Catalonia hands pro-independence parties a majority. The road to independence starts here. But where does it end?

La Diada Catalan independence rally, which saw around a million people take to the streets of Barcelona. Photograph: Onze de Setembre, Badalona i Meridiana by Castellers d'Esplugues (License) (Cropped)

On Sunday, the pro-independence parties of Catalonia put a proposition to voters in the regional election (Kassam, 2015). If you want independence from Spain, they said, then vote for us. After years of wrangling, the pro-independence leader Artur Mas promised that a majority of seats in the Catalan Parliament would begin a process leading to independence for Catalonia within eighteen months.

Voters responded by handing the pro-independence parties a majority of seats (BBC, 2015). That part, at least, is unequivocal. The rest will likely be contested down to the last possible moment and measure. Yet the separatist struggle, and how it comes to an end, will regardless have a profound effect upon the rest of Europe - particularly upon the Left.

The two sides of separatism in Catalonia

From the beginning, the legitimacy of the entire separatist movement has been challenged by the government of Spain. From constitutional rulings against holding referendums (Govan, 2014) to threats of legal action against separatist leaders (BBC, 2014), the establishment in Spain has made strenuous efforts to shut down the movement.

Yet even if Spain succeeds in preventing a breakaway, as the UK did, that will not alone solve its problems. The old establishment would most likely remain intact and those supporting the separatist movement, as in the UK, will not likely change their minds and back down after so clear a show of support. The establishment has also left it rather late to start negotiating a compromise solution.

At this point, a breakaway only looks likely to be halted by either a belated compromise deal - unlikely but at least theoretically possible, if the Spanish general election in December follows opinion polling that suggests the ruling, establishment conservative, Partido Popular will suffer a drastic loss of support (Penty, 2015) - or through further suppression. Neither of which is a recipe for long term peace and stability.

For the Catalonian Left, independence represents a new frontier on which the stubborn and intransigent old establishment might be contested. It is an opportunity to reconstruct the state and bring democratic power closer to the people, enhancing self-determination without closing off the provincial community from solidarity with the people of the wider continent (Sole i Ferrando, 2015).

The trouble is that the separatist struggle is not that simple. The Left has long struggled with the questions of identity embedded in nationalist struggles, which largely go against the internationalist and humanist themes inherent to democratic and liberal ideologies - that concern themselves instead with economic inequality and individual opportunities for people in a broader sense that crosses traditional social boundaries.

That makes the division in Catalonia uncomfortable for progressives. The contest between separatists in Catalonia and the establishment in Spain has been described as a struggle between two nationalisms (de Beer, 2014), with conservatism playing a leading role on both sides.

On the Catalonian Right, part of what Convergencia represents is a resentment, also felt in some other of Europe's richer provinces, at the unequal contributions they believe themselves to be making (Jackson, 2015). Like with prosperous industrial provinces such Bavaria, or Northern Italy where Lega Nord receive strong representation with its Far Right interpretation (Kirchgaessner, 2015), there is a belief that central government takes far more away from these regions that it gives back and is not serving their interests - not dissimilar from the sentiments of some regarding the UK's role in the European Union.

The separatists still have large hurdles to clear

After the last election, the two main pro-independence parties of Right and Left - Artur Mas' conservative Convergencia Democratica de Catalunya (CDC), leading the Convergence and Union coalition (CiU), and Oriol Junqueras' democratic socialist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) - between them held 71 of 135 seats (Nardelli, 2015).

At the European elections and in opinion polling since then, between them they have usually polled an overall plurality, and at times an outright majority, of support in the province. Individually, the ERC and CDC have polled as high as 24% and 26%, respectively. For this election they agreed to pool their support and stand together as a single pro-independence party, 'Junts pel Si' (Together for Yes, JxSi).

On Sunday that alliance resulted in the parties being just six seats short of a majority in the Catalan Parliament on 40% of the vote, but with pro-independence groups being, overall, in the majority (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2015). According to the pledge made by Artur Mas, that means the eighteen month countdown to independence has begun.

However, there are huge discussions to be had before the new form of Catalonia can be unveiled. The Left and the Right must still come to a settlement over their respective wishes for reconstruction. Then, together, they must manage their relationship with the establishment in Spain, which has no intention of allowing Catalonia to break away, and the European community - that will not look favourably upon a unilateral declaration of independence without the support of an outright popular majority.

