Election 2015: Economics - Austerity, Austerity Lite or an Alternative

The big question facing voters on 7th May is how should the UK's fiscal policy and public debt be managed over the next five years. That is to say: how much tax should be raised, and from who? And, how much of the deficit and debt should be paid off, and when?

As of April, the deficit - the amount of government spending in excess of revenue from taxation - was at around £90bn. Over the last five years the deficit has been reduced from £154bn. However, because there is still a deficit, the overall debt has continued to climb - from around £1 trillion up to around £1.5 trillion (Ashworth-Hayes, 2015).

Those are, admittedly, pretty scary numbers. But what is the reality behind them?

What are the parties offering?

There are two main groups of parties taking opposing positions: the Conservatives and UKIP on one side (BBC, 2015), Labour and the SNP on the other (Phelps, 2015). While the Conservative side is focussing heavily on bringing down the deficit and the debt substantially through further cuts to public spending, the Labour side has focussed instead on much shallower cuts, ostensibly to protect the economy from the shock of further public sector cuts (Peston, 2015).

In order to achieve their deficit reduction, the Conservatives will have to make massive cuts to public services (Robinson, 2015). They will need to cut as much as a third from the budget of each of the unprotected areas of public spending, plus £12bn from non-pensions welfare spending - of which jobseekers allowance only makes up £3bn of £74bn, with housing benefit taking up £18bn (Elliott & Wintour, 2015).

All of these Conservative efforts are aimed squarely at tackling, and eliminating, sovereign debt. By contrast, Labour believe that the way to cut the deficit is to improve the economy - encouraging growth and so increasing government revenues (Robinson, 2015).

With two potentially viable means to achieve the same end, the judgement as to who is right would seem to depend on outside factors (Peston, 2015{2}).

"...your judgement about who is right depends on your assessment of how big you want the public sector to be, and how likely you think it is that there is another economic crisis around the corner - because the more imminent such a shock may be, the more haste is appropriate for debt reduction."

That brings us to the question: how much of a risk is sovereign debt?

Keynes and cyclically balanced budgets

To answer that question it is worth revisiting the work of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was an Eton and Cambridge educated economist and member of the old Liberal Party. He had worked for the treasury, but his experiences during negotiations over German reparations at the end of the First World War led to his resignation.

He then wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which roundly criticised, on economic grounds, the process by which the German people were being punished with reparations for the actions of the German State and warned of the dangers inherent to that course. The work established his credentials as an economist.

In later works - such as the The Means to Prosperity and The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - Keynes' ideas went on to focus on the important economic role played by demand. Economics, of all stripes, is centred on the relationship between supply and demand. In a change from classical economic attitudes, Keynes saw demand as the one that drives the other - and so saw it as necessary for something to be done about making up for the slump in demand that occurred during contraction periods in the economic cycle.

The means to achieving that would be government debt and deficit spending. By borrowing and sending more on public services and public works, the government could keep people employed, thus keeping money in their pockets and so keep demand at a level that can support supply until the economy recovers. In a failure to do this, Keynes saw potentially catastrophic problems caused by the collapse of demand, as unemployment led to recession which led to more unemployment (The Independent Report, 2012).

However, the role that sovereign debt and deficit spending played was only intended by Keynes to be part of a more comprehensive fiscal strategy of cyclically balanced budgets - with surpluses created during the good times to allow for the deficit spending needed during the slumps.

Yet public debts have, over the past seven years, gone a long way beyond that. Sovereign debt has piled up thanks to governments taking private capitalist debts into their own hands to save the private business, and particularly banks, from catastrophe (Filger, 2010) - although the IMF estimates that only 40% of the total debt is the result of stimulus efforts and bail-outs, with 60% coming simply from lower tax revenues due to higher unemployment and lower profits (The Economist, 2013).

Further, the IMF has suggested that while public debt isn't helpful - compounding problems by questioning solvency, so driving up interest rates which makes borrowing and repayments more expensive, and undermining the freedom for governments to spend to stimulate the economy - austerity cuts aimed at tackling the debt have actually hindered growth (The Economist, 2013).

What may seem a fairly cavalier attitude towards public debt seem to be justified by analysis. Historically, it appears, sovereign default - where a country is unable to meet its debts and so is forced to restructure repayments - does not come with the risks generally associated with it. The effects on economic growth of default are a drop of around 2.5% in the short term, but are quickly overcome and recovering is relatively fast (Panizza & Borensztein, 2010).

The real dangers appear to be the political effects.

Back during Great War reparations negotiations, Keynes had argued that there was a limit to the capacity of a state to manage its debts. To pressure a state into pursuing repayments it could not afford could have dangerous ramifications (Miller & Skidelsky, 2012). Policies by creditor countries regarding debts would have to be handled in a way sensitive to both economic and political outcomes. The failure to do so would be expressed in the rise of extremism - as people turn to simplistic and drastic solutions in the face of the powerlessness of the centre.

So how does all of this answer our key questions: how much tax should be raised and from who? How much of the deficit and debt should be paid off, and when? How much of a risk is sovereign debt?

Conclusions with reservations

For Keynes, the moment for austerity cuts was during the good times, not during the bad. If debts became unmanageable, then it would eventually be better simply to cancel those debts and have everyone benefit from the renewed growth. However, debts and deficit spendings should be purposeful, with deliberate productive outcomes that will ultimately help balance out spending when the economy returns to expansion.

Taking all of these things into account, it should not be a huge surprise that Keynes would be unlikely to agree outright with either the Labour or Conservative side of the argument, but rather with the Liberal Democrats - the heirs of the old Liberal Party of which he was a member.

Of the mainstream parties, the Lib Dems are the most openly committed to what they call a middle course - to cyclically balanced budgets, tax rises rather than increasingly deep cuts to tackle the deficit more immediately than Labour and then keeping spending increases in line with revenue increases to spend more than the Conservatives (Crawford et al, 2014).

However, all of this analysis presumes the continued validity of the mainstream economic system - something about which questions have been raised in the last five years. Therein lies deeper questions of values that are much harder to answer: does the mainstream system still reflect what we expect from our lives? And, is anyone actually offering a real alternative system?

Anti-austerity parties, from the more mainstream Greens to more fringe groups like Socialist Labour, offer alternatives consisting of higher taxes and more public spending. But they not do not offer a comprehensively different system (Whale, 2015; BBC, 2015{2}).

There is the choice. Do we look now to the alternatives, that may not be ready or fully realised, or do we try to make the best of the present system, with as much fairness as possible, according to our best understanding of how it functions?

Yanis Varoufakis, Greek radical left economist and Finance Minister under the Syriza government, addressed that choice by stressing the need for progressives to be pragmatic during these times of crisis (Varoufakis, 2015). From his perspective the Revolutionary Marxists were wrong - crisis would not benefit the Left, but rather the Right. For Varoufakis, the priority is a 'modest agenda for stabilising a system that I criticise', in order to 'minimise the unnecessary human toll from this crisis'.

The rising cost of servicing debt, along with austerity applied during tough times, can damage the general wellbeing and lead to rising extremism. Progressives need to decide on which course they believe to be best able to protect the common good in the present, and will set us up for moving towards greater prosperity in the future.

Election 2015: Healthcare, public funding and the future of the NHS

One of the central issues for voters as they cast their ballot in the 2015 UK general election will be the future of the NHS. All the parties have made their pitch, each party setting out their position by juxtaposing it with the plans of their rivals. The trouble is, upon closer inspection, all of the parties are making very similar promises (Triggle, 2015).

The choice between very similar sounding options on 7th May is the product of the development of the NHS over decades. The NHS was established by the Atlee's Labour government in 1948 to be free at point of use and funded by taxation. Based on the report of the liberal William Beveridge, it represented the next step in the reform and modernisation of social welfare begun by the Liberal Party just after the turn of the century.

The free at the point of use principal was soon put to the test. With funding the service proving expensive, it was not long before charges were introduced - beginning with prescription charges. Over the years more costs have been gradually pushed away from the public purse - road accident charges to car insurers, and dental care charges, eye care charges, hospital car parking charges all to the service user.

