Conservative Queen's Speech offers some relief to Human Rights campaigners, but also holds new threats to civil liberties

The State Opening of Parliament took place in Westminster today, amongst all of the usual pomp and circumstance. At centre stage of the whole event was, as usual, the Queen's Speech - aka the Speech from the Throne. Accompanied by the government's full 103-page list of bills and notes - and through the traditional though slightly odd process of having a monarch read out the government's plans, largely in their words, like a celebrity giving an advertising endorsement - the Queen announced the Cameron ministry's 26 main legislative objectives for the coming Parliamentary session (Sparrow, 2015).

Alongside some of the expected promises, like an EU Referendum and a more conservative approach to addressing immigration and extremism - along with harsher rules for trade union strike action - there is also some fairly positive news and some news that is less so for those concerned about changes to the Human Rights Act, and to our civil rights and liberties (The Guardian, 2015).

The most notable absence from the speech was a firm commitment to scrapping the Human Rights Act (Wintour & Mason, 2015). In the speech, the commitment has been watered down to bringing forward proposals - meaning that there is likely to be, at the least, a consultation period lasting some years before any legislation is produced.

If so, that would mark a huge first success for the opposition to David Cameron's government. Campaigners for the Human Right Act have been very vocal from the day that Cameron took office and it looks like the message has gotten through.

However, human rights campaigners will have a new task on their hands with the return of the snooper's charter - long resisted by the rights and liberties protecting efforts of the Liberal Democrats (Wintour, 2015). Progressives will be hoping for an extension of the campaign to protect human rights to also cover civil liberties, as the proposed Investigatory powers bill - allow the tracking of communications data - returns to the table greatly expanded (Travis, 2015).

There is hope that progressives can succeed. The pressure they have brought to bear so far, in only a short time in opposition, may well have successfully delayed attempts to tamper with the Human Rights Act for years. Now that the campaign to protect our guaranteed rights has made a significant breakthrough, the next big effort will be to protect our civil liberties.

Labour and the Lib Dems talk of reclaiming the 'Centre' - but what do they mean?

The UK general election made it abundantly clear that the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats did not have the confidence of voters. In the face of that defeat, the respective parties have begun their own internal debates over their future. One of the questions that both parties will be asking is whether either of them need to claim the political centre ground to recover their electoral fortunes.

Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper has already made it clear that she won't back a 'lurch' to the Left or Right (Gayle, 2015), and the Lib Dems are also being cautioned against straying from the 'liberal centre' in search of the more radical liberalism for which they built their pre-Clegg reputation in opposition (Tall, 2015).

What isn't necessarily clear for many observers is what exactly is meant by the 'centre'.

There are, in essence, two of them. The first is the position of compromise between the grand historic ideological positions of liberalism, democracy and conservatism. The other represents a shifting point which acts as the 'centre' of a space shaped by the dominant voices of the day on the main issues - usually the media outlets with the broadest audience and the main political parties.

The Historic Centre

The historic centre represents a kind of Roman ideal, holding the space where the interests and sections of society are brought together - where the Romans were seen to have built a polity that incorporates elements from all of them. It is the place of mixed government, mixed economy and compromise between the grand polemic ideological positions - which represent ideals like individualism and communitarianism, progressivism and conservatism, libertarianism and authoritarianism.

While the shifting centre depends upon parties each appealing to a perceived majority opinion, the historic centre is the both the result of the development of distinct ideological positions and a place of compromise between the sections of society these ideologies have been seen to represent.

In Nineteenth Century Europe, the stranglehold of monarchist conservatism found itself challenged by radical new ideas. The enlightenment ideas of reason and progress - that had played a significant role in the American and French revolutions - had led to the formation of political groups and associations of radicals, republicans and reformers.

That new republican Left-wing of politics was broadly composed of two separate ideological groups: the liberals and the democrats. During the revolutionary struggles of 1848 the dividing lines between the two became apparent. While the liberals had been content to reform the old system slowly - accepting limited concessions in the form of a constitution, small extensions of suffrage and more freedom for merchants and burgeoning industry to open up a free trading free market - the democrats had wanted more.

The democrats wanted control placed in the hands of the people. During the strife of 1848, the democrats decisively split from the liberals and from amongst them came the early developments of socialism - including the works of Karl Marx. That division between the liberals and democrats, on the road to their own versions of progress, allowed the conservative establishment to survive. A counter-revolution followed, but what that reaction could not suppress was the emergence of these three broad positions, two upon the Left and one upon the Right, which were seen as each representing broad progressive sections of society.

Between these positions - each with their own distinct, historical priorities: the democrats for equality, community and the workers; the liberals for opportunity, the individual and the professional and merchant classes; and the conservatives for tradition, security and the traditional hierarchy - there lies a centre ground balanced in a compromise between these positions and sections.

The use of that place has been ascribed to the Roman system of mixed government, referred to and interpreted by renaissance thinkers as civic humanism. The primary concern at this centre was to avoid tyranny of all kinds, of any ideological or sectional type, by creating a society that balanced the various parts of society within the establishment's institutions. In Roman terms that meant singular monarchical figures in the form of term-limited Consuls, the aristocratic wealthy interests in the form of the Senate, and democratic participation in the form of direct democracy and civic assemblies.