That means, first, overcoming their stark political differences. The ERC and CDC each each represent a deep vein of separatist and reformist sentiment in Europe. For ERC, the pressure from the Left will be to embrace a radical democratic reform of the state. For the right, the CDC exemplifies a regionalist, pro-business, attitude that sees independence as a way of increasing economic efficiencies and integration into the European economic system.

They will both also need to find a way to work with the other pro-independence party, Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (CUP) - a far left, socialist and radical democratic party in the mould of its namesake in Greece. Overcoming their differences will not be easy.

The impact of the separatist movement will be felt across Europe

The separatist struggle, however it comes to an end, will have a deeply profound effect upon the rest of Europe. As with the Scottish referendum, moderates, separatists and nationalists of all stripes across Europe will await the outcome and ponder - likely with some anxiety - what it will mean for them.

After decades of trying to achieve reform within the establishment, often being thoroughly complicit in the decisions taken by the establishment, the Left is faced with - particularly social democrats - the possibility of the peaceful and progressive break up of the establishment institutions in various European nation-states.

As shown in Scotland, the mainstream Left has struggled to find a response to the fracturing of the power structures it has come to rely on. As the arguments within the UK Labour Party have shown, it is caught between propping up a crumbling edifice and embracing a new one that does not yet have firm foundations.

For progressives, as with Syriza in Greece, the hope lies in an outcome that shows an alternative to the old establishment positions is possible. An outcome that lays out a path that might be followed to a more civil libertarian and socially just society, able to marry self-determination with an open attitude to the world. For the more cynical, the hope is for clarity as to what the modern state should look like, from where its power should be derived and upon what basis it should claim legitimacy.

There are two pitches on the table for the future of the political left in the UK - a radical proposal from Caroline Lucas and a pragmatic one from Vince Cable

The September conference marked Tim Farron's first as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Photograph: Tim Farron at the Lib Dem conference rally on 19 September 2015 by Dave Radcliffe (License) (Cropped)

Tim Farron's first speech, as leader, at a Liberal Democrat party conference came at a crucial time for the UK's political Left (Kuenssberg, 2015). Farron used his speech to try and unite liberals and social democrats and relaunch the Lib Dems as an opposition party at a time when the opponents of David Cameron and George Osborne are scattered and divided.

Less than six months after a bad election night for Britain's progressives, the two main parties of the Left have just come out of the turmoil of leadership elections. The internal wrangling, squabbles surrounding their respective contests, and the distraction they caused - particularly Labour's (Bush, 2015) - have allowed the thin Conservative majority to roll on unchallenged.

The question that lingers behind the efforts of figures within individual parties, like Farron, is how progressives of all parties, with their new leaderships in place, should come together to present an opposition to the Conservatives.

With regards to that question, there have been two pitches, each representing a different approach to tackling Conservative dominance: one from Caroline Lucas and the other from Vince Cable.

Shortly after the election, Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP, made the first pitch. She suggested that a progressive alliance be formed in time for the next election in order to avoid splitting the anti-Tory vote (Cowburn & Boffey, 2015). Lucas argued that parties on the Left - again, Labour in particular - needed to embrace multi-party politics and co-operation to counter the advantage that 'split' votes offers to the Conservatives under the present first-past-the-post electoral system (Lucas, 2015).

The second pitch was made by Vince Cable, former deputy leader of the liberal democrats and business secretary. Cable took advantage of the dissensions and threats of splits and defections amongst Labour MPs to resurrect the idea of a realignment of the left (Mason & Perraudin, 2015) - an idea favoured by Roy Jenkins and Tony Blair (d'Ancona, 2015). Cable argues that there is a strong support for a progressive, centrist, party and that moderates from Labour and the Liberal Democrats could unite to fill that space. 

The election of Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron, as leaders of Labour and Liberal Democrats respectively, clearly shows where the hearts of the party grassroots are - deep within the radical left. That certainly suggests that there is an openness to the pitch made by Caroline Lucas for a radical alliance, where co-operation replaces the previous status quo, in pursuit of common progressive aims.