Toward the end of her time as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher introduced a new 'internal market' system, where the state would not directly provide the healthcare. Instead it would procure it, on behalf of the service user, from independent hospital trusts that would have to compete to provide the service (Laurance, 2013).

Those changes initiated a direction of travel arguably continued in the Labour Party's embracing of Private Financial Initiatives (PFIs) under Blair and Brown. The benefits of the system to which Labour clung were that it opened up a short term source of funding to get hospitals built (BBC, 2002). But in the long term it has led to a huge build up of debt for hospital trusts, while allowing the private companies to profit massively (Cooper, 2014).

As for the Lib Dems, there has long been a broad party consensus on finding ways to increase choice and to ensure oversight and to devolve power (Brack et al, 2007). That made the Health and Social Care Act 2012 a complicated matter, with strong campaigning opposition to elements of the reform from within the party led by the likes of Dr Evan Harris (Harris, 2012).

Yet even with these ways of extending the means of funding the NHS and trying to find increase in service 'efficiency', the NHS is still falling short and there are fears that it will affect services (Campbell, 2015). There is little belief that Andrew Lansley's reforms have helped to ease the pressures. NHS chief executive Simon Stevens has said that the institution needs an extra £8bn a year to meet an expected £30bn shortfall by 2020 (Baker et al, 2015).

In response, all of the main parties of offered more funding, each with their own priority (Wright & Moodley, 2015).

Labour's primary position has been to distance itself from, first, the coalition's policies, and then, second, from those of New Labour. This means promising to repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and introducing a cap of private profits from NHS contracts (Wintour, 2015). With NHS funding a major issue, Labour have also promised an increase of £2bn by 2016, and a £2.5bn fund for recruiting more nurses, GPs and midwives.

The Conservatives have promised to ringfence healthcare spending to protect it from cuts and to increase the budget by £2bn each year of the next parliament. However, that increase in funding is tempered by Cameron's announcement that his party would also be extending NHS services to full 24 hour coverage (Channel 4, 2015). They also later announced - to criticism of making unfunded pledges - that they would match the £8bn increase called for by the NHS (BBC, 2015).

By contrast to the other two main parties, the Liberal Democrats were initially the only party to pledge to increase NHS funding each year through to 2020 to ensure it will be, in real terms (adjusting for inflation), £8bn more than today - the amount that the NHS has stated is needed. Their main priority will the treatment of mental health, which they would put on parity with physical health and for which they would provide more funding (Perraudin, 2015).

UKIP have once again shown their chameleon-like skill at identifying the most popular mainstream policy and jumping on board - being sure to propose funding the NHS through their usual obsessions (Mason, 2015). However the personal views on the NHS of their leader Nigel Farage have been criticised by Dr John Lamport of the National Health Action Party (Lamport, 2015). He criticised Farage's praise for the Dutch and French style insurance-based system as an expensive doorway to privatisation.

However, despite their differing priorities, the similarities between the main parties and the general direction of travel towards privatisation has, for many, been a long term concern (BBC, 2003). Senior health professionals have criticised the coalition (Boseley, 2015), and others have called for whoever forms the next government to provide the funding that the NHS needs (Baker et al, 2015). These calls come with fears amongst medical professionals that after the election, charges may be introduced for basic NHS services (Campbell, 2015{2}).

Smaller third parties have taken up the fight against this perceived drift into privatisation. The National Health Action Party (NHA) represents a broadly Left-wing vision of rolling back privatisation. The NHA supports 1p rise in tax to pay for an increase of funding of £4.5m a year, phasing out prescription charges and repealing the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (BBC, 2015{2}).

However, regardless of who wins the next election, the closeness of the main parties' policies makes it likely that there will be some sort of cross-party commission to figure out the future of the NHS (Triggle, 2015). That commission will have to face the same questions that the public will at this election: do we want lower taxes or well funded public services? Because trying to have both means stretching those services ever more thinly (Toynbee, 2015).

When considering that question it's worth noting that the UK has comprehensive healthcare for which it spends far less, as a share of GDP, than most other comparable countries (Campbell & Watt, 2014). The NHS also remains an overwhelming popularly supported service (NatCen, 2015). In order to keep that service functioning, we need to understand the choices on offer about its future and to ask ourselves: when the future of the NHS is being debated, what values do we want to be represented and to underwrite its future?

Election 2015: What the past can tell us about the SNP's role at Westminster

Talking to Andrew Marr on Sunday, David Cameron argued that a Labour government backed by the SNP would be calamitous (Wintour, 2015). He said:

"This would be the first time in our history that a group of nationalists from one part of our country would be involved in altering the direction of our country..." (Marr, 2015)

Historically that is not, however, strictly true.

If, as the polls suggest, Labour and the Conservatives are unable to break their deadlock and a hung parliament results, then we could be looking at a repeat of 1910. Swap a few of the parties around - Liberal Party and Labour Party, the Irish Parliamentary Party for the Scottish National Party - and you have a similar outcome on 7th May as occurred in 1910: the Left and Centre outnumbering the Right, and a Centre-Left minority government propped up by a party of regional nationalists (Collins, 2015).

In the years preceding 1910 there had been a withering struggle between the Liberals and Conservatives over reforming the power of the lords, to limit the power of the Tory landowners and to allow for the passage of the Liberal 'People's Budget' (Cavendish, 2009). That struggle resulted in the first election of 1910, where the Liberal majority was reduced to a Liberal minority. In an attempt to break the deadlock, a second election was held in December - but that only produced the same result.

The third largest party was the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) with 74 seats, a full 70% of the seats in Ireland - a sweep not unlike that expected from the SNP in 2015 (Kuenssberg, 2015). Since the early 1880s, the IPP had been allied to the Liberal Party in pursuit of Home Rule for Ireland (Baston, 2015). After decades of campaigning, their position of power in propping up a Liberal minority allowed them to finally achieve the passage of a Home Rule Bill.

The comparison to Irish Nationalism of the early 1900s should not be overstated, though. The struggle for Irish independence carried barely suppressed undertones of direct action and violence - reprisals for suppressions and centuries of denied reform (Baston, 2015).

Yet there remain some interesting comparisons. When the IPP secured itself the role of kingmaker in a hung parliament, it succeeded in putting Ireland right at the centre of discussions. Having been defeated in the 2014 referendum, Alex Salmond had acknowledged that the independence question would be off the table for a generation (McVeigh, 2014). But that doesn't mean that, if as expected the SNP become the third largest party in Parliament, there isn't a Scottish corner to be fought at Westminster - including the promised further devolution.

However, Ireland becoming the centre of political attention in 1910 was resented in England (Boland, 2015). That same sort of resentment is being seen again, with an anti-Scotland sentiment on the rise, fed by Right-wing propaganda (Milne, 2015). But that negativity has been countered to a degree, though, by the popularity of Nicola Sturgeon, who has received a positive reaction outside of Scotland.

The SNP's clear stance of supporting a Labour government, and opposing a Conservative one, will also have helped (The Guardian, 2015). Again, that is not unlike the IPP, who stood alongside the Liberals for decades in the campaign for Home Rule - although they had little alternative with the Conservatives utterly opposed to their aims.

While adopting a clear position - being clear as to what side the party will take in advance - has let voters know what to expect, the SNP's announcement of who they will side with in a hung parliament will restrict their bargaining power, just as it restricted that of the IPP. Yet the SNP has tried playing the two big parties off against each other before, and that did not achieve better results.

In 1979, James Callaghan's Labour minority government was defeated in a motion of no confidence - by just one vote - which ushered in the Thatcher-Conservative era. Callaghan's minority government, in return for SNP and Plaid Cymru support, had legislated for devolution of power to Scotland and Wales. Struggling to pass the act, the focus switched to a referendum. Devolution for Scotland was narrowly rejected by referendum, though not without controversy (Aitken, 2015). Having lost a referendum, the SNP took the Conservative side and moved to oust Labour. The SNP subsequently lost most of their seats at the general election.

