methods are justified as a practical and necessary response to the iniquities of the electoral system, and yet they persist in their refusal to pursue the meaningful electoral reform needed to make politics more representative - all to protect the fragile balance of their system. And so far those methods have worked.

However, the two-party system is fracturing all over the world. The squabbles over power and the suppression of alternatives should, by now, simply act as a reminder that the majoritarian two-party system simply does not offer enough accountability or representation.

These leadership squabbles simply emphasise the detachment from reality suffered at the highest levels of power. In Australia, both Liberals (who in Australia are conservatives in everything but name) and Labor, and in the UK, both Conservatives and Labour, all of the mainstream parties are guilty.

These parties support a system that hands power to one person, who is surrounded by a small group that represents just a fraction of the population, and has been tightly whipped into an ideological line. People are alienated from control over political decisions. Even parliaments and assemblies are regularly cut out of the process.

There is a great danger in structuring the stability of our institutions around any one individual and the power they can muster in support. It has frequently become the means by which an isolated elite make serious and impactful decisions - affecting real people's lives - in ivory towers detached from reality.

We need to find new ways to govern. We need more choice, more representation, and governments that reflect the whole electorate not just the loudest minority.

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References:
==========
+ Bridie Jabour & Daniel Hurst's 'Australian prime minister Tony Abbott may be deposed after party revolt'; in The Guardian; 6 February 2015.

+ Saffron Howden's 'Australian politics: Why is it so tumultuous?'; on The BBC; 8 February 2015.

+ Liam Phillips' 'Labor leadership challenge - Gillard vs Rudd'; in The Sydney Morning Herald; 27 February 2012.

+ Jonathan Pearlman's 'Julia Gillard defeated by Kevin Rudd in leadership challenge'; in The Telegraph; 26 June 2013.

+ 'Australian PM Tony Abbott 'will fight leadership challenge'; on The BBC; 6 February 2015.

+ James Massola & Mark Kenny's 'Supporters say Malcolm Turnbull will run against Tony Abbott for Liberal Party leader if spill motion succeeds'; The Sydney Morning Herald; 7 February 2015.

+ Jonathan Pearlman's 'Tony Abbott faces 'Games of Thrones' showdown'; in The Telegraph; 8 February 2015.

+ 'Election 2010: Cameron warns over hung parliament'; on The BBC; 17 April 2010.

Into the Woods reminds us of what fairy tales do best

2015-02-02T09:21:00.001-08:00

(This article contains spoilers for Into the Woods, out at cinemas now.)

Disney's latest musical fairy tale Into the Woods takes on the weighty task of carrying the legacy of dark and twisted Grimm tales. Adapted to the screen from a stage musical, it follows the intertwining stories of several famous fairy tale characters.

The musical fairytale plays with the conceits of its main characters From the vanities of the princes, to the protectiveness of a mother, the self-burdening masculinity of the baker, and the selfishness of a greedy little girl; these flaws are all toyed with, deconstructed, and then punished severely - as befitting a Grimm fairy tale.

This fairytale, as the fairy tales of old, shows us what we rarely see in real life: significant repercussions for greed, cruelty, and malice, and also of anger and revenge. However, there are some conservative overtones to the warnings about dreams and wishes that take us from our responsibilities. It offers us a glimpse of life outside of our everyday comfortable routines, and shows us what we can reach for and what it can cost us if we reach recklessly and fail.

The tale, though, does also stray into offering a challenge to the perceived expectations of the audience. When the old witch is returned to her beauty, expectations are firmly defied when that does not mean returning her to youth.

Into the Woods does what fairy tales do best. It shows us the price of our own conceits, mocks our vices and preoccupations, and promises us that adventure awaits us outside our front door - so long as we're willing to accept the price and consequences of our actions.

Syriza can learn from the Lib Dems that strange political alliances send an inconsistent message

2015-01-30T08:50:00.001-08:00

Following Syriza's victory in the Greek elections, where they fell just short of a majority, they were forced to find a coalition partner in order to govern. Their choice of partner was a right-wing anti-EU party.

For a radically left-wing party like Syriza, that choice of partner is drastically inconsistent with their ideology. Inconsistencies, such as these, in the way political parties present themselves can have dire consequences.

That was a lesson learnt only too well by the Liberal Democrats in the aftermath of their decision to go into government with the Conservatives, and to drop their opposition to tuition fee increases. Now, in Greece, Syriza face that same dangerous path as they agree to receive the support necessary to govern from the right-wing national conservative ANEL party (AKA Independent Greece).

The parties, that sit at completely opposite ends of the political spectrum, with entirely incompatible social politics, are going into government together on the basis of their mutual antipathy towards the European Union and austerity.

In the UK, the Lib Dems and Tories put aside their differences in ideology in the name of pursuing a response to the economic crisis with a shared vision of a smaller state. The controversy was not so much in their actions, or their reasons for doing so, but rather instead a matter of how the Lib Dems had presented themselves beforehand.

Having campaigned as a left-wing alternative party, many people felt that their reasons for voting for the party had been betrayed when they went into coalition with the right-wing Conservative Party.

In Greece, Syriza are walking a similar tightrope. In opposition to conservative economic austerity, and the EU establishment that is supporting it, the party is crossing the ideological divide to work with the ANEL right-wing group.

The fact that there is something that they mutually oppose enough to work together to stop it, says a lot about the confusion over political ideology. For all the emphasis that is put on ideology, allegiance and other forms of social structuring in party politics, groups are reaching across the divides in the name of particular issues.

In reality they are parties with very different reasons and motivations to oppose the EU, with very different alternatives preferred - which makes it a tenuous alliance at best. It is a pragmatic marriage of convenience, an inconsistency that, if Syriza isn't careful, could permanently damage their standing as a party of left-wing ideals.

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References:
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+ Gregory T Papanikos' 'With Greece backing the euro but Syriza in government, another election may beckon'; in New Statesman; 27 January 2015.

+ Sunder Katwala's 'Did Nick Clegg betray 2.7 million voters?'; on The Next Left - A Fabian Society Blog; 26 July 2010.

The collapse of the political mainstream will mean more choice, but it will also call for more co-operation

2015-01-26T10:27:00.005-08:00

With tomorrow, 27th January, marking one hundred days until the 2015 UK general election, polling figures are showing us something interesting. The main two parties are weakening, falling as low as 30% each, and the third parties, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and UKIP, are all pushing 10% (Clark, 2015).