However, the parliamentary Labour Party and the so-called 'liberal-left' media have been cold to those instincts (Blair, 2015; Cook, 2015). Since his election, Jeremy Corbyn has been faced with rumours of splits, breakaways and defections by the self-described 'moderate' elements of his party (Peston, 2015).

Tim Farron has so far seen little of this kind of response, despite coming from the more radical edge of the Liberal Democrats (White, 2015). Yet his speech yesterday still tacked to the centre, using language that would appeal to centrist and Right-leaning liberals on hard work and opportunities and making references - that will be familiar to followers of the Labour Party (Penny, 2015) - to the necessity of attaining power before a difference can be made (Farron, 2015).

Within both the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, there are signs that the old patterns are hard to break. When one party makes a radical move, the other makes a centrist move - each trying to outmanoeuvre the other to be the one, dominant opposition to the Conservatives.

That certainly seems to make Cable's version of the Left coming together more likely. Historically, as Tony Blair has been at pains to tell the world (BBC, 2014), that has been the only choice that has ever been successful.

Yet that does not dampen the desirability of a radical alternative - nor lessen its necessity. Achieving long lasting and much needed change will require more than just an opposition. It needs a compelling alternative. Cable's proposal provides the first, but not the second. In Lucas' pitch, there is the possibility of both.

The austerity narrative, upon which Conservative domination rides, is part of a larger set of systems and presumptions that all need to be challenged - down to their roots. Only a radical alternative can do that - one that is willing to question accepted realities like the two-party monopoly over the electoral system.

So far, radical opposition, across Europe, has been stifled by its isolation (Fazi, 2015). In the UK, however, there are growing opportunities for progressives to work together - and they must if they are to challenge the establishment and the Conservatives who control it.

But before progressives can start down that road they must ask themselves a question, to which the answer matters: will they work together in the pragmatic centre, hoping to inherit control over the establishment, to soften its edges; or will they pursue a more radical course, seeking to challenge the establishment with an alternative vision?

Tsipras has his governing mandate, but weariness and disaffection dominate the mood and demand a positive response

Alexis Tsipras has been returned to power in Greece. Photograph: Alexis Tsipras - Caricature, by Donkey Hotey (License) (Cropped)

Once again, reality has made a fool of the polls. Against all of the indications pointing to a tight and inconclusive contest, Alexis Tsipras and Syriza have once again secured the position as the largest party at the elections in Greece (Smith & Wearden, 2015).

For Syriza though, it won't be all smiles and celebrations. The election also showed the clear limits of Tsipras' style of popular radical democracy. Voter turnout has waned drastically, with people worn thin by crisis after crisis and exhausted by Victory or Death stand-offs with creditors.

Alexis Tsipras resignation, back in August, was a gambit that triggered an election, with the purpose of shoring up his parliamentary support (Smith, 2015) - and possibly in acknowledgement of public weariness. His party's numbers in parliament had been irreparably dented by the rebellion of the Left Platform faction over the signing, by the Syriza leader, of the bailout terms negotiated with the European Union (Henley & Traynor, 2015).

In the run up to the election, the power of Tsipras' populist approach and personal appeal, for which Tsipras has been criticised (Patrikarakos, 2015), appeared to be on the wane (Smith, 2015{2}) - in line with the general disaffection. Yet on election day, Tsipras and Syriza proved resilient. In that sense, his gambit was successful.

Victory gives to Tsipras the task of building a majority coalition. At one stage, Syriza's falling popularity made it necessary to float the possibility of a coalition with Pasok and To Potami - the establishment social democratic and social liberal parties, respectively - in a centre-left and pro-European alliance (Ruparel, 2015).

In the end, though, the scale of the victory matched that of January and will allow Tsipras to rebuild his coalition with ANEL (BBC, 2015). But this time, he will be able do so without the most rebellious of the factions within his own party. That group, the Left Platform, had split away to form up under their own banner as Popular Unity. They stood against Syriza in the election, only to lose every single one of their seats, falling beneath the parliamentary representation threshold (Nardelli, 2015).