One big difference between 2015 and either 1910 or 1979, it that reciprocity on the part of Labour to the overtures of the SNP has been at an all time low (Ship, 2015). Even if a Labour minority governs after the next election, the SNP's direct influence may well still be further restricted.

Yet the party's seats, and those of the other possible members of the discussed Progressive Alliance bloc that would sit in the next parliament (Mason, 2015), could still act as a significant anchor-weight, holding the government in the Centre-Left.

In doing so, the SNP seem to have learned the lessons of the past. They has striven to avoid accusations of splitting progressive voters by committing to being part of a broad progressive voice at Westminster. The problem is that Labour seem to have learnt the lessons as well, believing they cannot afford to appear weak and at the mercy of sectional interests if they want to keep the support of those voters they appeal to on the Centre-Right.

Having now staked out their territory, the SNP can no longer afford not to keep to their Left-leaning commitments. Any failure or perception of wavering will see the party facing the same fall from grace as suffered by the Lib Dems. Those factors should at least ensure a progressive, Left-leaning parliament if people in Scotland vote for the SNP.

One final interesting note: the strength of Ireland's voting block in the 1880s was strong enough to force a reorganisation of parliamentary workings. In order to stop the IPP voting block from using Parliament to force its issues onto the agenda, the establishment's answer was to give the the government more power over Parliamentary proceedings and reduce the power of backbenchers (Baston, 2015).

The rise of the SNP and impending minority administrations - by restricting the ability of central government to act with impunity while they hold a majority - could now return that power back to Parliament. Far from disassembling the country in the next Parliament, the SNP could just be in a position to do the whole country a favour.

Election 2015: Party manifesto commitments and the values behind the policies

The traditional view of electoral politics in the UK is of two parties, one of the Centre-Left and one of the Centre-Right, who struggle with one another for control over the establishment. The one that succeeds is expected to implement their manifesto, a vision of the policies for the coming years - diametrically opposed to those of the opposition.

Yet the reality is that there has been - for some time, and accentuated in this election campaign - a lot of pretty obvious similarities between, and almost imitation of each other by, the supposedly fundamentally oppositional traditional Left and Right parties, Labour and Conservative (Robinson, 2015; Peston, 2015).

In many ways, though, that is kind of the point of majoritarian electoral competition. If the parties are competing for votes, rather than purely representing them, then by necessity they must appeal to the broadest possible audience. That broad vision, for which both parties try to sell their manifesto as the best representative, is called the political consensus. In the UK, that consensus has leaned slightly to the Right-of-Centre over the last five years - in response to thirteen years of Centre-Left government (NatCen, 2015).

So when both of 2015's main parties offer to be tough on immigration, harsh on welfare, and efficient with the public finances - particularly in needing to find £30bn to balance the budget (Peston, 2014), and when they talk about working people and families, they are trying to appeal to what they believe to be the issues that reflect the hopes, fears, concerns and values of the broadest possible audience.

With the expansion of Britain's political system over the last five years, from a two-party system to a multi-party system, a new element has been added to what a political manifesto has to achieve. As the number of parties represented increases, the chances of a major party claiming the number of seats needed for a majority decreases. By making one-party majorities difficult to achieve, alliances become essential. The manifesto becomes a means of communicating with other parties as well as with voters, as the starting point for future negotiations (Rawnsley, 2015).

To fully comprehend the manifesto released by any of the parties in 2015, the reader now has to consider all of these factors.

The problem is that, for many, it is hard to distinguish between the message being sent out to voters by each of the different parties. The protected and increased funding for the NHS, the clampdowns on immigration and on working-age welfare, an increase in house building, and a commitment to balancing public expenses and revenue: the four largest parties - in terms of support in the popular polls across the UK - all fall clearly within these parameters.

But it would not be right to say, however, that there are no differences.

Conservatives and UKIP

Conservative and UKIP plans have both been criticised for offering all sorts of tax cuts, alongside additional spending, even as they commit to going further and deeper with austerity cuts than has already been seen.

The Conservatives have been singled out, in particular, for repeatedly failing to address what will be targeted for spending cuts (BBC, 2015). David Cameron himself has even gone so far as to say that voters should simply trust the Conservative record (Gage, 2015). Aside from cuts, the Conservative manifesto places a hard focus on convincing people that the party cares about working people - from extending Right-to-buy to housing association tenants, and offering some discounts; to taking minimum wage workers out of tax, raising the minimum wage and creating more apprenticeships. But all of these are offset by other policies. There is a commitment to cutting taxes on businesses, increasing the legal threshold required for strikes and taking welfare away from young people.

UKIP seems set upon tax cuts as well - acting as little more than the extreme-wing of the Conservative Party. Their plans include what Nigel Farage termed an £18bn tax give-away. Their manifesto also contains a greatest hits compilation of the other parties' most popular policies, their own obsessions like anti-immigration, and plans to cut funding to the EU, to international aid, to Scotland and Wales, even to axe infrastructural projects like HS2 - seeking to save some £29bn in the process. But all the talk of saving money from withdrawing and scrapping all seems very short term and short sighted (Elliot, 2015).

£29bn in cuts to address the deficit and fund the NHS, plus another £18bn to be found in tax cuts, constitutes a lot of money to be found without taking into account the fact that these cuts could result in damage to Britain's economic and financial interests. The money spent on the EU and International Aid in particular go to facilitating better conditions, here and abroad, for ourselves as well as others. Much of the EU spending notably returns to the UK, in the form of grants to support local councils and scientific research.

With Conservative plans to take less revenue - a reduction on inheritance tax, more spending on opening free schools, more funding for the NHS, a doubling of the free childcare allowance, taking minimum wage workers out of tax, building 200,000 homes, extending right-to-buy for tenants of social housing, keeping museums and galleries free to enter, freezing the BBC license fee, and, on top of all of it, finding around £30bn in order to eliminate the deficit - it is a glaring omission that we do not clearly know where the money will come from. While some Conservatives have offered the vague answer that a recovering economy would increase tax revenue and so offset any tax give-aways (Ridley, 2015), it would seem that a voter would be gambling on quite a lot with a vote for a Conservative government.

Labour

The traditional alternative to the Conservatives would seem to be offering a different kind of gamble. While Labour have consistently rejected the suggestion that they will cover spending commitments with borrowing, their slower and steadier approach to lowering the deficit and debt would certainly leave them room for a little greater flexibility (Peston, 2015{2}). The party appear to be aiming to use their focus on raising living standards, by doing things like raising the minimum wage to £8 an hour by the end of the next parliament and promote the living wage, to ultimately increase tax revenues - in a manner parallel to Conservative plans dependent upon economic growth - and offset any spending commitments.

This kind of attention to the fiscal details is all part of Labour's attempt to rebuild its credibility (Elliott, 2015{2}). After the economic crisis began on the party's watch, there seems to be an understanding that Labour needs to re-establish its credentials. Yet that determination to be seen as credible has meant the party has signed up for an economic orthodoxy run very much according to a conservative narrative (Eaton, 2015), and faces accusations from other parties, such as the SNP, of offering little more than austerity-lite (Wintour & Mason, 2015).

That means trying to find different ways of doing what Labour previously relied upon the state to do. Promises to reinstate the 50p tax rate and to end Non-Dom tax status signal a move away from New Labour, but the commitment to austerity refrains the party from moving to the traditional ground of taxing, borrowing and spending (Peston, 2015{3}). Instead, by increasing the minimum wage, proposing ways of tackling rising rent and energy costs, and capping private profits from NHS contracts - rather than simply replacing market solutions with public control - Labour seems to be suggesting that it has learnt its lesson when it comes to trying to micromanage everything from central government.