It is a sign of something seen in many other countries: the established political mainstream is fracturing (Nardelli, 2015). There is an upside: choice becomes a realistic possibility. People will, however, have to prepare themselves for what it will mean to be represented by many diverse parties. The parties they vote for will have to co-operate with other groups to form governments. Coalitions will be necessary.

The Liberal Democrats' choice to go into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 has been seen by many as a controversial betrayal (Harris, 2011), but multi-party politics means multi-party governments. Those alliances often have to stretch across odd-parts of the political spectrum, working with what they find, and not everyone will get all of the things that they voted for, even if their choice makes it into government.

If we are to see greater choice between parties, all with realistic chances of governing, then people will have to get used to the idea of coalitions and the compromises that come with them. The alternative is to keep the partisan two-party system that divests all of the power upon one vision for the country, a method that can often exclude far more than half of the electorate.

The electoral battle ahead between the mainstream parties and the anti-establishment movements is already provoking fears about the impact it will have - fears that it will simply inflame the antagonism and polarisation that feeds nationalists and extremists (Behr, 2015). Fears that pluralism will bring instability, and that it will be exploited by one of the opposing factions, progressive or conservative, to crush their divided opponents.

The response of commentators has tended towards the same old framework (Jones, 2015), justifying the same old tactics: the mainstream parties (in particular Labour) need to head off and crush the small parties (in particular the Greens), and all of it to protect the position of the establishment party and its vague vision, in opposition to that of its old enemy.

But there has to be a better answer. Instead of crushing other groups on the Left, Labour could be co-operating on common issues, forming electoral alliances and creating a space on the Left for healthy debate. The alternative for the Left is more of the same old party system that has driven whole generations away from the political process.

"Political parties maintain their existence because they represent major cleavages which are persistent and long-lasting. These cleavages may be socio-economic, religious, ethnic or political. Political parties are, as it were, an institutional expression of a country's historical continuity, a mirror-image of the conflicts which past generations have found important...

...However, these traditional stances no longer coincide either with social reality, or with the natural division of opinion on political issues. The two major parties, therefore, appear less as cohesive agencies of political representation than as uneasy and incompatible coalitions held together as much by the needs of electoral survival as by common political beliefs." (Bogdanor, 1983)

When the two-party dynamic breaks down, the major parties survive by being big tents for all viewpoints, though none in particular, and dominate their traditional places on the political spectrum mostly through historical allegiance and fear-mongering about the dangers of vote-splitting. Their major concern becomes technocratic government, aiming to govern technically well according to whatever is the dominant economic system of the day, to justify their own suitability to govern. They become a refracting lens, directing and redirecting public political opinion rather than representing it (Bogdanor, 1983).

The Labour Party, as one of those mainstream, big-tent, technocratic parties, are finding themselves beset upon either side by these new political factions - UKIP, representing an older and more nationalistic crowd on the Far-Right, and the Greens, representing those younger and more liberal upon the Left (Helm, 2015; Ford, 2015).

These two parties, UKIP and Green, have two things in common: they represent a general discontent with the old system, and a fracturing of the old dualistic system into a number of separate factions of varied agendas. The old system is losing its grip. Top down control of policy and priorities is no longer in the hands of a single-faction government.

This is a function of a more open and representative democracy. It means many more viewpoints being brought into political debate, with new third parties emerging to drive change on new issues. The victory of the radical left-wing party Syriza in the Greek elections is a testament to what can be achieved in a multi-party system. However, the need of that party to form a coalition with a small right-wing anti-EU party in order to govern is a strong reminder of the compromises that follow.

The collapse of the established status-quo, and the fracturing of the system into a more open form, is far from complete. But more parties, with realistic chances of governing, and the possibility of electoral reform (Jones, 2015), mean that a more representative politics isn't far away. In that new form, the political Left - particularly the Labour Party - will have to adapt and rid itself of its own top down, patronising tendencies inherited from the present system.

The Left will need to find a way to co-operate, and to facilitate the presence of diverse views and fragmented factions. Those diverse groups, divisions and debates have always been a part of how the Left works, and that's fine. Its natural diversity is a positive, not a weakness. Openness to debate and the divisions that come with it are the lifeblood of progress.

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References:
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+ Tom Clark's 'Labour lead falls as Greens hit 20-year high in Guardian/ICM poll'; in The Guardian; 20 January 2015.

+ Alberto Nardelli's '2015 election: five key themes'; in The Guardian; 23 January 2015.

+ Evan Harris' 'The myth of Lib Dem 'betrayal''; in The Guardian; 6 May 2011.

+ Rafael Behr's 'The general election could unleash a new wave of contempt for politics'; in The Guardian; 21 January 2015.

+ Owen Jones' 'How Labour should respond to the ‘Green surge’'; in The Guardian; 22 January 2015.

+ Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983. [Buy Now]

+ Toby Helm's 'Green surge could hit Labour in 22 election battlegrounds, new study finds'; in The Guardian; 24 January 2015.

+ Robert Ford's 'How Green party surge threatens Labour’s election hopes'; in The Guardian; 24 January 2015.

Charlie Hebdo, John Stuart Mill and the Harm Principle

2015-01-19T10:12:00.002-08:00

The events in Paris have put freedom of speech at the front and centre of political debate around the world. Governments are discussing their response, including expansion of surveillance powers particularly in the domestic sphere (Watt, 2015).

In the light of the attack upon the offices of Charlie Hebdo, which has been defended as a satirical publication, conservative voices are arguing that some things are sacred, and cannot be ridiculed (Topping, 2015). In response, others have accused conservatives of blaming victims for 'provocation', rather than condemning those who wield violence to achieve their ends (Toynbee, 2015).

The question is, what is free speech? What does it look like? Why is it important? How can we use it?

John Stuart Mill, an influential figure in liberal political philosophy and contributor to utilitarianism, argued that free thought and expression were key to the discovery of the truth, and to keeping honest the establishment that is supposed to embody that truth. Out of these ideas, Mill developed his harm principle:

"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant... Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

The point of individual freedom is that you may do as you will freely, but only where you do not impose upon the freedoms of others. The question raised by recent events, and by the opinions thrown out by public figures, is what happens in the grey area?