Few of Syriza's other opponents fared much better (Malkoutzis, 2015). New Democracy, under their acting leader Vangelis Meimarakis, could not, in the end, close the gap to Syriza and finished over seven points adrift. No other party managed to collect more than 7% of the vote. When it came down to it, it did not seem to be that Tsipras had triumphed, so much as he had found himself as the last man standing.

Being the only credible option left has given the Syriza leader a strong position that he will need, as the task facing the victor doesn't offer much in the way of joy (Elliott, 2015). The second term Prime Minister now has implement the austerian conditions of the bailout agreement and, importantly, negotiate for debt relief - without which the country will plunge back into chaos.

Tsipras will also need his strong parliamentary position because the biggest winner of the night was not Syriza. With voter turnout down to just 56%, the mood in Greece is now clearly dominated by disaffection and weariness. Despite his emphatic victory, Tsipras will have to lead his Syriza government without the kind of popular public mandate he had enjoyed for the first half of 2015.

Until now, Tsipras has tried to follow a radical democratic course in which he aimed, it seemed, to use the popular mobilisation of the people as a powerful political bargaining chip. Yet Syriza's victories with this strategy were limited and, in the case of the OXI referendum vote, became little more than a pyrrhic demonstration of dissent in the act of compliance.

With the people clearly tired from the strain of the crisis and weary and frustrated by pyrrhic acts of dissent and defiance, Tsipras and Syriza - at least for the moment -  have exhausted their popular political capital. That fatigue will limit the hands that Tsipras will be able to play in his game of political poker with the European austerian establishment.

Tsipras idea of radicalism has long been about popular power (from Horvat, 2013).

"I believe that today 'radical' is to try to be able to take responsibility for the people, to not be afraid of that, and at the same time to maintain in the democratic road, in the democratic way. To take the power for the people and to give it back to the people."

He and his party must now, because the people are tired, instead show that they can use parliamentary power - and they must use it to restore the people's belief. Their disaffection and weariness need to be healed with hope and opportunity, because, in the long run, a political crisis can be as dangerous to Greece as the economic crisis that currently engulfs it.

As the dissenting economist Yanis Varoufakis has made clear (Varoufakis, 2015; Luis Martin, 2015), the collapse of the mainstream systems into crisis does not, and has never, benefited a rational and progressive Left. Crisis breeds fear and fear feeds narrow and extreme responses.

Tsipras has his mandate, but the big challenge is still ahead. He must rebuild the economy and visibly tackle the old corrupt establishments, both in Greece and in Europe. And he must, above all, find a way to show people in Greece and Europe a positive and reforming way forward.

Stella Creasy is in a position to be a mediator and, through the co-operative movement, bridge the widening gaps between Labour Party factions

Stella Creasy, the Labour Co-operative MP, has put herself at the front of progressive campaigns - from support for local credit unions to campaigns opposing violence against women. Photograph: Stella Creasy at the launch of LAWRS' anti-violence campaign by Macarena Gajardo (Licence) (Cropped)

Jeremy Corbyn's victory heralds as much change for the Labour Party as it does for British politics. His election through a process of mass, popular internal democracy broke a century of control over the party by a largely middle class establishment of economists and lawyers - as former Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell put it (from Bogdanor, 1983):

'We, as middle-class socialists, have got to have a profound humility. Though it's a funny way of putting it, we've got to know that we lead them because they can't do it without us, with our abilities, and yet we must feel humble to working people.'

Yet Corbyn's rise has not healed the deep stratification within the party, but rather exposed the rifts. The fact that the Islington MP should need to build a coalition of groups within his own party (Kuenssberg, 2015), which is riven with rumours of splits (Peston, 2015), may be an indication that it's about time that the Labour Party began to act like the broad coalition that it very clearly is.

One MP, and parliamentary group, that would benefit from a clearer organisation of Labour MPs, more than most, is Stella Creasy and the Co-operative Party.

Corbyn, and the Trade Unionist 'Left', don't have a great deal in common, beyond their common allegiance to Labour's party and movement, with the Brownite 'Moderates' and the Blairite 'Modernisers'. They have shown themselves, however, to be capable of finding common causes and working together.

The Co-operative Party is one group that could hold them together. Long sitting in parliament with candidates put up jointly with Labour, they have supported members that have played roles across the Labour movement. From former ministers like Alun Michael and Ed Balls to shadow cabinet figures like Chris Leslie and Lucy Powell, many leading Labour figures have been elected as Labour Co-op.