Liberal Democrats

For those that agree with the mainstream consensus, the safe option would seem to be the Liberal Democrats. The party has reduced its need for particularly deep cuts, as they try to balance the books, by promising to raise taxes on the wealthier, to restrict some of their benefits, and to introduce new levies like the Mansion Tax on their homes. Meanwhile they still leave themselves free to expand spending later in the Parliament, once the deficit is eliminated and the economy is growing - particularly on the NHS to which the Lib Dems were the first to commit to funding by a full £8bn more per year by the end of the next Parliament. Yet beneath the surface of the Lib Dem manifesto policies themselves, there is the appearance of an interesting division.

In some ways it would seem to be a revealing tale of two liberalisms. The manifesto was prepared by a group headed up by David Laws and constructed with the help of the party's usual process of democratic policy creation. The overall content of the manifesto itself represents the Centre-Left social liberalism of the party membership at large - protections of rights and liberties, combined with action to ensure an 'opportunity for everyone' - and contains many policies green in colour and libertarian in flavour (Wintour, 2015). Priority is given to investments in industrial regeneration - particularly digital and green energy based - and to the introduction of their 'Five Green Laws', along with indulging the party's love for rights and liberties - this time with protections for digital rights and for the rights of journalists (Elliot et al, 2015).

However the priorities from that manifesto, and the tightly controlled message constructed around it (The Guardian, 2015), are right out of Laws' Orange Book Market Liberalism, seen by many as the Lib Dems' Right-wing. The presentation of the Lib Dem manifesto - which sets it aside from the two traditional political powerhouses by having their coalition negotiation priorities on the front cover - focus heavily upon the narrative used to justify the coalition and represent the party's main policy successes therein. The fact that the majority of the front cover commitments have been copied by the Conservatives - and the absence of a mention of the UK's membership of the Europe Union - is notable.

Yet there is still plenty of common ground to which Ed Miliband can pitch - his main compromise will be meet the Lib Dem priorities already co-opted by the parties of the Right. The rest of the Lib Dem manifesto looks like it would integrate with that of Labour quite neatly. From a commitment to staying in Europe, to the introduction of a Mansion Tax and increasing taxes on the wealthier, there is much that a Lib-Lab accord could agree on without a fight. Labour action on letting agent fees and the Lib Dem policy of help-to-rent tenancy loans represent what might well be easily integrated, pretty comfortably, with a Labour system.

While the the priorities and message make it easy to see another term with the Tories, the manifesto at large appeals to a coalition with Labour. Sitting between the two, Clegg's team are working hard - favouring a controlled strategic message over openness and idealism (Green, 2015) - to present the Lib Dems as the more attractive prospective governing partner to all sides, when compared to the SNP or UKIP (Robinson, 2015{2}).

Greens

Yet not everyone is convinced by the conventional wisdom, however balanced and reasonable it may be presented. The Green Party represents the progressive alliance group of parties - including Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland - in its opposition to the dominant pro-austerity, deficit-reduction narrative.

The Green Party's pitch to voters represents the Left-wing ground that some feel Labour has abandoned (Behr, 2015). Renationalisation of the railways, completely excising privatisation from the NHS, the introduction of a £10 living wage, a 60p top rate of tax, an expansion of the public sector, the abolition of tuition fees and the abandonment of the economics of austerity, growth and balanced budgets - these all represent an occupation of political ground Labour clearly feels it cannot win from.

The problem facing the Greens is that their pitch also means far more spending and far more borrowing to pay for a complete change of direction in terms of the size of the state. As the election gets closer and gaps get tighter, they will probably be squeezed out in favour of a safer option. That will mean a best case scenario of picking up only a very few seats, with which they can do little but pressure a minority government. That means deciding how to balance their idealism against the reality of what they can actually achieve (The Guardian; 2015{2}) - the very thing upon which the Lib Dems ran aground in 2010.

'Sooner or later, idealism and realism have to come to some sort of accommodation.'

For the Greens, according the MP and former leader Caroline Lucas, that means crafting a set of priorities that can at as an anchor to restrain Labour's move to the Right (Mason, 2015). Yet it is the commitment to some deeply idealistic policies found in the Green manifesto that will be the main attraction for many - chief examples amongst them being the Citizen's Income with its promise of an end to poverty and the abolition of tuition fees. But those are not the priorities of all supporters and members, many of whom put their vision of environmental sustainability first. Managing those tensions will be key to this manifesto, and how it is applied in the next parliament, not pulling the party apart.

The Underlying Values

Those ideals, lying beneath the often fairly similar priorities and policies, are an important part of manifesto. They can be woven in a co-ordinated into the fabric of the policies contained within it, or for parties like UKIP, remain hidden beneath a deflective surface of popular policies taken from other parties.

For example, behind the Conservative expansion of Right-to-buy - on its surface increasing the supply of houses to help ordinary people onto the property ladder - has been criticised as a Thatcherite sell-off of public property that does little to address the actual problem. It has been accused of instead furthering the lack of access to affordable shelter for the less well off, by depleting reserves of social housing (Jones, 2015). That policy chimes consistent with the Conservative emphasis upon reducing the size of the state, putting the burden of welfare upon the shoulders of the individuals themselves within the private market.

Both of the two main parties share similar approaches to both immigration and welfare - likely reacting to cover political ground opened up by the campaigns against immigrants, and those receiving working age benefits, led by UKIP and the Right-wing press (Greenslade, 2015). But their reasons for doing so are different.

Labour, caught between the arguments of Blue Labour - that the party needs to recapture working class voters by appealing to their conservatism - and their own attempts to divert attention away from immigration and on to low pay and falling living standards, seem reluctantly to have taken a cynical position as a qualified concession. The party have spoken of some controls on immigration as a campaign priority, but have kept their focus on low pay and living standards.

On welfare the matter seems even less clear. While the Tories talk of rewarding hard work with a plan seemingly based on relative comparison - cutting taxes for low paid workers and punishing those in need of welfare with more and heavier restrictions (Peston, 2015{4}) - Labour have moved to the Right to cover the Tories almost blow for blow in restricting benefits. Young people face particularly severe cuts in support. That move, along with the shift on immigration, is causing some confusion as to what the party is actually standing for (Perkins et al, 2015).

Multi-party politics

Amongst the positives of a shift to multi-party politics is that it allows for the possibility of parties as representatives - if the biggest parties could let go of their lust for power. Parties representing different ideals would represent their supporters in finding alliances and common grounds for co-operation that do not depend everyone being forced under one big tent.

The parties could focus upon representing a consistent set of values or priorities, like those found in the Lib Dem or Green manifesto, values like a free society or a sustainable society, and less on trying to appeal to all audiences. A centrist balance between idealistic visions is then achieved by a coalition after an election, where as broad a group of parties as possible agree to work on achieving their common or compatible ideas.

Right now, though, we are still bogged down in the practicality of majoritarian politics. The Tories and Labour find little room for an idealistic vision, and policies that reflect those values are watered down before they even reach the pages of the manifesto. Their concern is to gather as many voters as possible in order to claim control over the establishment and its power - the same old story.

While the Lib Dems remain the most well adapted to the realities of multi-party politics, with a manifesto that finds room for their ideals but sets them beneath the priorities for post-election negotiations - a mixture of ideals and practicalities - it is likely that only the Greens who have presented a vision of a society, in their manifesto, that truly represents an uncompromising pursuit of their values.

At this election, the absence of major concessions to practicality will likely count against them. But in the future we might possibly, hopefully, see it a little more often - if the traditional parties cannot reimpose their system on 7th May.

Election 2015: The BBC's opposition leaders debate sees Farage cornered by the Left and lash out at the audience

David Cameron's refusal to engage with debates has led to some very awkward arrangements, one of which was tonight's debate. The leaders of the opposition present - Ed Miliband for Labour, Nicola Sturgeon for the SNP, Leanne Wood for Plaid Cymru and Natalie Bennett for the Green Party - but not Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats, who by virtue of a deal between broadcasters and the Prime Minister ends up left out (BBC, 2015).

With no place in the previous Prime Minister's debate, and no place at the opposition debate, its hard not to think that the Lib Dem have been unfairly excluded. Yet the debate itself was lopsided enough without another party of the Left or Centre taking to the stage.