For Mill, there exists, between the clear freedoms of any two parties and the clear infringements of those freedoms, a grey area of debate. It is in that space that governance takes place - and it requires two voices: one liberal and one conservative, one for progress and one for the status quo. Freedom of speech plays an integral role in the relationship between the two. It is part of the encouragement of individuality, and protection of it. It is part of our defence against powerful establishments that reinforce their own opinions against criticism, tyrannies both of government and of the majority.

Something that the events in Paris brought into particular focus are the tools that those without institutional power use within that grey area. Protest, terror and satire.

Protest and terror are two sides of the same coin. They seek to create an alternative form of power to that of the establishment, in order to project their views and challenge the authority of the established position. One of them is about peaceful civil action or disobedience designed to persuade, and the other is about using force, fear and violence in order to coerce.

Satire follows a different path. Rather than creating a source of power, it instead seeks to undermine power with humour - ostensibly in order to hold it to account. It is meant to be the tool of those who want to challenge a powerful establishment, from a position of relative weakness or powerlessness. The humour of satire aims to dispel the seriousness with which ritual and adherence are followed, to create a dehallowed critical space.

That is, of course, a difficult task. It means walking a line between irreverence towards the things that people hold dear, and a fall into racism, homophobia and sexism, the cheap tools of cheap victories. How do we go about challenging the presumptions of others, or basis of their power, without falling into those traps? How can we safely disrespect the taboos of others, in order to shine a light on the unquestioned, unchallenged or corrupt?

On the matter of how we express ourselves through free speech, and the idea that we ought only to be 'temperate' in that speech, Mill's answer was pragmatic. He argued that while law and government could not, and probably should not, shut down sophistic, 'invective' or 'intemperate discussion', they were none the less tools best not used.

"The gravest of [the principal offences] is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely possible, on adequate grounds, conscientiously to stamp the misrepresentation as morally culpable, and still less could law presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct."

While those methods - like lying about your opponent and their views or using generalised slurs to sully your opponent and therefore anything they say - are effective at shutting down debate, these tools serve only to sully the causes connected to their use, and to damage our chances of understanding truth by distorting or stopping the contributions of free voices.

"It is, however, obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either [intemperate argument professing the prevailing or contrary positions], while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case - condemning everyone, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves; but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own; and giving merited honor to everyone, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor."

Conservatism seeks to argue that some things are sacred, and cannot be made fun of. To build up dogmas, religious and ideological, to be adhered to. The whole point of satire is to the contrary - to poke fun at, and so undermine, the things people hold sacred when they become corrupt and despotic. To call into question those things that people fail to think about, to critique, for themselves and instead follow blindly.

That aim is at the heart of free speech. We are to be free in our opinions so that truth will not be lost or suppressed, and so that the powerful may be held to account. Those who seek to shut down free speech likely have a vested interest in the prevailing opinions, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Those who fall into racism, homophobia, sexism and other kinds of chauvinistic bigotry also wish to protect a vested interest in an opinion, but through the use of such methods only mark themselves and their cause.

Free speech for Mill was about peaceful, calm and reasoned debate, a process necessary for the discovery of truth and for the advancement of good governance. In the everyday sense, it translates to thinking and expressing yourself freely, but that those thoughts and expressions are not free of criticism, from being challenged and proved false, and that this is the very point of free speech. It is how we move forward, how we learn, how we discover the truth. Ad hominem attacks, bigotry and violence contribute nothing.

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References:
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+ The Guardian's World News section devoted to the Charlie Hebdo attack.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Ed Miliband rejects calls for revival of snooper’s charter after Paris attacks'; in The Guardian; 11 January 2015.

+ Alexandra Topping's 'Pope Francis: freedom of expression has limits'; in The Guardian; 15 January 2015.

+ Polly Toynbee's 'On Charlie Hebdo Pope Francis is using the wife-beater’s defence'; in The Guardian; 16 January 2015.

+ John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty'; 1859. [Buy Now]

The 2015 UK general election leader's debate might not happen. But is that a bad thing?

2015-01-12T06:51:00.001-08:00

As January sees the campaign for the 2015 UK general election begin in earnest, so too does it see the negotiation over possible televised debates become more intense. Following the impact of the 2010 debates between Prime Ministerial candidates, there are obviously those who want more of the same this time around.

A group including YouTube, The Guardian and The Telegraph have proposed to expanding the format with a digital debate between the five main UK-wide parties (The Guardian, 2015). However, all of the proposed debates have already resulted in a lot of squabbling.

The rise in polling support for UKIP and the Green Party has seen demands for the presence of their leaders on the podium alongside those of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats (Hodges, 2014; Morris, 2014). Yet, the presence of reactionary right and radical left parties at the debates are only likely to make the bigger parties less interested in the debates happening at all - no one particularly wants to be upstaged (Rentoul, 2015).

In fact, those in power see so little reason to voluntarily put themselves on the same platform as those claiming to offer even slight alternatives, let alone drastically different approaches, that the debates may not even happen at all (Rentoul, 2015). UKIP and the Greens may want in, but Cameron and the Conservatives, it appears, do not (Watt, 2015) and without the sitting Prime Minister the debates would struggle to be considered representative.

From one perspective, being denied the opportunity of seeing the five UK wide parties debating would be a disappointment. Politics in the UK already struggles to engage with voters, is already too remote and inaccessible, without then cutting off one main focal point through which the majority can stay in touch.

However, the short format of a couple of hours of television makes it difficult to ensure depth of discussion and analysis of the ideas presented. The ideas and critique are reduced witty or snide one-liners, jabs aimed at the subjective weak spots of an opponent.

Informative analysis - something needed to keep the people, who ultimately have to make the choice, well informed - can be given much more space when offered in other formats, like newspapers (print and online) and blogs. If done well, and presented well, they can even reach as wide an audience, if not wider, through the internet than might engage passively with a couple of hours of prime time television.

Whether or not we want to see the political parties debate their ideas, there are still some things to consider about the format. Do the televised debates increase visibility and engagement enough to make up for its fairly limited approach to analysing the facts? Or does it just present grandstanding populists with an opportunity to score cheap points with simplistic sentiments, and so to distort the facts and the argument?

We must be wary that, in seeking to increase the visibility of politics and in attempting to reach out to engage with people, we do not lose the depth and complexity of analysis required for the making of sound decisions.