If Labour's internal factions would start to organise themselves - rather than splitting off to form new parties or join others - there could be some consolation for deputy leader candidate Stella Creasy. Despite losing to Tom Watson (Mason, 2015), she would be in one of the, potentially, more powerful positions within the party.

Now one of the most visible women in the parliamentary party, Creasy has the makings of a future Labour leader (Blackburn et al, 2015). But first, as a visible figure in the Co-operative Party, she could lead a fully coherent, organised, internal faction - one that would be able to reach out to all sides and bring them together.

Arguably, the Co-operative Party has never been in a stronger position within the Labour Party.

With the new leadership committed to public ownership and the Labour mainstream having just begun to fully embrace neoliberalism, along with its vast reductions in public spending and role of the state, just as it was swept away by the Corbyn-tide, ideas are needed in which each side can see its values.

Co-operation has the capacity to fill that space. The Corbyn faction has expressed openness to the public ownership they have championed coming in the form of worker and customer co-operatives, rather than control by the state (Voinea, 2015) and New Labour at times embraced mutualism during their time in power (Wintour, 2010).

In those discussion, co-operative voices would have a strong role to play and Creasy and the Labour Co-op MPs could help to bridge the factional divide. As for a leading, mediating, figure, Creasy herself has been a vocal champion of feminism and women's rights (Bryant, 2014; Creasy 2012) and championed credit unions in opposition to pay day lenders - both progressive causes around which even the most disparate wings of the party could unite.

The idea of economic co-operation itself might also have an even bigger impact than just holding together the Labour coalition. It could also be one of the pillars upon which an electoral alliance of Left-wing parties could be built. While it is unlikely that the Liberal Democrats could get behind a program that would see Corbyn pushing state socialism, there has long been a liberal commitment to co-operatives. Small crossovers of this kind can be the foundations for much larger agreements.

Labour is in need of a means to hold its broad coalition together. It is also very much in need of visible female leaders (Moore, 2015). Stella Creasy is in a position to play mediator, along with other Labour Co-op MPs. Played right, its is a role that could see her leading a much wider movement in the future.

Corbyn and the Labour Party pass their first big challenge - showing solidarity against the government's trade union bill

Trade Unions led this summer's London Tube Strike over the safety concerns tied up in the extension of services to running 24 hours. Photograph: Tube Strike by Barney Moss (License) (Cropped)

Today saw the second reading of the Conservative government's trade union bill. This was the first debate on the controversial measures, aimed by the government at stopping what they have called 'endless' strike threats. Following a morning on which Jeremy Corbyn's new shadow cabinet had been announced (May, 2015), Labour was in need of an issue on which they could present a united front.

If an opposition, particularly a progressive opposition, has any role at all it is to challenge power and the way it is used. The trade union bill presented the first, very early, opportunity for the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn to do just that. The measures to be debated included an extension - up to two weeks - of the notice required before strikes can be held, allowing employers the use of agency workers to cover striker shifts, and mandatory identification to be worn by picketers with their details to be provided to police (BBC, 2015).

The reading of the bill by minister Sajid Javid met a hostile reception from the beginning, with Caroline Lucas and Dennis Skinner setting the tone. The Conservative position was that their proposed regulations were aimed at stopping a malign minority of trade unionists forcing strike action - damaging to the livelihoods of other workers -  upon the broader general public (BBC, 2015{2}).

Elements of the bill were criticised by influential Conservative backbencher David Davis (Mason, 2015; Casalicchio, 2015). Davis described measures requiring strikers to identity themselves and provide details to police as more suited to Franco's Spain than "Queen Elizabeth II's Britain". Yet during the debate itself, Davis argued that the bill, stripped of its illiberal elements, would tackle one of the side effects of public sector monopoly, that withdrawal of public sector labour means withdrawal of the service - deeply inconveniencing the lives of the wider public.

However, human rights groups have described the bill as a dangerous restriction upon the human and democratic rights of workers that, in particular, makes it 'easier for the Government to be a bad employer' (Ogilvie, 2015). The bill has also been described as a vindictive attack on civil liberties, by Liberal Democrat former business secretary Vince Cable and the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress Frances O'Grady (Taylor, 2015; Cable & O'Grady, 2015).