With the leaders of four broadly progressive parties lining up against the leader of one Far-Right party, it was always going to feel like they were ganging up on UKIP's Nigel Farage. Farage was clearly feeling cornered - going so far as insult the entire audience and the BBC for being too Left-Wing.

The fact is though that the parties on the stage, not only the independently selected audience, were fairly representative of national polling - 13% for the Far-Right UKIP, 39%+ for the Centre-Left parties, a difference of at the least 3-1, before you even add on the numbers for the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

That was reflected throughout the debate. Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood and Natalie Bennett regularly ganged up on both Nigel Farage and Ed Miliband - challenging the Far-Right anti-immigration narrative of Farage on one side and calling for Miliband to join their anti-austerity progressive movement on the other.

That three-way alliance seemed to be a clear precursor of what Sturgeon hinted about at one stage: a Progressive Alliance bloc in the next parliament formed by MPs from the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party (Mason, 2015). On the present polling that would mean a 57 seat bloc pressuring for Left-Wing anti-austerity policies.

Once more, there was less discovered by the debate than many would have hoped. However, it did provide a platform for a challenge to Farage and UKIP's anti-immigration, anti-EU, narrative that has been contested far too little over the last five years. And, once again, it showed the UK's voters that there are alternatives, and that multi-party politics is a very real possibility. Those, at least, are some positive in favour of the debate format.

Election 2015: On the campaign trail there can be more at stake than the result of just one election

The first week of the 2015 UK general election campaign has been dominated by three things: questions over how parties intend to fund their promises (Gage, 2015), televised debates and the first outbreak of negative campaigning (BBC, 2015{1}). The trouble is that these staples of election campaigning, while rarely illuminating the issues, can have significant impact. Not from the events or debates themselves, but the small and decisive moments they create.

A televised debate became a significant point of difference between Nixon and Kennedy - but not because Kennedy was the more impressive speaker (Webley, 2010). Those that listened on the radio thought Nixon had won. Yet to viewers Nixon came across sweaty and tired and Kennedy fresh and charismatic (Gabbatt, 2012).

Barack Obama's successful campaign for the Presidency in 2008 was carried on the back of a particularly catchy slogan (Edgar, 2013). 'Yes We Can' became a rallying cry of hope and positivity, along with slogans like 'Change we can believe in', and simply 'Hope'. The dynamism and vitality of Obama's message was in stark contrast to his opponent, John McCain.

The UK general election of 1983 came off the back of a chaotic four years. Labour shift to the Left under the leadership of Michael Foot and the Chairmanship of Tony Benn - both committed left-wingers - led to a number of moderate Labour members leaving, to form the SDP. The newly formed SDP-Liberal Alliance polling as high as 50% as disaffection with Labour and the Conservatives ran high thanks to years of stagflation and recession.

Running against the Conservatives, under Margaret Thatcher, who had recovered in the polls due to the impact of the Falklands War, and the SDP-Liberal Alliance ended up taking 25% of the vote - for very disproportionately few seats - Labour produced a manifesto for the election which was christened 'the longest suicide note in history' by one of their own MPs (Clark, 2008).

The scale of the Labour defeat resulted in the manifesto and its left-leaning content - featuring abolition of the House of Lords, unilateral nuclear disarmament and nationalisation of certain industries - being made a scapegoat. The defeat of the Left in 1983 has been used to discredit the Left in the UK for the last three decades, and helped lead to the more right-leaning party that spawned Tony Blair's New Labour.

As Labour announce their manifesto, trying to tackle the lasting impact upon their reputation of the financial crash happening on their watch (Robinson, 2015) and the Conservatives try to convince everyone that they will provide adequate public funding for the NHS (BBC, 2015{2}), it is important to keep in mind these historic campaign moments. The fact is that, while the theatre of the electoral campaign can be little more than a distraction at its worst, it exists because of those small things that can turn more than just an election. They can set trends and shift debates for years to come.

Election 2015: SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Regional Parties

Following their landslide victory in the 2011 Scottish Parliamentary elections, under Alex Salmond, the SNP (Scottish National Party) looked strongly placed to lead their country towards independence. Yet in 2014, independence was rejected by referendum.

In the aftermath Alex Salmond resigned and his former deputy Nicola Sturgeon stood unopposed to succeed him (BBC, 2014). Yet even defeat and a change of leadership has not shaken the party's momentum. Polling suggests the party is set to sweep the Scottish parliamentary seats on 7th May.

All of this seems to suggest a complex relationship between the SNP and their supporters.

Despite the likelihood of the party becoming the third largest group in Parliament in May, their Westminster aims are not particularly grand. Their primary ambition appears to be shared with the Green Party: to keep pulling Labour leftwards (Greenwood, 2015).

Former leader Alex Salmond, who is himself running for a seat at Westminster, has given his support to the SNP backing a Labour minority government in the likely event of a hung parliament (The Guardian, 2014). There has even been talk of a progressive alliance being formed in the next parliament between the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party (Mason, 2015).

It is this that complicates the SNP's relationship with its supporters - the tension between the SNP's separatism and many of their supporter's Left-wing politics.

The SNP has become the latest home for progressives looking for a new alternative to the Labour Party (Wishart, 2015). Like the Greens, the SNP have benefited from the Liberal Democrats going into government, and in doing so being seen to have sacrificed their values.

The SNP has certainly tried to live up to the view of the party as Left-leaning. They have promised to oppose austerity, with a fiscal plan that sees efforts to reduce the deficit spread out over many more years than their rivals - meaning less to cut in the short term and more to spend (Settle, 2015). The party has also pushed a number of progressive policies over the years, including the opposition to tuition fees, trident and private financial initiatives in the NHS (Wright, 2012).

However, the SNP has also faced criticism over individual liberties issues - such as the Liberal Democrats opposing their attempts to create an integrated National ID database (Macwhirter, 2015). The party's own traditional leanings, historically towards the political Centre rather than the Left, have also shown through in places with a very friendly attitude towards business - seen in Alex Salmond's tendency towards low corporation taxes (Wright, 2012).

The Labour Party have, however, make it all too easy for the SNP to present themselves as different, a radical alternative, to the parties of the Westminster establishment parties. Labour were all to quick to side with the Conservative No-vote campaign against independence (Wishart, 2015).

At the 2015 Scottish leaders debate, Labour leader Jim Murphy did a good job of summarising the attitude that has turned many, both in Scotland and across the UK, away from the party (STV, 2015):

"Only Labour is big enough. Only Labour is strong enough."

That sense of entitlement from Labour has not convinced many. They persist in demanding that everyone unite against Tories, but insist that it only be in rank and file behind Labour.

Even with Labour largest impeding themselves, the SNP still struggle to establish themselves as a mainstream party due to their commitment to independence. Their separatism compromises the party's chances of having any major influence at Westminster, other than as an outside critic - strength at Westminster will all be about reinforcing their national influence in Scotland (Rawnsley, 2015).

Behind the tensions between those wanting independence and those wanting an alternative party of the Left, there is also a struggle between the newer Left-wing and the older Centrist party that is trying to juggle a coalition of different interests. And gives the party a New Labour feel to it.

The question is, without the issue of independence to unite them, is the SNP ultimately more progressive and more conservative? Unfortunately the party's contradictory policies - anti-austerity but pro-business, anti-Trident but infringing civil liberties - that make it a broad tent Centre party trying to keep everyone happy, also make it impossible to be sure of the party's ideological convictions.

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Prospects: 53 seats (for a gain of 47).*

Possible Coalition Partners: Labour (271 seats), Liberal Democrats (29), Plaid Cymru (3), Green Party (1).

Verdict: A broad tent Centre party, trying to keep and Left and Right happy in a delicate pro-Independence coalition. Leaning towards progressive for now, but not with any overwhelming conviction.

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Plaid Cymru

In Wales there is almost a complete contrast to the SNP's success. Plaid Cymru - Party of Wales - a party of much stronger Left-wing convictions, has struggled against a Labour Party much more assured of itself than its Scottish counterpart.