The Shifting Centre

Though it may not feel like it, what with all of their similarities, Britain does still have three main parties representing these three grand historic ideologies - Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. Their connection to these distinct historic positions has however been weakened by their competition over the Centre ground - in the name of chasing the power to govern.

The Centre the parties compete over today is not, however, a true compromise between each ideological viewpoint and sectional interest of society. The contemporary Centre has been shaped by the times. Tony Blair's Third Way social democracy, David Cameron's attempt at a warm and fuzzy conservatism, and David Laws' Orange Book liberalism all represent responses to a Centre that shifted to the Right, deep into Conservative territory, due to the drastic changes to the balance of power between sections of society that took place in the 1980s and 1990s.

All three accepted the possibilities created by the flimsily founded wealth generated by the aggressive speculative capitalism of the 1990s and 2000s. All three accepted deregulation and light touch management, only interfering as much as was needed to ensure a small amount of wealth redistribution to serve those social purposes prioritised by the party ideology - broadly speaking equality, opportunity and security, for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories, respectively. All three accepted that the balance of power had shifted significantly into the hands of wealthy vested interests and so adjusted their approach accordingly.

That has, however, proved a dangerous game. The question that many will have asked over the last twenty years is: what is the point of having power if you have lost what makes your use of it distinct?

Disillusionment with the tripartite status quo, where the big three parties appear to have become indistinguishable, has fragmented the old system. Even though the Conservative Party managed to just about squeeze out a majority, it is a narrow lead on a poor mandate - less than 25% of eligible voters - which, by prizing a majority to the Conservatives, has done little to re-establish the legitimacy of the old system. If anything, it may simply accelerate its collapse.

A Decision to Make

The trouble for Labour and the Lib Dems is that to 'win' an election, under the present system, means receiving votes from the broadest groups of voters, not simply representing a section of society. That has led both parties to make compromises with the dominant social attitudes of the day in order to appeal, not to the historic centre, but to the shifting centre - first in the 1990s and 2000s with the wealth created by an economic boom, however shaky its foundation, and then in the 2010s with the growing cynicism towards welfare, free movement and immigration.

The big decision now ahead of both parties is whether to return to a purer form of the party ideology, with the risk of becoming little more than a sectional voice for a particular interest, or to embrace the chase for the votes at the shifting centre, with the risk of alienating more idealistic supporters in order to gain the support of those whose views have been formed from the dominant attitudes of the times. That decision comes with a lot of questions to answer.

Should the parties give up their distinct arguments to appeal to as large an audience as possible, in order to gain the power to implement their vision? What would then make any party distinct from another? Would there be something dishonest in that approach?

Or, should the parties be up on a platform, making their distinct arguments heard and trying to convince people of the merits of their ideals, each representing a small portion of voters? And where society remains divided in the aftermath of an election, place trust in coalition government?.

There are no simple answers. It is, however, worth considering a few things: whether we believe or not that people are fixed entities, with definite and fully formed views, bound to the narrow interests of their section of society; whether we believe or not that ideologies can offer a broader civic vision, in which people from all parts of society can find merit, without a party having to give up its distinct ideals; whether we believe that it is the justly democratic act to attend to the dominant social attitudes of the day, regardless of the evidence, or if we can or should challenge that popular consensus with idealism and evidence.

The popular consensus of today has pulled the shifting centre far into conservative territory. The voices advocating for business, for low taxes and for nationalist priorities like restricting immigration are writing the contemporary political narrative. To deviate too much means risking being seen as an idealistic extremist. To play for votes from the midst of that consensus means progressive parties straying a long way from their idealistic alternatives.

What stands before those who have to make the decision is a choice between a pragmatic path to the power to govern and a, potentially, politically impractical pursuit of idealism. The path each party has chosen won't be known until their newly elected leader begins to shape new policy ideas. But it is to be hoped that a decision to tread a practical path can still find space for presenting visions of alternative societies outside of the present limitations and boundaries. That there might be included the aim of changing minds and reconstructing social norms, values and structures so that in the future we might see our ideals represented rather than sacrificed on the road to political office.

Building a new progressive opposition will require solidarity and activism, inside and outside of Parliament

The first ten days of David Cameron's new government look like a preview of what we can expect over the next five years. From the moment he resumed his premiership there have been protests against austerity and against his party. The protest group People's Assembly Against Austerity has already scheduled a major protest for June, expected to draw at least 50,000 people, in a show of popular opposition ahead of George Osborne's July budget (Elliott, 2015).

With both of the main, traditional, opposition parties partially incapacitated - through depletion and from finding themselves bereft of leadership - these protests can be seen as an acknowledgement that opposition to the policies of the Conservative's governing majority will have to come through new voices via new means. Even though the Conservative majority is only slim, Tory rebels are most numerous on Far Right issues - which is unhelpful to progressives. That means that the little fights are going to matter all the more (D'Arcy, 2015).

Protests will be one route to challenging the government, though some would disagree. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative MP for North East Somerset - and one man window to the Parliament of the Nineteenth Century - criticised marchers at a protest in Bristol as anti-democratic (Bristol Post, 2015).

"It's not a protest against government policy, its a protest against the election result, so it is tainted by a lack of acceptance of democracy. I think they may have missed the General Election that took place last week, where the country endorsed the Conservative manifesto. I am all in favour of people's right to protest, I think its a very important right, but people have just voted. A decision has been taken which supported continued austerity."