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References:
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+ 'An invitation to UK party leaders digital debate'; The Guardian; 9 January 2015.

+ Dan Hodges' 'Nigel Farage is desperate for Ukip to join the cosy Westminster clique'; in The Telegraph; 14 November 2014.

+ Nigel Morris' '260,000 people sign petition to include Green Party in election debates'; in The Independent; 12 November 2014.

+ John Rentoul's 'I agree with David Cameron – there will be no TV debates'; in The Independent; 11 January 2015.

+ John Rentoul's 'Footnote on TV debates'; in The Independent; 11 January 2015.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Cameron is running scared from TV election debates, says Ed Miliband'; in The Guardian; 11 January 2015.

A Short Review of 2014

2014-12-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

For those with a progressive political leaning, the themes of 2014 have been pretty dark. Austerity, cuts, and reactionary opportunism from the mainstream parties to try and respond to the rise of the Far-Right. The main hope for The Left has been in ideas like the Citizen's Income entering into serious political discussion, widespread vocal championing of feminism, and some fresh young left-wing parties beginning to gather support.

The early part of 2014 was dominated by the return of Far-Right politics, with right-wing nationalist parties polling in increasing numbers across Europe on the back of immigration scaremongering. While the Far-Right managed to make some breakthroughs, for the most part it simply served to make it easier for those pushing austerity to make scapegoats of the poorest and most vulnerable to draw attention away from the real powerbrokers.

In an intensely pragmatic response to the small victories won by the Far-Right, parts of the Labour Party believed in making opportunistic appeals to those persuaded by anti-immigration propaganda. It gave the impression only of an effort to stave off the threat posed by right-wing parties to the party's supporter base, under threat already in Scotland by the continued rise in popularity of the SNP and its campaign for Scottish Independence.

The summer saw the Scottish Independence Referendum campaign draw unusual lines of division through Britain, with splits between Unionists and Separatists pulling up issues of nationality and nationalism. Yet the campaign was plagued by negative campaigning, particularly from the No group, which rejected Scottish nationalism with its own rather hypocritical British nationalism and played heavily on economic fears by calling on voters to stick with the Westminster status quo in the name of economic security.

Despite the negativity, the world was watching. Separatist voters in Catalonia waited to see if it was possible to construct a democratic path out of the nation-state settlement. In the end independence was rejected - though by much less of a margin than most were willing to admit. That left the matter, at least partially, unresolved. In particular the general discontent with central government, echoed across Europe, was not truly addressed.

Those feelings probably helped to fuel the newly fire lit that saw, in autumn, a rising popular response to conservative driven austerity. In response to the far right and to Conservative cuts, the UK has seen the Green Party finally making a breakthrough, by polling at the same kind of levels as the other mainstream parties. In Spain, the brand new Podemos party has caused a major shock by polling ahead of all of the established parties.

In many ways, conference season and the Autumn Statement in the UK have only stoked that fire further. Both high coverage events where used by the Conservatives to lay out their plans for further austerity measures and cuts. As autumn turned to winter, those moves have led to the Liberal Democrats, junior coalition partners, to distance themselves from the plans for further cuts - something that reopens the possibility of a positive dialogue amongst leftist groups.

Despite some dark moments, particularly in the Far-Right rearing its head, there are reasons to be hopeful. There are pieces moving into position for a progressive alliance in the UK following the election next spring, with the various groups on The Left opening up to working together in common cause.

We will be back in January with more subjective observation and analysis of politics, ideology and public life.

What are the liberal alternatives to the austerity cuts?

2014-12-15T11:05:00.002-08:00

Vince Cable and Nick Clegg, two of the most senior Liberal Democrats, were quick to make their voices heard in response to the Autumn Statement and to the Conservative push for more cuts during the next parliament. The essence of their narrative was simple: the Lib Dems believe that austerity has been pushed as far as it can or should go.

Cable was quick off the mark with a letter to the Office of Budget Responsibility, which called for the OBR to make a clear a distinction between the future policies of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats (Wintour, 2014). Clegg followed in his wake by stressing that the Tory determination to cut tax was not matched by available funds (Marr, 2014) - meaning more public services would have to go.

The economic analysts seem to agree with them. The analysis released in response to the Autumn Statement stressed that public spending would have to be reduced drastically if the Conservative path was to be followed (Johnson, 2014). And this week the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) announced that its research had shown that inequality is bad for economic growth, and that a redistributive economy is far more conducive to economic success - not to mention beneficial to social welfare (Elliott, 2014).

So what would the Lib Dems do differently?

Well, Clegg says that they are not ashamed of the role they have played in arresting public spending (Mason, 2014), but the party has expressed disagreements over the way forward. While the Conservatives want more and deeper cuts, the Lib Dems think that the realistic plateau has been reached. Instead of more cuts, they want a rise in tax that is controlled to protect the poorest (Lansdale, 2014).

While serving as a practical challenge to the Conservative narrative pushed by the Tories and UKIP, people are unlikely to be inspired by ideas aimed at just keeping a sinking ship afloat. People want an opportunity to make things better - and there are liberal ideas, more radically progressive, that the Lib Dems could push.

Though the modern Lib Dems have been focussed on the idea of reducing the state - with a Gladstonian commitment to capitalism, in opposition to the state - when the old Liberal Party began to modernise in the early twentieth century, the new social liberalism it had embraced opened the party up to the idea that there was a role for the public sector to play, though still with the proviso that it should be reduced wherever possible.

Those deep rooted liberal tendencies have produced ideas, beyond simply reducing state influence, that are more conducive to creating a new era of reform. In the 1920s, Liberals under the guiding hand of John Maynard Keynes produced an in depth report of the British economy that included in its recommendations co-operatives, and democracy in the workplace (Yellow Book, 1928).

'The worker's grievance arises from a sense of the inadequacy of their reward, of their insecurity of livelihood and tenure, and of their lack of information as to the financial results of their work... The present ownership of industry is unduly concentrated and should be diffused as widely as possible among industrial wage-earners. Such diffusion, tending towards the popular ownership of industry, may be effected partly by progressive taxation and restrictions upon the inheritance of large fortunes, but more directly by the stimulation of employee-ownership under schemes of profit-sharing and investment by employees, by the encouragement of popular banking and investment, and by the creation and development of investment trusts. All these processes should be encouraged and, where necessary, regulated by the state.'