Both the cause of Welsh devolution and support for Plaid Cymru were launched onto the national stage in the 1950s and 60s by the controversy of the creation of Llyn Celyn reservoir to supply Liverpool by the drowning of the Welsh village of Capel Celyn.

Over the next three decades the party saw its support rise over the 10% mark until Labour held the Welsh devolution referendum in 1997. At the first Welsh Assembly election Plaid took 28% of the votes to become the official opposition to a Labour-Lib Dem coalition. Since then the party has remained firmly established in the Welsh Assembly, governing in coalition with Labour between 2007 and 2011.

Yet at Westminster the party has hovered at around 3 seats. Having the opportunity to takes its Left-wing regionalism to a national audience in the leaders debates under leader Leanne Wood will likely help the party immensely (BBC, 2015). However, the party is still only in fourth in Welsh opinion polls - behind even UKIP - on 11% and may be on course to lose one of its only 3 seats in the Commons on 7th May (The Guardian, 2015{2}).

Until the party finds a way to break Labour's stranglehold on the Welsh electorate - twenty of the forty seats in Wales are safe, with Labour holding seventeen of them (Williamson, 2015) - Plaid Cymru will likely remain an addendum.

And the rest of the regions

In Cornwall, Mebyon Kernow - Party of Cornwall or Sons of Cornwall - are the local equivalent to the SNP and Plaid Cymru. They support devolution for Cornwall, and share the Left-of-Centre approach of their equivalent parties in Scotland and Wales. So far they have only achieved representation on Cornwall Council.

As for Northern Ireland, that is an almost entirely separate political system within the larger UK system, largely divided between sectarian interests. Here is a link to some seat predictions for the seats in Northern Ireland.

Election 2015: UKIP and the Right

UKIP - the United Kingdom Independence Party - are not likely to receive an endorsement from progressives. National conservatism, social conservatism, and economic conservatism are hardly a mix likely to attract those looking for a radical alternative.

It doesn't help that the party's Euroscepticism clings close to an anti-internationalist position, deeply contrary to the ideas that run through the liberalism and socialism of the Left. While UKIP talks of national values, national services and national sovereignty, the Left have historically looked out at the world with broad visions: to unite people in grand communities across cultural borders and to find consensus for the protection, whoever or wherever people might be, of individual civil liberties.

So UKIP's aggressive campaign - rocking its way through scandal after scandal, from racism (Stockham, 2015), to sexism (Newman, 2015) and homophobia (McCormick, 2014) - presents pretty much the antithesis of the ideals of those across the political Left and Centre. According to its founder, however, it was not always supposed to be like that.

UKIP was founded in opposition to the 1993 Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union. Alan Sked, the founder, was in origin, a member of the old Liberal Party who opposed what he saw as a Union that was undemocratic and flawed. He later left the party he founded feeling it had become Frankenstein's Monster, and a harbour to racists (Jeffries, 2014).

He and other originators of the party left after an influx of new supporters to the party who had broken away from the Conservative right-wing, and from other right-wing groups, including the National Front. Since that point its main figures have been Conservative Party breakaways and rich businessmen.

UKIP became the vehicle for pressuring the Conservatives from the Far Right on the one hand, and on the other opposing the existence of the European Union and Britain's membership. Yet it has consistently had members sitting in the EU Parliament and claiming expenses - and not without controversy (Jeffries, 2014). Nigel Farage, the party's very visible leader, himself was criticised over his boasts of claiming millions in expense from the EU to fund UKIP (Helm, 2009), and other MEPs were variously criticised for poor attendance and jailed for fraud (Randall & Brady, 2013).

"The party I founded has become a Frankenstein's monster. When I was leader, we wouldn't send MEPs to Europe because we didn't want to legitimise it. My policy was that if we were forced to take the salaries, we would give them to the National Health Service – they wouldn't be taken by the party or individuals. Now UKIP say they're against welfare cheats coming from eastern Europe, but in fact they're the welfare cheats." (Jeffries, 2014)

The party has not given a great account of itself. Mired in scandals involving bigotry, racism and homophobia, focussed on Europe and Immigration beyond the point of obsession, holding 'public' meetings that are closed to the public and the press, and having political campaigns run by former National Front organisers (O'Loughlin, 2015).

The party is fueled by scapegoating (Milne, 2014). They even scapegoat their own supporters, making excuses for them when they can, or cutting them loose when they get caught with their intolerance out in the open (Mason, 2013). It seems even HIV sufferers are considered legitimate targets (Mason, 2015{1}).

And yet the party has seen its support expand. At the European elections in 2014 it claimed around 10% of Britain's voters, and polling has seen them stay steadily at that level. That has demanded a fleshing out of the party's policies. An earlier manifesto was threadbare, pushing low taxes for the rich, and a clearly conservative pro-business attitude - complete with opposition to the EU, immigrants and their rights (Randall & Brady, 2013).

In the quest to be taken more seriously, UKIP has revamped its policies for 2015. That process seems to have involved just skimming off the most popular policies of their rivals - in a way that has made it all that much harder to get to the core of what the party believes in. Yet there is a clue in the way this mimicry has focussed particularly upon the Conservatives - including a commitment to see through the Conservative Party's 'long term fiscal repetition' and the implementation of austerity (BBC, 2015).

The party's complicated position on healthcare gives an idea of the forces at work within the party. Farage admitted to having supported a system of privatised insurance (BBC, 2014), but that a different position was decided on within the party (Cook, 2014). Yet Farage has been challenged for his deriding criticisms of the NHS, and recommendations that people should go private if they can afford it (Lamport, 2015).

In reality, it is likely that UKIP realised that it could not get a privatised healthcare system past a public very fond of the NHS, and so just popular public opinion - with the de rigueur conditions that foreigners should be excluded (Mason, 2015{2}).

As for the party's predilection for clamping down on immigration and leaving the European Union?

Fiscally, immigrants are net contributors to the public treasury (O'Leary, 2014). And the real solutions when it comes to low pay aren't in locking people out, but in having proper minimum and living wages and enforcing them against those who would try to undercut workers' rights (Taylor-Dave, 2014). From a cultural perspective, nationalism and sectarianism do little to diffuse tensions. A happy, open and confident multi-cultural society is the better facilitator of the kind of 'integration' that UKIP claim to want (LBC, 2015).

As for the European Union, for a net contribution of about £6.5bn - £15bn (0.5% of public spending) contributed to Brussels, with £8.5bn being spent back in Britain through various grants for local government, farmers and scientific research amongst other things - the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reckons a return for the British economy of £60-80bn, and access to a $24tn market with a say in the rules and regulations that govern it (Robinson, 2015{1}). All of that, before we even consider all of the good that EU regulations have actually done (Wallace, 2015; Robinson, 2015{2}), make clear that the problems of the European system - like the need for more democratic oversight of economic policy - are better reformed than abandoned.

When it comes down to, for all the attention poured over Farage's 'People's Army' - the right-wing insurgent - and UKIP's rollercoaster grand tour of gaffes, shouting, bigotry, racism, homophobia, apologises, retractions and excuses, the party is not likely to pick up many seats. Considering how much the party has come to rely on the public image of Nigel Farage, the party is likely very worried about his pledge to resign the party leadership if he fails to win the South Thanet seat (Mason, 2015{3}).

In the end the party will more than likely simply split support between themselves and the Tories, picking up a few seats where their opponents are weak - perhaps fitting. Then they will hope to be in a position to do a post-election deal with the Tories (BBC, 2015).

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Prospects: 14%, 4 seats (gain 2).*

Coalition Partners: Conservatives (271 seats).

Verdict: Absolutely not progressive, not radical, and not an alternative. UKIP are Far Right conservatives, covering it up with populism - offering up whatever happen to be most popular policies that can be pinched from the other parties. Committed to Conservative economic policies and to cutting the UK off from Europe.