The trouble is, Rees-Mogg himself is missing an important point. The endorsement of the Conservative manifesto is based on only 37% of voters. 37% is itself a poor enough mandate for a majority, even if it wasn't achieved on a two-thirds turnout. That means less than a quarter of eligible voters chose to 'endorse' the Conservative manifesto.

With Parliamentary opposition weak, protesting the iniquities of the electoral system, and demanding that they be taken into account, is all the more important at this moment. So is trying to make other views heard, like those of the 75% who have been disregarded.

Even if the government mandate and majority had been strong, opposition still plays a tremendously important role in the majoritarian system, scrutinising the government and holding it to account. When majorities are this slim, it takes a lot of power away from central government and gives it to Parliament - which means more power to constituents through their MPs. In that case, protesting would still be a viable and useful means of applying pressure.

The pressure being applied by protesters on the street looks likely to be assisted by resistance to the Conservative cuts from within their own party. The Tory-led Local Government Association (LGA) has cross-party agreement against further cuts, warning of the devastating impact that more budget cuts for local government could have local services and communities (Helm, 2015).

Led by Cllr David Sparks, the LGA has claimed that local government has cutback as much as it can with the reduction in funding of 40% since 2010 (Sparks, 2015). Sparks, as Chair of the LGA which represents 375 councils in England and Wales, added to that warning with a call for more power to devolved away from Westminster.

Back at Westminster, the SNP are claiming that they will be the main opposition to Conservative government during the next parliament, on the basis that they offered something significantly different - unlike Labour (The Guardian; 2015). It is important, however, that they have at least noted opposition is something that they cannot do alone. Angus Robertson, leader of the SNP MPs at Westminster, mentions that they will be prepared to reach out across party lines.

While the Liberal Democrats have previously shown how small parties can lead a strong opposition - particularly under Charles Kennedy's leadership when they opposed entry into the Iraq War (BBC, 2004) - they could only bring principled resistance and offer backing to popular pressure. They could not stop or change government decisions alone.

Labour, traditionally the voice of the workers, and the Lib Dems, the traditional voice for civil liberties, are at this moment both weak and rudderless. The absence of a strong liberal voice in Parliament is already being missed by some (The Guardian; 2015{2}).

If they, the SNP and other Parliamentary progressives are going to maintain an effective opposition to the Conservative agenda, they will have to pull together. They will have to reach out, not just across party lines, but also to local government and to the public to build a strong and co-ordinated activism.

They will need to oppose the government with protest and public opinion, build strong arguments to tackle the methods and underlying reasoning of the Conservative policies, and construct a compelling alternative progressive narrative. Against a majority government, all of these elements will have to come together to put pressure on where it will be most effective. That cannot be achieved without solidarity between progressives.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act removes the safeguards that protect individuals from the arbitrary power of the state

The very same week in which David Cameron has been confirmed to a second term as Prime Minister offering stability, with Parliament barely having had the chance to reassemble, the new Conservative government has already lit the fires of controversy. Cameron has promised a unified Britain, yet one of his first announcements is the intention to scrap the Human Rights Act 1998 (Watt, 2015), which is likely to be the first of several big and divisive threats to the Union during this Parliament.

The Human Rights Act is woven deeply into the British social fabric. The Welsh Labour government is resistant to changes, SNP-led Scotland already has one foot out of the door and even the Good Friday Agreement for peace in Northern Ireland would have to be tampered with (McDonald, 2015) - and all of the devolved institutions possess the power to deny consent to alter this matter within their jurisdictions (Brooks, 2015; Scott, 2015).

Tensions are already high between Westminster and Scotland over the UK's continued membership of the EU - with Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon demanding that a majority be secured in each of the UK's nations for secession from the EU to go ahead (Sturgeon, 2015), and Wales is divided on the issue (ITV, 2013). This attempt to undermine British commitment to Human Rights is only going to ensure that the fault lines are riven deep between the nations of the UK, almost entirely by the hands of the Westminster Conservatives.

Under the stewardship of Justice Minister Michael Gove, formerly in charge of much criticised education reform (Garner, 2013), the Conservative plan is to end the influence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the UK Supreme Court - although it would leave in place the right of British citizens to appeal to the ECHR themselves (Watt, 2015{2}).

But the Human Rights Act is so much more. It allows British citizens to contest abuses of their European human rights in British courts and requires public institutions to abide by those rights (Stone, 2015). Those rights, contained within the European Convention on Human Rights - in the drafting of which Britain played a large part - protect things like the right to life, privacy and a fair trial; the freedom from torture, servitude or slavery; and the freedoms of conscience, expression and association.

While the UK has largely kept pace with the rights contained within the Convention, its removal takes away certain fundamental guarantees. A particularly important guarantee that will be to remove executive action from accountability to citizen's human rights (Starmer, 2015).

The Convention, and the Human Rights Act, are also nothing to do with the EU. They were implemented rather by the regional international organisation the Council of Europe and is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights - to which 47 states are signed up as members, a much wider membership that the EU, which include Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Norway, Switzerland and others, all in addition to the 28 members states of the EU.

