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

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.

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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

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:
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+ 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

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

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]