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And the rest of the Right

Beyond UKIP, the visibility of right-wing politics has otherwise subsided - perhaps having been caught up in that party's nationalist wave.

Election 2015: Green Party and the Left

For 2015, the job of representing the radical left alternative has fallen upon the Green Party. They made a breakthrough in 2010 by claiming their first parliamentary seat at Brighton Pavilion, and took minority control of Brighton and Hove Council in the local elections of 2011.

The role they've taken on - largely seen to have been held by the Liberal Democrats in 2010 - comes with some benefits. Since their 2010 breakthrough the party has polled as high as 8%, seen its membership rising and secured a podium at the leaders debate. The party is growing and its support is typically younger (Williams, 2015).

The recent surge in support, particularly amongst young people, has come with a focus on social and economic policy, rather than environmental. The Greens' social liberalism and progressive anti-austerity economics, supporting a £10 living wage, the abolition of tuition fees and reintroduction of EMA, support for the NHS, and for a Citizen's Income, have been singled out as positive by young members (Gil, 2015).

There is, however, a price for those benefits. They come with greater pressures and scrutiny. There was heavy criticism for party leader Natalie Bennett's performance in a series of interviews (BBC, 2015{1}; LBC, 2015) and scorn has also been poured on the potential cost of some their more radically progressive policies - particularly the Citizen's Income.

Those criticisms have led to some in the party - particularly their only MP and former leader Caroline Lucas - to play down their support for a Citizen's Income in the short term (Riley-Smith, 2015). Yet there are those who think that the policy can be costed practically (Finlay, 2015), and the party has announced that the policy will be in their manifesto (BBC, 2015{2}).

While some of their more radical policies have courted controversy, other ideas have made it into the mainstream. Matching Green support for renationalisation of the railways has been talked about in Labour circles (Ferguson, 2013).

Yet, until we see those principles tested in practice, it is difficult to know how the party will respond when pressure is put upon its priorities. The only example we can really draw upon is the experience of Brighton and Hove City Council, which has been under Green Party minority control since 2011 (Bawden, 2014).

The record of the Green council is marked with some successes. The Greens have managed to promote the living wage in Brighton (Harris, 2013). But there have also been controversies. The party initiated the review of pay that led to potential cuts in the pay for rubbish-collectors and street-cleaners. Then, Green MP Caroline Lucas supported the workers when they went on strike against the council. The matter was eventually resolved, but not without marring the Greens reputation with imposing austerity and association with the Conservatives (Hadfield, 2014).

The disputes in Brighton have been suggested to have exposed fault-line splits within the party - between those instinctively leaning more towards Labour, cautious Centrist compromisers leaning towards the Lib Dems in attitudes, or those leaning towards Eco-Anarchism - although the seriousness of internal rifts have been played down (Chakelian, 2015).

But what the disputes definitely show is a difference within the party between those willing to work within the established system, to negotiate and to compromise - most notably with austerity - and those who stand in a more stark opposition. It is the latter position that will undoubtedly be looked for by the new influx of supporters.

There is a wary parallel to be drawn here with the Liberal Democrats. Like the Lib Dems, they were not really taken seriously until 2010. They too are often dismissed as being too obsessed with a particular policy niche - for the Greens the environment, for the Lib Dems political reform. The big difference comes with the fact that the Lib Dems have always been committed to political compromise and Centrism. Even if they lose some voters who supported them in protest over specific issues or against the establishment parties, they will still have supporters well familiar with  consistent long term approach. It is unlikely that the Greens will allowed any such margins.

However, without a major upsurge in voters switching from the many minor left-wing parties, and others switching from Labour and Lib Dems in large numbers, they will likely only do to Labour what UKIP will do to the Tories - split the vote. In doing so, the Greens can still be consistent in their aim to pull Labour leftwards and put themselves in a position to benefit from those disaffected with Labour's drift to the right - a sentiment likely to increase if Labour get into government in May and prop up austerity.

That particular likelihood is considered credible enough that Labour has being warned against the risk of becoming like their Greek equivalent PASOK (Chakrabortty, 2015) - rendered obsolete by complicity with austerity, and surpassed on their Left.

In the present the Greens will focus on picking up seats where they can, finding support for their more moderate policies (Sparrow, 2015) - like an introducing a £10 living wage, support for rolling back NHS marketisation, and pursuing the creation of a progressive alliance, uniting the Green Party, the SNP and Plaid Cymru in a new progressive parliamentary group (Mason, 2015)

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Prospects: 5% for 1 seat (no change).*

Potential Coalition Parties: Labour (271 seats), Liberal Democrats (29), SNP (53), Plaid Cymru (3).

Verdict: High turnout and low seats numbers will put the party on the map and in a strong position for 2020 - especially if Labour are seen to be toeing the austerity line.

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And the rest on the Left

Beyond the Green Party, the biggest group of note is the Respect Party. Their most prominent figure is George Galloway, former Labour MP and previously Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, who now holds the seat at Bradford West, won in a 2012 bye-election (BBC, 2012).

Respect was formed as a small alliance of minor parties - representing Democratic Socialists, Trade Unionists, Environmentalists, Anti-War activists, and general Leftists - which has achieved some small successes, in twice taking a seat in parliament.

The party has however had a history of splits and controversies, including an inamicable split with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 2008 - which itself has faced allegations of, and criticism over the handling of, sexual assault, sexual abuse and rape (Platt, 2014).

As for Respect, despite some continuing internal dissensions (Pidd, 2013), they are still around and likely to focus their attention on only a few seats. Polling suggests they will hold Bradford West, with Birmingham Hall Green being a possible additional target.

Other Left groups include the TUSC and Ken Loach's Left Unity.

Election 2015: Liberal Democrats

For Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, the 2015 general election has to come with extremely low expectations. The party is polling at only a third of those that voted for them in 2010, a measly 8%, and Clegg himself seems to have been made a scapegoat for all of the failures of Britain's political system.

On 7th May the Liberal Democrats look like they will be held responsible, for better or worse, both for the impact of the coalition and for the compromises made in the forming of it. While the Conservatives look set to be judged on austerity, how much support - and how many seats - Clegg and the Lib Dems are able to retain will represent whether or not the decision to enter coalition has been accepted by voters - regardless of any proposals that the party puts forward.

If the public's judgement should run against them, as polls suggest, the party looks like it will still survive in some seats where it is, ironically, protected by the first-past-the-post system against which they have campaigned for decades. That campaign for political reform was one of the party's biggest hopes for the coalition, and also their biggest disappointment. Their already compromised proposals for changes to the electoral system were rejected at a referendum (BBC, 2011), and attempts to reform the House of Lords into an elected chamber were put to an end in cross-party talks, with the Conservatives and Labour both blocking Lib Dem efforts (Clegg, 2012).

The Lib Dems have, however, managed to get quite a few policies through. The rise in the Personal Tax Allowance (Liberal Democrats, 2014), the Protection of Freedoms Act (Liberal Democrats, 2012), and the Pupil Premium (Vasagar, 2011). While they have been charged, by association through coalition, with culpability for allowing the Tories to govern, the party has argued that they have held the Conservatives back from doing their worst.

They resisted and tried to get a better outcome on the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (Harris, 2012), they resisted the Tory version of the Bedroom Tax (Watt, 2014) and they earned praise for standing up for public sector Trade Union members against the Conservatives (Syal, 2014; Watt, 2015). Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, have both gone further and warned of worst to come from the Tories if they're left unchecked (The Guardian, 2015{1}; The Guardian, 2015{2}).

Their future plans have also been roundly copied by their rivals. Their Mansion Tax has been co-opted by Labour (Dominiczak, 2013) and their Personal Tax Allowance has been taken on by the Conservatives (ITV, 2014). The Liberal Democrats are also the first party to pledge an increase in NHS funding each year through to 2020, in real terms - adjusting for inflation - to the £8bn more that the NHS has stated it needs (Wright & Moodley, 2015; Campbell, 2015).