As much as it is guarantee of the human rights of British citizens, the Human Rights Act 1998 is also an international commitment to upholding the principle of human rights, which requires signatory states and their lawmakers to avoid infringing, or treating arbitrarily, the rights of its citizens contained within the ECHR.

When the convention was signed up to by Churchill, all of the rights were covered by the UK's laws already (Johnston, 2015). But over time they have been applied in ways, and legal challenges have been made through the European Court, that have led to new rulings that have proved a difficulty for the UK - legal representation of migrants, arbitrary removal of the voting rights of prisoners (Ziegler, 2012).

There have been claims this means Europe is making laws for Britain, but this is simply an evolving legal system, responding to a changing environment, in the same way as the British system has evolved. But it also stands as a safeguard, aimed at ensuring that people all across Europe have access to same basic rights, and have a place where they can appeal against arbitrary treatment at the hands of their government. With regards to the prisoner voting 'scandal', Aidan O'Neill QC (2011) said that:

'What is important... is the example one gives. One of the big issues facing the European Court of Human Rights is teaching newly democratic States about democracy. One of its biggest client cases is Russia. Another one in terms of democracy is Turkey. It is a problem with the Council of Europe mechanisms that some States simply do not fix their systems as they should do and it would be a great pity if a long-established State — the United Kingdom, which was there at the founding and there at the drafting — were to set an example to other States in the Council of Europe that they do not have to abide by the law. This is where politics and international relations come in. It is incredibly important that the rule of law be respected at an international level because if we have law/law then we do not have war/war.'

There are concerns, even amongst some potential Conservative rebels, such Kenneth Clarke and the former attorney general Dominic Grieve who disagree with the move (Watt, 2015{2}), that repealing and replacing the act constitutes a step towards rejecting government under the rule of law.

Concerns have risen again about the kinds of laws the UK government is seeking to pass to which European human rights challenges would have posed a strident difficulty. Amongst them, the Snooper's charter remains the one to provoke the most controversy (Carr, 2015). The so called 'communications data bill - for which previous attempts to pass such a bill had been blocked by the Liberal Democrats (Rawlinson, 2015) - forms part of the scramble by Conservatives to give security services more access to our personal data as a way to see attacks before they can happen (Johnston, 2015), to which Boris Johnson said that:

'I'm not particularly interested in all this civil liberties stuff when it comes to these people's emails and mobile phone conversations. If they're a threat to our society then I want them properly listened to.'

These attempts have been criticised for attempting to take away important liberties for very little gain in terms of safety. One particular observation being that regular investigative methods have proven far more effective, based on specific, targeted and legally accountable procedures (Carr, 2015).

The SNP is already looking to rally Conservative backbench rebels against the party's aim to scrap the Human Rights Act (Brooks, 2015). With the devolution legislation, that brought into being both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, there comes the demand of compliance with the Convention and the 1998 Act by the decision-makers of those jurisdictions.

It is possible and likely that Holyrood will refuse to give consent to Westminster, and the Welsh Labour government has derided the attempted repeal as making Britain 'look like a Banana republic' (BBC, 2015). Even the Good Friday Agreement, essentially an International Treaty - that made it possible, in partnership with the Irish Republic, to establish a peaceful Northern Ireland - guarantees that the European Convention on Human Rights is completely incorporated into the law of Northern Ireland (McDonald, 2015).

Recently, these rights have become a political football, bound up with sovereigntist, anti-foreign narratives that have gained traction in the UK. But underneath that is a struggle between competing visions of conservative and liberal societies.

Human rights are, by their nature, fundamentally liberal. They are the defences of the individual against the many, or against the abuses of the state. They represent a guarantee, whatever the circumstances, that people are always afforded an essential respect. In that sense, they undermine many of the institutions and social orders inherent to old conservatism, from churches to the state, where a premium is placed upon hierarchy and adherence. Over the years, the more modern versions of conservatism has taken on elements of these liberal values - but only so long as those liberal values remained 'safely' contained within conservative frameworks and limits (Willetts, 2013).

By standing outside of the British state - outside of any state - the rule of human rights law instead forces conservatism to work within a liberal framework. That is what keeps the rights of individuals safe from arbitrary treatment at the hands of ideologically motivated political decisions, and ensures that we can get justice when those rights are infringed. Trying to undo that framework would represent a step backwards, favouring the power of the state over the individual.

The Future of the Left begins today: If the Centre-Left parties get the foundations right, then the momentum is all in their favour

No sooner had David Cameron returned to Downing Street as a second term Prime Minister, than London was already playing host to anti-austerity, anti-Tory marches and protests (Tapper, 2015). In London, and in Cardiff as well, with chants declaring that 75% of the people did not vote for this Conservative government, there was a sneak preview of things to come - mass activism from the Left.

In the face of these protesting oppositions, the Conservatives are striving to show themselves to be the representatives of continuity and consistency (Watt, 2015). The Left, by comparison, has no real political continuity to speak of. However, that might not be a bad thing.

For both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the two biggest UK-wide parties of the Centre-Left, the spectacularly bad night they endured over 7th and 8th May was a pretty definitive rejection. But in that rejection, wherein both parties where very clearly broken by the result, there lies an opportunity. This is the threshold of a brand new day.

The key at this moment are the right foundations.