These ideas are still woven into Lib Dem policy proposals. Nick Clegg has previously called for a move towards a 'John Lewis Economy' (Clegg, 2012), with companies embracing workers holding shares, and party members have argued that co-operatives should be at the forefront of the Lib Dem economic policy (Donaldson, 2013) - as they are in the preamble to the party constitution.

Now could be the time to start bringing those ideas to the forefront. Co-ops represent a huge step forward, giving people more autonomy in their working lives and spreading the profits of their labour more equitably. If the Lib Dems are to see the aims of the authors of the 1928 Yellow Book report fulfilled, to ensure that individuals may enjoy life more abundantly, co-operation is going to play a key role in achieving them.

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References:
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+ Patrick Wintour's 'Vince Cable asserts Lib Dem economic independence after autumn statement'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Andrew Marr's Interview with Nick Clegg; on 'The Andrew Marr Show'; on The BBC; 7 December 2014.

+ Paul Johnson's 'Institute for Fiscal Studies: Autumn statement briefing, 2014 - Introductory remarks'; for the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS); 4 December 2014.

+ Larry Elliott's 'Revealed: how the wealth gap holds back economic growth'; in The Guardian; 9 December 2014.

+ Rowena Mason's 'Nick Clegg: I’m not ashamed of the autumn statement'; in The Guardian; 4 December 2014.

+ James Lansdale's 'Lib Dems seek centre 'gap' as Tories and Labour shift'; on the BBC; 5 October 2014.

+ 'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928. [Buy Now]

+ 'Nick Clegg calls for a 'John Lewis economy'' on the BBC; 16 January 2012.

+ Iain Donaldson's 'Opinion: Liberal Democrats have a unique position on co-operatives. We should use it.'; on LibDemVoice.org; 22 September 2013.

The Autumn Statement shows us the flaws in the Tory cuts agenda

2014-12-08T10:00:00.001-08:00

The UK government's Autumn Statement, released last week, is a mid-year review of its economic policy (Treanor, 2014), and an opportunity to stop and assess the general health of the national economy.

On this occasion, that assessment has stirred up controversy. The main story behind the review was that the Conservatives have not reached their target reductions to the country's budget deficit, and will likely seek further and deeper cuts to public spending in the next parliament (Allen, 2014).

While senior Conservatives have criticised coverage of future spending cuts as hyperbole predicting that the world would fall in (BBC, 2014), they did not deny that further cuts would be coming. In fact, further cuts to welfare certainly appear to be planned.

The most baffling thing is that, despite the Autumn Statement having laid bare that the Conservative approach has failed to deliver the promised results, the government seems intent upon pushing on, further and deeper, with their strategy of cuts, and of placing trust in markets. They seem to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the economy is still weak, the recovery remains slow, and the public deficit has not been eliminated.

The possibility of more cuts is sure to inflame more than a few hearts that are already set against the Conservative austerity agenda. That will not be helped by independent assessments that say future cuts could take the UK's public spending down to an 80 year low, the lowest since the inter-war era (Reuben, 2014; Johnson, 2014).

It has been suggested that one key reason for the failure of the Conservative approach to achieve its goals, was hinged upon a rise in private sector employment. Conservatives thought that a rise in employment - which they believed would follow from economic incentives and encouragements for the private sector, along with cuts to the public sector - would boost the economy to pick up the slack as public sector spending was reduced. Their gamble, however, did not deliver (Arnett & Nardelli, 2014).

The new jobs, that the Conservatives have celebrated, have come with very low pay and short, unstable hours. In conjunction with the general failure of wages to rise, the decrease in unemployment has not led to an increase in the funds available to pay off public debts and deficits. Further, and even more disastrously, austerity and cuts are being directly linked with rising poverty (Wintour & Butler, 2014).

If, as predicted, the next stage of the Conservative approach returns Britain to its pre-war settlement, with a drastic reshaping of the state and its role in society - with further retraction of the state and a return to a market place with fewer safety nets - it is not unreasonable to ask if the continuation of the cuts agenda will drop public spending so low as to threaten even the most basic services like health and welfare that protect people who fall on hard times.

Conservative policy is steering towards an economy built on the backs of workers labouring through unstable and fluctuating hours, for low pay, and with no safety net when something goes wrong in their incredibly temporary situations. That assault upon the security of workers lives, in pursuit of making labour markets more 'dynamic', is undermining the living standards of workers while simultaneously failing to produce a useful growth in the common wealth.

And that is not good enough. It's not enough to just peddle cheap impermanent work, and assume that work itself will be some sort of miracle cure for societies ills. To live the better and fuller lives that they deserve, people need more security and better pay, with real safety nets.

'We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'
(Yellow Book, 1928)

The Autumn Statement is just the latest demonstration that Conservative austerity and cuts are failing, both economically and socially, to address the problems of the day. The question now becomes: what alternatives do we have?

==========
References:
==========
+ Jill Treanor's 'Autumn statement 2014 at a glance: eight key points'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Katie Allen's 'George Osborne thrown off course by pay squeeze and falling income tax take'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ BBC's 'Osborne: Autumn Statement cuts warnings 'hyperbolic''; 4 December 2014.

+ Anthony Reuben's 'Headline Numbers: Public spending heads to 80-year low'; on the BBC; 3 December 2014.

+ Paul Johnson's 'Institute for Fiscal Studies: Autumn statement briefing, 2014 - Introductory remarks'; for the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS); 4 December 2014.

+ George Arnett and Alberto Nardelli's 'Why has George Osborne missed the deficit target?'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Patrick Wintour and Patrick Butler's 'Tories seek to avert rift with Church of England over food bank report'; in The Guardian; 8 December 2014.

+ 'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928. [Buy Now]

Constantine's flawed humanity makes for good television

2014-12-01T09:35:00.001-08:00

NBC's new TV show Constantine, with a second series yet to be commissioned, has joined a long list of shows that have seen fans start campaigns aimed at keeping them alive (Wickline, 2014). It was always going to be a brave decision to try and translate the character of John Constantine to the small screen. The Hellblazer comics are often dark and intensely grim, and Constantine himself is a hero often shown to be flawed and manipulative, and even prepared to sacrifice his own friends should the need arise.

Yet, so far, NBC's new show has held true to that course. We have seen Constantine smoking, itself a fairly big challenge to modern television standards; he has exploited the abilities of his allies, like Zed and Liv; and he manipulated his friend Gary Lester into sacrificing his life to trap the hunger demon Mnemoth.