Despite all of this, there is one one policy that the party does not seem able to live down. The compromise too far was tuition fees. The party argues that, despite being a small party without enough influence and no parliamentary supporters, it got the best deal it could, rather than let something worse come about - specifically uncapped unlimited fees. The solution itself is, although achieved through what feels a lot like an accountants sleight-of-hand, higher education free at the point of use, to be paid back later in tax.

That outcome comes - along with the risk of non-payment being moved to government away from the universities in order to secure higher education funding for the present (Ashworth-Hayes & Sippitt, 2015) - with a shift in the burden of debt from universities to students. With repayment thresholds designed to protect the poorest, the tuition fee has turned into a de facto graduate tax. The problem is that the debt, though structured to lessen the burden, is still - on principle - a burden (Swain, 2015).

That goes against the radical principle the party had stood for, and it seems few want to hear the arguments about political compromise from weak bargaining positions - despite that being central to the party's political beliefs since before they were called Liberal Democrats. Their practical stances and readiness to compromise means that few would find it realistic for the party to present themselves as the radical alternative protest party that they were seen as in 2010 (Brocklebank, 2010). In that light the Lib Dems have had to take a new approach.

The new presentation is focussed on the party's belief in practical, balanced budget, Centrism. Fair and balanced is what they are presenting as the order of the day under a Liberal Democrat government - or, at least, a government under liberal influence. Fewer cuts than the Right wants, less spending than the Left wants. Cuts only to tackle the deficit, spending only what can be afforded, with a commitment to raising taxes on the wealthier to reduce the depth of cuts to public spending. Less harsh and more understanding on welfare than Labour or the Tories (Batchelor, 2014); a commitment to funding for mental health care (Sparrow, 2015); a commitment to Europe; a commitment to civil rights (Macwhirter, 2015); and a commitment to devolving power away from Westminster (Demianyk, 2015).

Despite their proposals, despite their achievements, the party is nonetheless in a precarious position. There are those, however, who are not so pessimistic about their chances on the 7th May (d'Ancona, 2015). Away from the mainstream polls, there is positive thinking amongst Lib Dems that 12-15% of vote and 30-something seats is possible, and that 40-something seats are not out of reach (Tall, 2015{2}). With annihilation predicted for them, even 30 seats would be seen as a huge victory - and maybe in some way vindication for taking the difficult decision to change British politics and go into coalition.

In that there is something from which the Liberal Democrats will ultimately take pride. Clegg and the Lib Dems have made compromise, coalition and a more grown up politics possible. They have made it possible to have, not only coalitions, but stable coalition government where both sides can openly, brazenly disagree and still work together - even if in doing so has damaged their own chances of ever playing that role again (Gibbon, 2015).

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Prospects: 8% for 28 seats (for a loss of 28).*

Potential Coalition Partners: Labour Party (273 seats), Conservative Party (273), SNP (51), Green Party (1).

Verdict: All of the reasons to vote Liberal Democrat in 2010 remain valid in 2015 - with the obvious exception of the tuition fee policy. Abolition of fees for Higher Education is now being considered a future aspiration the party, not something it can deliver in the short term. That alone may be enough to damage the party significantly. Keeping half of their seats would be seen as a major success.

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Election 2015: Labour Party

In 2010 Labour sagged to a narrow loss under the weight of thirteen years in government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Two wars, an assault upon civil liberties, and the financial collapse of 2008 had burnt out many supporters on the New Labour brand.

Amongst Ed Miliband's tasks in 2015 has been to face the legacy of Blair and Brown. So far he has approached that task by claiming that the Labour Party of the past was wrong (ITV, 2015). The trouble is that not much has changed from the New Labour days to make the party more progressive.

The party's five key pledges for 2015 are:

1. A strong economic foundation
2. Higher living standards for working families
3. An NHS with the time to care
4. Controls on immigration
5. A country where the next generation can do better than the last

Beyond that very vague language is very little drama. The pledge to raise living standards comes with a new regulator for energy suppliers and a rise in the minimum wage - though only to £8 by 2020, which is only a slight advance upon the already expected yearly rise (BBC, 2014).

Labour's pledge on the NHS largely amounts to a recruitment drive, albeit much needed, but there has not yet been a commitment to the funding that the NHS has claimed will be needed. Even Labour's announcement on the election campaign's opening day that they would cap private profits made from NHS contracts is tantamount to admitting that Labour is not interested in ending the creeping privatisation that expanded so much under the party's watch (Wintour, 2015).

As for the pledge to build a strong economic foundation, analysis of Labour plans seems to suggest that they will borrow some and cut less in order to eventually open up a £39bn spending gap over the Conservatives (Peston, 2015). Yet Labour seem to be determine to convince people that they are sticking to the Conservative austerity script, scrambling to offer confusing reassurances to critics regarding whether they will, or how they will, borrow for spending after 2015 (Eaton, 2014{1}; Hope, 2015).

But the pledge that best represents the problems with Labour's thinking heading into this election is its commitment to 'controls on immigration' - complete with its own mug (Perraudin, 2015). It is on immigration that Ed Miliband thinks his predecessors have gotten it most wrong. A look at their proposals is even more disconcerting for progressives. They place a heavy focus upon allowing the rich and influential to move how they like, while denying access to the poorest. For those already driven away from Labour by the party mimicking the Far-Right in their language on immigration during the Blair and Brown years, or those that agreed with Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems in their opposition to child detention, Labour is doing itself no favours (Hasan, 2014).

Their lurch to the Right on immigration is matched by the party's shift in position over welfare (Eaton, 2014{2}). The party's proposals include a 'return to the contributory principle', which would mean the introduction of further conditions for access to welfare (Byrne, 2012). Nowhere will that weight be felt more than by those aged Eighteen to Twenty-one (Wintour, 2014), who under Labour would have extra conditions, including means-testing, placed upon them at a time when unemployment amongst young people is already threateningly high all across Europe (Tse & Esposito, 2013). The fact is that those supportive of generally accessible welfare for those in need are fighting a losing battle against public opinion (The Guardian; 2014).

Commentators have for some time been calling for Labour to come out with a strong and hopeful, passionate progressive message (Jones, 2015) - but what they have gotten is at best pragmatism - and at worst a rather cynical appeasement of the Far Right.

All of it amounts to one painfully obvious thing. Labour just don't really seem to understand how to shake off the disaffection that saw Labour finally lose its majority in 2010.

For progressives, alarmed by austerity being driven by social conservatism, Labour - historically the party representative of the centre-left - aught to be the safe and obvious port of call. But the party has leaned so far to the Right, with so few concessions towards radical, socialist and liberal Left-wingers, that it is hard to see Miliband's Labour Party as much in the way of an alternative to the current coalition.

That reality is particularly sad because there are positive ideas out there, such as profit-sharing proposals from the party's partner Co-operative Party (Boffey, 2015). But they seem to have found little public traction in a Labour party that seems to be allergic to trying to reform their pro-establishment attitudes - and determination to siphon money out of corrupt institutions to remedy the wrongs they have caused, rather than attempting to reform them.

Much as the Conservatives are struggling just to consolidate their position, Labour too seem to be lacking a positive spark. The difference is that Labour should have everything going for them. They are the supposedly left-leaning opposition to a government imposing unpopular austerity. Their nearest competitor for left-leaning votes, the Liberal Democrats, have largely burned themselves out through coalition with the Conservatives.

And yet Labour seems incapable of taking the initiative. The fact is that the polling suggests they will lose votes and seats to other progressive parties, and pick up votes and seats from the governing parties - but that is unlikely to be thanks to anything more than a negative vote, a reaction against austerity - regardless of whether or not Labour actually intends to end austerity.

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Prospects: 34% for 273 seats (a gain of 16).*

Possible Coalition Partners: SNP (51 seats), Liberal Democrats (28), SDLP (3), Green Party (1).

Verdict: While they can likely expect some voters to return to due to the party representing a historically symbolic vote against conservative austerity, Labour have yet to do enough to win back progressive voters who went away looking for better alternatives. Like the Tories, they will do well to simply consolidate their position.

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