One of the big criticisms aimed at their parliamentary leadership by the Liberal Democrats' membership was that the approach to coalition was wrong from the beginning. Too eager and too easy. The damage done, by being seen as the party of coalition and complicit in Neo-Thatcherite austerity, the party could not recover.

However, the scale of the Lib Dems' defeat has, at least, served them by drawing a line under the last five years. They veered off from the expected script and they have been punished severely. That defeat presents the Lib Dems with the opportunity to rediscover their radicalism - their passionate campaigning, for political reform, for civil liberties and civil rights (Boyle, 2015).

David Steel, former leader of the old Liberal Party, placed the blame for the Lib Dems' poor result upon that apparent eagerness for a centre-right coalition. He argued that going into such s coalition meant abandoning 'radical progressivism' in favour of the pragmatic centre (Cowburn & Boffey, 2015).

Recovering the party's radicalism will require the election a convincingly left-liberal leader from amongst their rump. The current favourite is Tim Farron, as other possible candidates like Norman Lamb may have been too close to Clegg to be seen as representing enough of a shift to a towards distinctly liberal, rather than a Coalition, position (BBC, 2015).

If the party can find the right leader - and they can apply and embed the lessons of the last five years - there is optimism that the Lib Dems could recover (Wintour, 2015). There is even talk of the party reclaiming their position as the alternative opposition to Labour, able to work with them and others on the left.

Following the lead of the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas (Cowburn & Boffey, 2015), there is talk of co-operation between the parties of the progressive Left: first in the form of a pro-EU alliance and then maybe as some sort of electoral pact, along the lines of the old Lib-Lab pacts, by 2020 (Black, 2015).

Achieving those kinds of agreements will, however, require Labour to greatly reduce their aggressively jealous and belligerent attitude towards the other parties on the Left, that leads them to fight vindictive battles rather than fight the Conservatives.

At this election, that attitude led the party into a fight on three fronts: trying to stop the flood of voters leaving them in Scotland for the SNP - seen to be more conventionally Left-wing; trying to take back voters from the Lib Dems who were being punished for not being Left-leaning enough; and trying to fight the Conservatives head-on-head, on Tory-defined issues with Tory-style policies.

The Labour response was to put out a mix of messages and policies that left quite a puzzle as to what the party's values actually were - all over the place across Left, Centre and Right. It certainly wouldn't have helped that Labour tried to mimic so closely the Conservatives' own rhetoric, raising the question for voters: if you say Tories are right about all the main issues, why should anyone vote for you instead of them?

The debate has begun again - a particular long term internal struggle for the party - as to whether the party was too Left-wing or too Right-wing to be electable in 2015. According to an analysis of the election result, Labour did well in seats that were 'young, ethnically diverse, highly educated, socially liberal' and had a 'large public sector' (Ford, 2015) - probably helped by the lack of competition from the weakened Lib Dems. The trouble is that they bled voters in every other direction.

They lost white working class voters to UKIP, which the Blue Labour movement had warned would happen if the party did not cater to working class conservatism. They lost voters in Scotland on socialist issues, like the 'NHS, public services and redistribution'. They cannot even count on squeezing social liberal voters from the Lib Dems at every election. However they also lost out, particularly notably, amongst the wealthy, ambitious middle Englanders.

Former leader Tony Blair has staked out the New Labour case, claiming that the Centre-ground is the place for the Labour Party (Helm, 2015). Blair argued that if the party wants to achieve equality, its needs to do so without being seen to punish the ambitious - it needs to present a comprehensive vision of a society inclusive of those at the top as well as those at the bottom. Chuka Umunna, a potential Labour leadership candidate, is amongst the most Blairite of the new crop of hopefuls. Umunna's vision matches Blair's - a big tent Labour Party, able to house the poorest and the richest, which can take voters away from the Conservatives directly in those middle England constituencies (Umunna, 2015).

While there is always going to be some thinkers looking back to Blair for evidence that Labour can be broadly electable when positioned at the Centre, a task made all the more easy by the probable slight shift of the Lib Dems towards emphasising their Centre-Left credentials, that isn't the only thing the party needs.

One thing missing, or at the very least lacking in clarity, is the Labour Party's purpose. The search for a new leader can only do so much (Williams, 2015). What the party needs as much as anything else may well be the heart that the Lib Dems said they'd bring to the Tories. They need some sort of coherent vision that connects the party's soul (its values) with its head (the practical way in which those values are turned into policies suited to the times).

The decision ahead for Labour, between being part of the Left or the main party of the Centre, will have ramifications for voters and parties elsewhere. The performance of the Greens and the SNP show that Left-wing politics remains popular - taking 9% of the vote and seats between them, which is a strong showing even when you consider that many Left-wing voters will still have clung to Labour. Yet trying to reclaim their Left-wing voters will mean some stiff competition - and in the process giving up the Centre-ground contest.

If Labour sticks to the centre, they will have the potential to appeal to voters without stepping on the toes of either the Greens or the Lib Dems. But doing so means accepting the continued decline of its own Left-wing which will ultimately begin to believe that their are other options out there. The key for a Labour Party at the centre is to understand that you can be there with your values intact - you can accommodate a place for everyone within your vision of society without sacrificing ideals and principles.

For both Labour and the Lib Dems, the policy priority now seems to be returning to devolution and decentralisation, of both government and the economy, and comprehensive political, electoral and constitutional reform. The pursuit of that task will be helped by a positive thought: the immediate electoral future of both Labour and the Lib Dems looks bright... if they can resolve their issues and develop their visions.