But we have also seen him struggle with a troubled and violent childhood. He struggles with his guilt over, in his arrogance, failing to save a little girl named Astra. We have seen him show nobility in trying to save people from many dangers that they might not even believe to actually exist.

These struggles, and the weight of burden that his failures have cast upon him, are what makes him a character that is easy to identify with - and were all key parts of the complicated character that was so beloved on the pages of the Hellblazer comics.

The Constantine of Hellblazer is a punk, a bisexual and a smoker. A working-class mage. He is burdened by enormous guilt over the past, and cares about the people around him, though often reluctantly. He gets by on wit and guile, rather than brute force and physical strength.

Even with the faults in his methods, like the dangerous manipulation of his friends and allies, he is still a charming and likeable anti-establishment figure - and that makes him easy to sympathise with. He is a controversial hero, and a complicated and imperfect person who earns our sympathy through his flawed humanity.

These things, translated to the small screen, make for a fascinating character. His belief in himself is not unshakeable - he has doubts. He has regrets. He is caustic and short-tempered. He is manipulative, using, and exploiting his friends. He is self-righteous when he gets the chance, and angry when he gets called out on his hypocrisy.

These characteristics make him flawed and vulnerable, and so reveal to us his humanity. They are the kind of traits that make for a great television character.

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References:
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+ Dan Wickline's 'There Is Now A Save Constantine Petition'; on bleedingcool.com; 27 November 2014.

+ Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette & John Ridgway's 'Hellblazer'; DC/Vertigo; 1988. [Buy Now]

+ Daniel Cerone & David S. Goyer's 'Constantine'; on NBC; 2014. [Buy Now]

Support for the Greens and the SNP is forcing change on the British Left

2014-11-24T10:18:00.005-08:00

If the years since the 2008 economic crisis have shown us anything, it's that people are discontent with the old order. In the UK, as well as elsewhere, governments have struggled to manage sinking economies and it has led to crashing confidence in central national authorities (Nardelli, 2014).

In Britain this has shown itself in the slow but dramatic collapse of the two-party system. Across Britain voters first switched, in modest numbers, to the Liberal Democrats, as the largest left alternative to a Labour Party that had become a towering behemoth of establishment power (The Guardian, 2010).

That switch created the first true multi-party system in Britain since the Second World War. However, when the Lib Dems gathered too little support to achieve much other than mildly shackling the Conservatives in a coalition, their voting support fractured (Kirkup, 2014). Failing to defend certain of their key policies from Conservatives depredations have sent supporters fleeing to find new havens.

In Scotland, the SNP have been the main beneficiaries of the Lib Dems being sucked into the whirlpool of mistrust of establishment political parties, and of voter's loss of trust in Labour (Carrell, 2014). The SNP have established a reputation as a more than just a single issue separatist party, and have attracted a number of left-wing voters looking for a new left alternative, with policies like nuclear disarmament, free higher education and progressive taxation (Brooks, 2014).

Across the rest of Britain, the Green Party has been slowly building support (Walsh, 2014). The party has persistently set itself apart from the other main parties, supporting policies like the citizen's income. Green parties are organised right across the European continent, and are close to being the first truly federal European party, but have yet to make the big breakthrough in the UK. In 2010 Caroline Lucas became their first MP (BBC, 2010), and since then they have begun to poll at similar levels to both UKIP and the Lib Dems.

The rising support, for both parties, is breaking open the old system. That break could well be a blessing for the British Left. The Greens and the SNP are opening a space to the left of the British mainstream, and it's a space where progressive ideas can make themselves heard. It is also the opportunity to reshape the left in a less centralised way.

Plurality, many voices and many perspectives, is the lifeblood of debate and is at the centre of progress. The Labour Party has tried to force those different groups to unite into a single faction with one voice, but in doing so has only strangled and frustrated the political left - even as they have achieved great steps forward. The emergence of a multi-party system, and the much needed democratic reforms that will allow it to thrive, should be seen then as an opportunity to be embraced.

Britain has seen elements of a multi-party system before, but not since the Second World War. The loss of multiple parties was not really to the benefit of the left, even as Labour managed to gather left-wing voters around itself. It meant an end to co-operation between social democrats and liberals that weakened both movements (Bogdanor, 1983).

The opening up the left by multiple parties could pull Labour back leftwards, and force it to embrace co-operation with other leftist groups. The fear is that a system with many parties will lead to division and therefore weakness - but it doesn't have to. If you can find common ground and find a way to present an allied front, you will be able to work together.

There is room on the left for the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Green Party, the Co-operative Party and more, so long as they, and especially Labour, can learn to co-operate.

==========
References:
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+ Alberto Nardelli's 'A crisis of trust - and the rise of new political parties'; in The Guardian; 6 November 2014.

+ The Guardian's 'General election 2010: The liberal moment has come'; 30 April 2010.

+ James Kirkup's 'Only third of 2010 Lib Dem voters will back party again, poll suggests'; in The Telegraph; 7 March 2013.

+ Severin Carrell's 'Labour faces massive losses to SNP at UK general election, poll shows'; in The Guardian; 30 October 2014.

+ Libby Brooks' 'Who are the new members of the Scottish National Party?'; in The Guardian;13 November 2014.

+ James Walsh's '7 reasons why people are turning to the Green party'; in The Guardian; 14 November 2014.

+ BBC's 'Election: Green Party gain first MP with Brighton win'; 7 May 2010.

+ Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press; 1983 [Buy Now].

Spain's Podemos party signals the rise of a new political left

2014-11-17T09:54:00.000-08:00

Since the financial crisis erupted in 2008, Europe has seen a rise in co-ordinated leftist movements, such as Occupy, getting people out onto the streets to protest against the conservative economic orthodoxy.

Despite being highly visible, those campaigns, for welfare before wealth and people before profits, have found little traction inside the political mainstream. The failure of mainstream political parties to reflect public priorities in policy has led to collapsing support for those parties, and a corresponding collapse in trust in the political institutions (Nardelli, 2014).

However, that has began to change. In time for the European elections, while the world was justifiably worried about the rise of the far right, a new party emerged in Spain. Born out of the Indignados movement, which saw as many as 8 million people take to the streets across Spain in 2011 and 2012, a new party was formed, called Podemos (Jones, 2014).