Through first the Liberal Party and later the Labour Party, trade unions in the UK have sought better rights and protections for people in the workplace. In the early years that meant a mix of support of parliamentary candidates and organisation of large strikes. Yet over the years - though with some periods of resurgence - time lost to industrial action has dwindled to give way to negotiation and under the restraints of increases in trade union legislation (Bienkov, 2015).

The ability of public sector workers to strike, with an impact on the wider public, is part of the right to strike. As private sector strikes challenge the interests of their employers, in the form of their accumulation of profits from labour, public sector strikes challenge the interests of their employer, the government, in the form of their votes dependent upon public satisfaction. With employers holding an unequal power in being able to withhold employment upon which the lives of workers depend, it is not unfair that workers to also be able to withhold benefits from their employer - in fact it is recognised as a human right (Ewing, 2015).

Whatever the differences between the factions within the Labour Party that Jeremy Corbyn has been elected to lead, opposition to anti-union tactics likened to those of dictators - a poignant example of a disturbing conservative trend of attacking human rights, suspending liberties supported by legal aid or social security, and even naming opposition parties as a risk to national security (Dearden, 2015) - provides an easy point of agreement.

If the role of opposition - and the roots of what it means to be on the Left - is to challenge power, attempts to restrict liberty of peaceful protest and civic dissent should be able to unite the Labour Party. Especially since opposition to the bill has been supported across progressive parties, by Labour, Green and also Liberal Democrat MPs - whose leader Tim Farron said that the bill attacked trade unions who stood up "for workers' rights" and protected "against workplace abuse and bullying" (Farron, 2015).

There is no rule against being constructive in opposition. But a majority government has little need of aid in pursuing its agenda. Corbyn's first day has seen Labour taking a stand, showing some solidarity with the trade union movement - which alone is admittedly a small victory. And yet, it is the small victories and acts of solidarity out of which a larger labour movement is built.

Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership election in a revolution of party members overthrowing the party establishment

Jeremy Corbyn MP speaks at anti-drones rally in 2013. Photograph: By stopwar.org.uk (license)(cropped)

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the Labour Party with 59.5% of the vote in the first round of voting. In a contest where over four hundred thousand people voted, no other candidate achieved over 20% of the vote and Corbyn won in every party category, including 49% of established party members and 57% of trade union members.

In the build-up, Tom Watson was also announced as the winner of the deputy leadership contest. The MP, who led the campaign to hold the media to account after accusations arose of  illegalities, promised in his acceptance speech to back the new leader and help them to unite the party.

Whether or not the new leadership can unite the party is the big question that will come out of this contest. The remarkable rise of Jeremy Corbyn exposed a rift between the Labour Parliamentary Party and the party's wider membership and supporters.

The contest had been initially dominated by the more right-leaning Blairites and and centrist Brownites, in the form of younger generation candidates like Chuka Umunna, Tristram Hunt and Liz Kendall and older generation members like Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper.

Yet there was a sense that the party's Left needed to be represented in order to have a substantial debate. That was only accomplished with the assistance of MPs 'lending' Corbyn their nominations. And yet those 'lent' nominations opened a floodgate. The popular appeal of Corbyn seemingly gave the Labour Left the confidence to come out in numbers and chance a return to the mainstream.

The future of the Labour Party from here may well have a lot to do with how it organises going forward.

In the run up to today's announcement, with the defeat of the followers of Brown and Blair seemingly imminent, there began to be suggestions that the two groups should unite themselves into a strong 'moderate' faction. United and organised, they would represent a formidable pressure group, pushing Corbyn to adopt pragmatic policies - and there are already signs of ranks closing with members of the shadow cabinet resigning.

The Left-wing faction, over which Jeremy Corbyn has effectively become leader in the last few months, has shown that it is strong in the party, but it remains firmly a parliamentary outsider. Its numbers are spread out across the country, in trade unions and constituency parties.

Against the strength of the self-appointed 'moderates', who will still have great strength in parliamentary numbers, the Left will need new methods to support its approach. Following its supporters, that will likely mean shifting the power of policy-making away from MPs and out to activists in the community.