As Cameron - digging up his One Nation Toryism (Nelson, 2015) and appearing magnanimous in victory, with praise for his opponents and appeals to the whole of the UK as one nation (White, 2015) - stood in front of Number 10, the old establishment found itself unexpectedly propped up, if only for a little while. But Cameron's grace in victory covers the fundamental weakness of his and the Conservatives' position. Cameron, the Conservatives and the Westminster establishment have on their side continuity and momentary stability. But that is all constructed around toxic attitudes towards welfare and the poor for which they no longer have the Liberal Democrats to hide behind.

The Left is not able to claim any sort of continuity. But what it has instead is time to construct, with care from the ground up, the ideas around which to build a new consensus. Combined with the spirit of political co-operation, best represented by the Green Party's Caroline Lucas, the Left now has all of the momentum. That momentum is leading to the completion of that which the advent of coalition government began - the comprehensive progressive reform of the British politics.

Election 2015: A bad night for progressives. What now for the Left?

The night began with the prospect of a parliament painfully divided between Left and Right. But the release of the exit polls at 10 O'clock turned that stress into a painful crushing blow to progressives. Even to the last moment, the polls had indicated a multi-party split. Yet when ballots were cast in the polling stations of England, there was a kind of sudden and astonishing shift towards the Conservatives.

In the short term, while the Conservatives form a new government without the need for the compromises of the last five years, the Left needs to find a new way forward. The most emphatic message of the night is that the Left does not have a convincing message for the people of the UK. That has played out with some dramatic losses.

Labour have lost swathes of supporters in Scotland and failed to be convincing in England. The Liberal Democrats where heavily criticised for their coalition with the Conservatives, and for a broken promise over tuition fees, and yet have lost seats by bleeding thousands of voters to the Conservatives and UKIP.

That contributes to a very complicated picture for the Left to try and understand.

Labour tacked to the Right on social issues, while sounding moderately Leftist on the economy and have barely survived outside their Northern heartland - and even lost part of it with voters swinging away from Labour to the SNP. They have lost their Scottish leader Jim Murphy, their campaign organiser Douglas Alexander and even their shadow chancellor Ed Balls.

The Lib Dems ran as a socially liberal and economically centre-right party, and have found themselves decimated. They have lost ministers and senior figures all over - Danny Alexander, Vince Cable, Ed Davies, Simon Hughes, Jo Swinson, Lynne Featherstone and many more are all gone.

This must all, surely, mean the leaderships of the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats, particularly, will have to change.

Some of the expectations that came with the prospect of a hung parliament, that many had thought was awaiting voters on the 8th May, was big political reform. Talk is still abound of constitutional change. But now, with the polls leaning to the right, it will likely be less about proportional representation and more focussed on Unionist concerns. Matters like English and Scottish votes and their role in a British Parliament and changes to the electoral boundaries will take precedence, but Federalism may still get a look in.

Teresa May of the Conservatives is already talking about life without a Lib Dem anchor - she told the BBC's election night programme that she blames the Lib Dems for holding back Conservative wishes to give the security agencies more intrusive powers of investigation.

With that announcement setting the tone, the first thing for the Left is to find a way to put together a meaningful and co-operative opposition. One that can restrain the very slim measure of control that the Conservatives will have over the Commons - and find candidates that can drum up passionate support to challenge the Conservatives at bye-elections.

The second aim, for the longer term, has to be figuring out what it is that the Left can offer to the people of the UK at a sorely divided time. Scotland is represented almost entirely by the SNP Nationalists, and England is under the control of the Conservative Unionists. Nationalism has become a very major factor once again. But above all, voters in Scotland found the SNP a more convincing representative of the Left values than Labour, and in England it seems that few were convinced that they as voters belonged with the Left at all.

Something has gone very wrong for the Left. The starting point in the recovery will be accepting what has happened. That will mean Paddy Ashdown eating his hat and Alastair Campbell eating his kilt. The next step will be to find the big new visions that are needed to rebuild a progressive alternative.

Election 2015: Your vote is your chance to speak out, even if you only do so tactically

With the UK's voting system being less than great when it comes to representation, it isn't surprising that there are many people out there who are seriously considering a tactical vote.

With a 'largest minority takes all' system, greatly in need of reform into something more representative, too many people are casting ballots without a hope of seeing themselves represented in their constituency. This is not a new issue - John Cleese had plenty to say about it thirty years ago. But its what we have for now.

As a result, many have cast, and many are again considering casting, their vote for the best of the worst - or at least, the most likely of the rest to stop the candidate they most despise from being the one who represents them. There are arguments for and against tactical voting which have validity - mostly divided between the idealism of voting for what you believe in, and the practicality of stopping what runs counter to your beliefs.

Various sources have published guides to where and how a tactical vote can count the most. Liberal blogger Stephen Tall gives a run down of where to vote tactically if you want to oppose UKIP. The Guardian and The Independent have both published guides to tactical voting in favour of any party, and voteswap.org is offering a  pledge system that allow you to vote tactically for Labour or the Greens in co-ordination with others around the UK.