Podemos, meaning "We can", marks an important transition. The leftist activists and protesters are shifting from campaigning to political democracy, from protesting to developing policy - trying to turn ideas into action (Pope, 2014). It is a beginning of a fulfilment of the promise shown by leftist campaigns across Europe.

People have shown they are active and engaged. But they're unhappy, and are now they're taking to proposing the solutions themselves, because the establishment hasn't listened, and hasn't reformed to suit the needs of the people.

That disaffection has elsewhere only fed the parties of the far right, who only offer narrow and restrictive responses to poverty and suffering. Those groups, like UKIP, do not break from political orthodoxies and fail to offer positive alternatives. Only the anti-establishment libertarian democratic group Movimento 5 Stelle, of Italy, has succeeded in taking popular support away from those far right groups... so far.

The rising polling strength of Podemos is a positive answer to that right-wing populism, and ought to be a huge boost to those on the left, from progressives to socialists to liberals. They are championing the causes of the left: poverty reduction, the basic income, reducing dependence upon fossil fuels, promoting small, medium and local producers and enterprises along with some sensible public control.

They represent the ideals of the left, backed by a popular movement, bringing activism and political policy together to challenge mainstream methods and orthodox ideas. That is a cause for hope for anyone who is looking for a better future, one oriented more towards people and their needs, than to endless, monotonous, accumulation and consumption.

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Reference:
==========
+ Alberto Nardelli's 'A crisis of trust - and the rise of new political parties'; in The Guardian; 6 November 2014.

+ Owen Jones' 'Viva Podemos: the left shows it can adapt and thrive in a crisis'; in The Guardian; 16 November 2014.

+ Mike Pope's 'The rise of Podemos and its People's Assembly'; on OpenDemocracy.net; 17 November 2014.

Tories are finding new ways to demonise welfare

2014-11-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

To prepare the ground for the next phase in their ongoing obsession with cutting back the public sector, the Conservatives announced last week that they were spending £5m of public funds to send all taxpayers a leaflet breaking down how the tax they pay is spent (Mason, 2014).

This Tory presentation on government spending has been criticised, in particular, for presenting welfare spending in an incredibly simplistic, and so misleading, way (Moore, 2014). It has been suggested that the primary aim of doing so is to justify future cuts in welfare spending, by comparing its cost versus other popular priorities like healthcare and education (Ball, 2014).

These leaflets, with their presentation of the cost of welfare are just the latest assault. Yet, a more detailed look at government spending reveals much different picture. Of spending on welfare, 46% of it goes on pensions, with only 3% spent on jobseekers allowance. A further 8% goes to the disability living allowance, and 14% is spent on housing benefits (Moore, 2014). Furthermore, the 3% spent on support for the unemployed, while they look for work, is less than 0.6% of tax revenues (Ball, 2014).

Those figures make the Conservative government's pursuit of cutting back welfare, in order to reduce overall public spending, seem absurd. It also puts into context how heavily the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been criticised for its zealous pursuit of this Tory ideological aggression towards welfare (Toynbee, 2014).

The DWP has even faced legal challenges over its 'workfare' policy, on the grounds that it constitutes forced labour - and has even refused to release information of where it is forcing people to work on the astonishing grounds that it would provoke protests (Chakelian, 2014). It's attitude has, however, provoked protests regardless, unsurprisingly, with people are being forced into work without pay in ridiculous situations (Malik, 2014).

These moves tie in perfectly with the Tory obsession with demonising welfare and demolishing public welfare safety nets. Their illiberal approach is undermining the wellbeing of the poorest, leaving them at the mercy of the market, mostly in the name of supporting capitalist free enterprise by saving the wealthiest the trouble of contributing to the common fund.

That approach, in pursuit of statistical success to justify the very unequal distribution of wealth that their economic approach requires (Watt, 2013), is crushing the real people behind the percentages and the entries in spreadsheets, and dividing the communities that bind them.

Welfare is all about a community coming together to ensure that, should any one of them stumble, everyone else will rally to help them back to their feet - and yet it is being replaced with a modern day workhouse for the poor, forcing the unemployed to labour unpaid in increasingly temporary jobs, in a job market that is being propped up on temporary workers. Throwing more obstacles in the path of those who find themselves at the bottom, or leaving behind those that falter, is an inadequate and unfair response to hard times.

Instead, we should be looking forward with ideas like a Citizen's Income, to engage with new ways to liberate people from poverty and provide opportunities. We need to provide better prospects, created by better investments in people, and the provision of better access to better opportunities - an unlocking of the doors barring the least well off from access to the connections and resources they need for a better life.

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References:
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+ Rowena Mason's 'Tax statements from George Osborne to show government spend'; in The Guardian; 2 November 2014.

+ Susan Moore's 'What the Tories won’t tell you in their ‘transparent’ tax statement'; in The Guardian; 3 November 2014.

+ James Ball's 'Osborne’s tax summary shows benefits bill is biggest drain. Is this fair?'; in The Guardian; 3 November 2014.

+ Polly Toynbee's 'Help to Work is a costly way of punishing the jobless'; in The Guardian; 15 April 2014.

+ Anoosh Chakelian's 'The DWP won't tell us exactly where it sends people on placements for fear of protests' in New Statesman; 4 November 2014.

+ Shiv Malik's 'DWP orders man to work without pay for company that let him go'; in The Guardian; 3 November 2014.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Boris Johnson invokes Thatcher spirit with greed is good speech'; in The Guardian; 27 November 2013.

Marvel finally includes a much needed female lead in their cinematic universe

2014-11-03T09:44:00.001-08:00

The announcement of the upcoming movies planned for phase three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) contained a pleasant surprise (Brew, 2014). On the list was, at last, a female-led movie. The introduction of Captain Marvel to the MCU looks set to address the worrying lack of a female lead in Marvel's very successful movie-series (Kastrenakes, 2014).

Until now, rumours of a movie for Black Widow, portrayed in the MCU by Scarlett Johansson, had been little more than a demonstration of the extent of Marvel's dependence upon white male characters. That dependence is, however, hardly unique to Marvel. It has been shared by many a movie franchise, so much so that the success of female led films, such as Scarlett Johansson's Lucy, have resulted in expressions of wonder (Cunningham, 2014).