One very notable and troubling issue is the absence of a successful female nominee for either leadership position, with Yvette Cooper coming third in the leadership contest and Stella Creasy coming second in the deputy leadership race. That will need to be addressed. One option would be to appoint a female chancellor. But that will be something to delve into deeper as Corbyn announces his shadow cabinet in the coming days.

Today though, the story is that the mainstream pragmatists have lost control of the party to Corbyn and his more idealistic, popular, Left-wing supporters amongst the party membership. In his acceptance speech as the new Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn spoke of wanting to build a better society. For all progressives, it can only be positive and exciting to hear a leader, elected on a huge mandate, championing a challenge to inequality and poverty.

Ed Miliband failed in efforts to put the cost of living at the centre of the political debate, but it remains the big picture

Photograph: Ed Miliband gives his first keynote speech to Labour Party conference as leader, in September 2010. At Labour Party Conference, Manchester (License) (Cropped)

At a time when compassion for the suffering of others is at a high, even forcing Prime Minister David Cameron into accepting more refugees from Syria (BBC, 2015), it is worth remembering that compassion is needed domestically as well. Homelessness has increased even as housing costs have continued to soar (White, 2015). The rising cost of welfare has led to questionable actions to reduce the bill (Stone, 2015) and the proliferation food banks (Wintour & Butler, 2014).

These are all expressions of an underlying theme: the cost of living is too high. Before he became mired in the catastrophic miscalculations that were the Ed Stone and the mugs that boasted of closing borders to foreigners, Ed Miliband tried and failed to make the cost of living the centrepiece of his leadership of the Labour Party (Miliband, 2014).

Overcome by the media pressure to deal with the big issues facing Britain with stern and direct action, as well as party insider insistence on pursuing obsessively conservative methods (Glasman, 2011), Miliband's attempt to take the lead on the big issues of the day dissolved into populist political stunts. For just a moment the Labour leadership had grasped a single coherent theme that might have helped the party to form a distinctive position.

These two, big, long term problems facing the UK - that housing is too expensive and that welfare costs too much - have often been reduced to the result of 'migration problem' which, it is commonly believed, increases the burdens on both of the first two, so making them all the more expensive. Yet migration is little more than a scapegoat, or an exacerbation that exposes fears, and only distracts from the real issues moving beneath the surface. The fact is that the cost of living is too high - there is some dispute, however, as to why.

In the struggle to tackle the exorbitant cost of living, there are two schools. On the Right, the focus is upon so-called distortions of the market - instead of relying on market competition to set prices so that efficient marginal wages will go further, the Right sees government as interfering and managing in a manner that leads to distortions and corporate oligarchies. On the Left, the answers lie with income inequality - provoking a need for intervention to introduce regulation, maximum wages, redistributive taxation, all to ensure that workers earn a better share.

Cost of Living and the Right

On the Right, one of the big criticisms of Left-wing economics is its failure to keep minimum wages, and other measures that inflate costs for business, under control. From the pro-market perspective, a rise in wages increases prices. That wage inflation drives price inflation, which gives rise to wage inflation, in a vicious cycle.

The argument goes that minimum wages hurt employment - they increase labour costs artificially and put basic low paid work at risk of replacement by more economically efficient automation (The Economist, 2015). More complex assessments argue that tax credits are a superior welfare alternative, encouraging people to work by offering subsidy without driving up business costs. Employers can respond by paying more, as they might say, 'competitive' wages - low enough that they can have more staff and more staff of greater skill - with incomes of low paid workers being effectively 'topped up' by tax credits, with the government taking on the cost.

However, with the age of austerity in full swing and public debt being used as the rallying banner for cutting back state taxation and spending, governments have wanted to cut their own budgets (Money Talks, 2015). Tax credits, as a sizeable public expenditure, has become a target, with its cost being passed on to businesses in the form of increases in the minimum wage. That, of course, needs to be paid for out of business profits and so is passed on to customers in higher prices - resulting in higher wages not necessarily meaning relatively higher incomes, as the cost of living also goes up.

For the economic Right, the focus is on trying to find ways to reduce the cost of living without tampering with the delicate functioning of the market (The Economist, 2015{2}). That has led to calls for planning regulation reform to ease way to profits in the house building sector (BBC, 105{2}).