It is to be hoped that this might be the last time a tactical vote is needed. The case for reform is growing irresistible. Sadly not everyone thinks the best move would be towards a more European style, more proportional system. Some would rather move towards another form of two-party system in the American style.

Regardless of how you intend to vote, even if you only spoil your ballot paper with a silly picture or a meaningful slogan, please do vote. Don't let the establishment think that your disgust, displeasure or disillusionment is to do with you being apathetic or uninterested. Make your voice heard, even if only to reject all of the options and demand better.

Election 2015: The European Union - is the UK's future in or out?

The pressure applied by UKIP and the rest of the Conservative Party's Right-wing has succeeded in putting the question of the UK's membership of the European Union on the table. If those parties succeed in gaining enough seats at the next election, then a referendum on the UK's place in the EU will be on its way. Then, if a majority vote to leave, the UK will sail off into the Atlantic. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

The simplicity is, however, restricted to the actual decision to leave - which itself can be done with an ease that a lot of world leaders find quite disturbing, especially as most of them think the UK and the EU are better together (Preston, 2015). The potential ramifications are much greater and more complex.

Reports suggest, in a best case scenario, that everyone in the EU will lose out economically if the UK leaves, but no one more than the UK itself (Grice, 2015). While there is apparently a quiet acknowledgement even amongst Eurosceptics that - at least initially - the UK will be less well off outside of the EU, there are those who see big business opportunities away from the European system (Preston, 2015).

Amongst Eurosceptics there is talk of the UK's Financial Services industry being 'freed' from the EU Financial Transaction Tax - which was pressured into existence in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis by the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax; 'freed' from the EU cap on bankers' bonuses; 'freed' to pursue new trade deals with 'emerging markets', like India, where some feel the EU failed to negotiate a good enough deal; and even to pursue the marketing of UK agriculture to the world (Preston, 2015).

The trouble is, those arguments all seem to depend upon a lot of 'if'. If the UK is able to negotiate a substantially different deal while still maintaining its trading links (Behr, 2014). If it is able to successfully renegotiate better deals for the UK than it could get when it was able to advertise free access through Britain to the whole of the European Market - at a time when the UK's trade relationships are already very lopsided against the UK (Peston, 2015).

On that particular point: the UK would also have to convince the potential investors that they would be getting a good deal from pouring their money into the products of one of the most expensive places in the world to live and work. With a high cost of living, wages have to keep up, which means businesses fork over large sums of money on labour costs. While the EU is a free market, it nonetheless encourages protections of workers rights and measures to raise the standard of living across all member states, and trading partners, up to the same level to try and avoid anyone being undercut.

Are the UK's workers going to receive those same assurances when they are competing in a global free market against the workers of India or China? It's more likely that they will face the same calls for measures aimed at increasing 'competitiveness' - levelled at countries with high debt like Italy - which, under talk of lowering prices and increasing flexibility, ultimately demands cuts to wages so reduce the cost of labour (Sinn, 2014).

None of this is, of course, to suggest that the EU is perfect. The European Union is subject to the same pressures from globalisation as anywhere else in the world. It needs serious reform, such as the need to make the management of the European economy, and particularly of the Euro, more democratic (Garton Ash, 2015).

But achieving these reforms means getting into the spirit of internationalism. As Nick Clegg said during the BBC's Question Time Election Leaders Special on Thursday (30th April), the main issues facing us today are continental, not just national. The solutions to problems like tax dodging corporations and human traffickers will be continental and international in scale, not confined to particular countries and nations.

There are ideals in the make-up of the European Union - mostly constricted to being merely undertones in these times when ideologically conservative economics is riding high - grounded in internationalism, solidarity, commonality and liberty. There is a sense that, with reform, the European Union could be a positive progressive force for the common good.

The European Parliament has campaigned for equal pay for men and women and for the rights of pregnant workers. It derailed the ACTA treaty, which lead to most European nations refusing to ratify it, and it has also forced the TTIP treaty negotiations to be open and transparent (Robinson, 2015).

The European Globalization Adjustment Fund provides compensation when jobs move abroad, and funding for new training and start-ups. The EU even pursued the capping of bankers bonuses (at an obviously stingy 100% of their salaries) in the face of opposition from the UK government (Robinson, 2015{2}).

The cost to the UK of being part of all this is a net contribution to the EU budget £6.5bn to £8.5bn per year, less than 0.5% of British GDP. That figure extracts from the gross contribution what is spent back in the UK itself, on supporting everything from agriculture and scientific research to grants for local councils. For this investment the Confederation of British Industry suggests net economic benefit of EU membership to the UK is £62-78bn/yr (Robinson, 2015{3}).

As for immigration there is evidence that it has limited impact on wages, even coinciding with a boost in wages in the long term (Preston, 2015). While the 5% lowest paid can be disproportionately affected, the solutions lies in tackling low pay with minimum and living wages, with better education and training, and by addressing the disparities in the quality of life and levels of pay to be found across Europe - once again, continent-wide solutions. In terms of numbers, at present 2.2m British citizens live elsewhere in the EU, balancing out the 2.4m EU citizens living the UK. Less than 5% of the EU migrants claim jobseekers and less than 10% claim other working age benefits (Robinson, 2015{3}).

Are these arguments likely to dissuade fervent Eurosceptics? Probably not. There is a certain sense of Nationalism to Euroscepticism that makes talk of negotiation and reform, rather than abandonment, likely to fall unheard.