The Captain Marvel announcement comes then as a positive step, and follows moves made in the TV branch of Marvel's cinematic universe. On TV, with Agents of SHIELD, Marvel has at least featured a number of strong female characters very prominently. The cast has grown to become, gradually, more diverse across its first series, and now into the opening episodes of the second.

That direction is kept up by their upcoming series Agent Carter, starring the eponymous Agent Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell. Carter had a significant role in Captain America: The First Avenger, and Atwell is resuming the role to head-up the MCU's second TV series.

Together, the two Marvel shows have done a good job of giving a good share of screen time, and a good share of character roles to female characters - putting women very prominently and visibly at the forefront. However, despite the critical praise for television in general that has brought increased exposure, TV still lacks quite the same high profile that movies enjoy - and the major money-making entertainment industry that it supports - and that supports it in turn.

In the entertainment industry, that seems very much to be the key. By proving that a major film production with a female lead can bring in big box office numbers, and therefore make large amounts of money, an important ceiling can be broken. That's what makes this announcement so important.

Captain Marvel, set for screens in 2018, will bring much needed exposure and visibility for lead female characters in a critically and popularly acclaimed movie universe. It is a chance to break through the myth that the only safe option for big budget films is a white male lead.

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References:
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+Simon Brew's 'Marvel unveils Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe'; on DenofGeek.com; 28 October 2014.

+ Jason Kastrenakes' '"Captain Marvel" will be Marvel Studios' first female superhero movie'; on The Verge; 28 October 2014.

+ Todd Cunningham's 'Why Scarlett Johansson's ‘Lucy’ Strikes Blow for Women With Kick-Butt Box Office'; for Yahoo Celebrity!/The Wrap; 28 July 2014.

+ Josh Dickey's 'Carol Danvers, Marvel's first female superhero, is also the most powerful'; on Mashable.com; 28 October 2014.

+ Dave Haglund's 'Stop Saying That TV Is Better Than Movies These Days'; on Slate.com; 18 July 2013.

+ David Cox's '10 reasons today's movies trump TV'; in The Guardian; 21 October 2013.

+ Stuart Heritage's '10 reasons why today's TV is better than movies'; in The Guardian; 23 October 2014.

+ Joss Whedon's 'Marvel's Agents of SHIELD'; on ABC; 2013. [Buy Now]

+ Joe Johnston's 'Captain America: The First Avenger'; from Marvel; 2011. [Buy Now]

Fear poisons the democratic well and leaves us ripe for exploitation

2014-10-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks and months there have been attempted armed assaults on elected officials in two Western countries (The Guardian, 2014; Roberts, 2014); there has been war, kidnap and murder in the Middle East (Swinford, 2014); a deadly disease has posed a threat to three continents (BBC, 2014); and crude and aggressive attempts are being made to stop women from speaking up for their rights (Hern, 2014). All of these events have one thing in common: Fear.

In the UK, from welfare to migration (Wintour, 2014; The Guardian, 2013), fear has started to play too large a part in the political arena, much too often. A rash of issues have been blown up into alarmist struggles, with the disproportionate and scary language used feeding the negative emotions that complicate and confuse matters (Jenkins, 2014).

The US has faired little better. The arrival of the Ebola virus has sparked all sorts of animated and colourful reactions from conservative commentators (Younge, 2014). The fear these events spark upset the order of people's lives, destabilise the things that they depend upon, and that makes them feel vulnerable and afraid, and that fear can lead to escalation (The Guardian, 2013).

Fear, either as a result of fear-mongering or ignorance, is potentially extremely powerful. It can be a potent mover of public opinion, but it does so only by poisoning the popular democratic environment. It poisons debate, it drowns out reason in a howl of noise, and it corrupts our ideals. When that happens, our liberty is at stake. It is a dark road down which we travel when we let fear, and our frightened reactions, override our reason.

Niccolo Machiavelli, the much maligned Florentine political philosopher, gave us an insight into the power that fear, when we let it control us, gives to those who might exploit it:

'And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are thankless, fickle, false studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to you while you are able to confer benefits upon them, and ready, as I said before, while danger is distant... For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes its grasp.'

That cynical view on how the fears of the people may be exploited serve us now as a warning. During the good times, when people have freedom, and their lives have some measure of stability and security, it is easier for them to think clearly and make good decisions. But when their world is upset, they feel vulnerable and so close ranks.

Fear, whether it is of change, violence, chaos or punishment, can be used to control us, or to steer us towards extreme solutions. As we retreat to familiar ground, shut out others and become less tolerant, we give life to extreme solutions. Our fears present a potentially profitable exploit to others willing to react to the situation and give us a sense of security.

However, as reactionaries offer us the extreme solutions that we, in our fear, desire, they only affirm those fears and exacerbate them (The Guardian, 2013). Fear and reaction can this way become a vicious cycle, each causing the other in turn to escalate.

We need to find a way to be calm, to be considered and thoughtful, as we take important decisions. When the world is at its worst is the time when cherished values like kindness, hope and generosity are needed the most. The answer to violence and danger, to exploitation and fear, is not to retreat into narrow tribal groups. Instead we need to find more friendship, and more support for our most cherished values, amongst more people and across many and more diverse cultures.

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References:
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+ The Guardian's 'The Guardian view on the terror attacks in Ottawa: hold fast to tolerance and diversity'; 23 October 2014.

+ Dan Roberts' 'Armed intruder had penetrated farther into White House than admitted'; in The Guardian; 29 September 2014.

+ Steven Swinford's 'David Cameron breaks off holiday after 'British' jihadist beheads kidnapped journalist'; in The Telegraph; 20 August 2014.

+ BBC's 'Ebola: Mapping the outbreak'; 22 October 2014.

+ Alex Hern's 'Felicia Day's public details put online after she described Gamergate fears'; in The Guardian; 23 October 2014.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Welfare state presides over 'culture of fear', charities say'; in The Guardian; 18 February 2014.

+ The Guardian's 'Migration: politics of fear'; 30 December 2013.

+ Simon Jenkins' 'Downing Street’s Ebola panic is a classic case of the politics of fear'; in The Guardian; 17 October 2014.

+ Gary Younge's 'Ebola has exposed America's fear, and Barack Obama's vulnerability'; in The Guardian; 19 October 2014.

+ Niccolo Machiavelli's 'The Prince'; from Chapter XVII; 1513. [Buy Now]