That does necessarily not mean that some satisfactory compromise cannot be reached.

A number of leading European figures have for some time been talking about a two-speed Europe - the tone of which might be seen in David Cameron's 'veto' in 2011 (Curtis, 2011). While trying to negotiate policy for the single market, the EU faced opposition from Cameron who demanded protections, exemptions and concessions for the City of London's financial sector. However, instead of actually blocking the move - as would be required for it to actually be a veto - the UK merely removed itself from consideration on the issues being discussed and the rest of the EU went on with its discussions.

Romano Prodi, former Italian Prime Minister and former President of the European Commission, has argued that the move towards a two-speed Union is well under way as a practical response to the realities of the situation (Tost, 2012). Prodi stressed that Europe is taking steps towards a common financial policy without the UK - the next big step in integration - and that Cameron's policies have only moved Britain to the fringes where they will have less influence.

The reality will be a UK that tries to opt out of what it doesn't want - within limits which will still mean much the same situation if the UK wants to trade with Europe - but will remain, in principle, a member of the Union and UK citizens will keep some of the benefits of being EU citizens like free movement and access to European Courts.

Meanwhile, the rest of Europe will continue to grow closer, gradually building a continental federation and reforming it to become more democratic. There are alternatives that would see Britain more involved or holding the EU at arms length, but this approach, of a two-speed Union - seems the only one likely to strike a balance between pro-Europeans and Eurosceptics.

Election 2015: Political endorsements - Newspapers, Russell Brand and #Milifandom

As might be expected, the media has had a lot to say about the upcoming 2015 UK general election. Their major concern has been the matter of who will do a deal, and who they will do it with, when the predicted hung parliament arrives on the day after the 7th May. Most of that focus has been on Labour and SNP- with many making headlines of the deal offered by the SNP's leader Nicola Sturgeon during the opposition debate (Kleiderman, 2015), with less coverage of the fact that Ed Miliband made a clear and absolute refusal.

There have also been a few celebrity endorsements, mostly for Labour. Delia Smith, Steve Coogan, Paul O'Grady, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Martin Freeman and Jo Brand have given their backing to Ed Miliband's party (Turner & Holehouse, 2015). None of these endorsements have received quite as much attention as Russell Brand. Brand's comments in the years running up to the election, suggestive that people should not to vote in protest against the British political system, have been heavily criticised (Alexander, 2014). However, with only a few days to go until the election, Brand has now endorsed Green Party candidate Caroline Lucas (Walker, 2015) and today endorsed voting for Labour (New Statesman, 2015) - which feels like a slightly irresponsible shift in position to make, from 'won't vote' to 'vote for this', after the voting registration deadline has long passed.

The newspapers have also begun to declare themselves. The Financial Times and the Economist have both come out in favour of a continuing Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (Ashmore, 2015). The Guardian has backed Labour, but with an acknowledgement of the value of voting Liberal Democrat or Green where those parties have a chance (The Guardian, 2015). As for The Sun, it has declared in favour of the Conservatives - and yet its sister paper in Scotland has backed the SNP (BBC, 2015).

Just as interesting, and maybe quite a lot less bland, has been the coverage on social media where the election, and particularly the economics debate, has been a top trending topic over the last month (Simmonds, 2015). UKIP have been the most talked about party, though not necessarily for good reasons - controversial as they are - but the Greens have received the most positive tweets ahead of the Conservatives, who have a slight edge over Labour in terms of positive feedback.

The most inspiring social media story was the launching of a social media campaign, #Milifandom, against, and in order to counter, the alleged distorted portrayal of Ed Miliband in the media (Jewell, 2015). Abby, 17 and apparent spokesperson for the fandom, has said that they wanted to "change opinions so people don’t just see the media’s usual distorted portrayal of him".

Responses to #Milifandom have included references to 'smitten' teenage girls, and photoshopped images of politicians as 'only ephemerally amusing', of fandom being just teenage girls falling 'desperately in love', and a product of their 'all-consuming hormonal hysteria' (Jewel, 2015; McElvoy & Parkinson, 2015; Ratcliffe, 2015) - which all leave a whiff of condescension in the air.

Apart from somewhat robbing these people of their agency by reducing their actions to 'smitten hormonal hysteria', a fairly big point seems to have been missed about fandom: tongue-in-cheek, excessive exaggeration and over-the-top sarcasm and irony are common and deliberate tools for making a point. And enthusiasm, something that has become almost a dirty word in a world undercut by irony, is also alive and well in fandoms.

A sense for the satirical? An interest in challenging establishment message and expectations? Passionate enthusiasm? These are all things politics does not have in plentiful supply. Here are people, mostly young and female, two other things poorly represented in political circles, who understand how their medium works and how to mobilise people using it - and they're using it to challenge a mass media editorial line in their own way. Patronising them is really not the way forward.

Of all the stories at this election, from newspaper and celebrity endorsements to post-election deals, the enthusiasm shown for politics by thousands young women is easily the most important. Passion and a critical eye, with a satirical tongue firmly in cheek, is a good sign for the future electoral politics in the UK. It gives us hope that, regardless of what deals and compromises are made that drive people away from politics in disaffection, there will always be people out there with the energy to speak up and participate.