However, the cost of living presents huge challenges, such as the gigantic housing costs, that have no easy or cheap fix. Building houses to address housing shortages is necessary. Yet it is also expensive and the profits that can be derived from a project are as much a part of the problem as the shortage itself. Nor does building them alone tackle the other issues like the unfairness of ownership and the need for economies of scale in the rental sector. Previous attempts in the UK to thrust this task upon the private sector, under Thatcher, only helped propel the country into the present crisis (Gulliver, 2013).

Cost of Living and the Left

For the Left, the pro-market analysis is taken as tantamount to an attack on the life security of the poorest. Moving away from minimum wages is seen as a dangerous step further along the road towards the precarious lives filled with constant stress of zero-hours contracts (Fleming, 2015).

They would seem to have good reason to be guarded. There is evidence that suggests in-work poverty is climbing and the gap between the poorest and prosperity is widening (Pradella, 2015). The relative wage, the value retained by workers from the value they produced, is under increasing pressure.

The response of the Left, historically, has been to try and ameliorate these conditions through welfare. The most obvious and blunt force approach has been deficit spending on public sector projects, a Keynesian option to create more and better paid work - allowing workers to afford a more stable life. This is an idea that, with a new twist, is being considered again by Jeremy Corbyn (Peston, 2015).

For the broader economy, the benefits are proposed to lie in the Keynesian priority of propping up demand. The struggle has become finding a way of doing so within the dominant capitalist market system, without upsetting its balance. The Left's main tools for the task have been tax credits and minimum wages.

Corbyn, in particular, appears to want to turn back - for the duration of the crisis at least - to the more blunt approach with his people's quantitative easing. To make up for lack of income distribution into the pockets of consumers, which suppresses demand, Corbyn suggests turning to credit - much as Reagan and Thatcher did after the suppression of workers' bargaining power in the 1980s (Harvey, 2010). But in true democratic fashion, the burden of that debt falls of the state on behalf of all of the people, rather than on the head of any particular debtor.

So while the pro-market Right is interested in seeking ways to make it possible to do more with less, the Left's focus on giving people more to spend.

Cost of Living: The Bigger Picture

However, because Corbyn's QE for the People is just a correction for a crisis, sooner of later the Left will have to come back around to Ed Miliband's aborted project to tackle the cost of living head on, which, under pressure from the clamour to tackle public debts, shows significant crossover with the Right. Miliband's strategy included promises to tackle energy costs, to increase the housing supply, to tackle renting costs, to cut tax for poorest, to cut small business rates, to increase wages and clamp down on the illegal - and migrant-exploiting - practice of undercutting wages.

The pro-market groups on the Right also have to confront big questions. When the early free traders, like Richard Cobden and John Bright, wanted to extend free trade in the interests of peace, breaking the power of corporations and land owners, and making food cheaper for the people. Modern free traders are battling against the land oligarchies of their own times, but the power and influence of rentiers over the high cost of dwellings will not be shaken off by a laissez-faire cull of regulations. Rentiers own the playing field as well as the pieces.

If the high price of housing and energy could be tackled, then a debate over minimum wages or marginal wages would be held on a much clearer, unfogged, field. The discussion of the impact of wage levels - and how they set the 'purchase power' of the poorest, with their higher pay coming at the cost of higher business prices, potentially meaning higher prices and lower employment - would be substantially more straightforward.

Yet it is hard to shake the feeling that the wages debate would still mean buying into an economic rhetoric based on manipulation and coercion of people into certain kinds of 'productive' behaviours, and which ignores key ideas. Particularly, who benefits, how and how equally from the profits/net gains of an enterprise? There were elements of that idea in the debate that Ed Miliband tried to open up on the cost of living, in taking elements from both camps.

But it didn't go far enough, going only so far as to make a pitch to the middle class within present structures (Grice, 2014) - and was soon drowned out by populist support for closed borders and austerity toward welfare. Surely, the really progressive approach is to ask whether we can reconstruct the economy so that people can get a better relative share of the product of their work, see their relative share go further, and have greater social security?

The only way to achieve that is to tackle the cost of living holistically. Such an alternative approach to solving the cost of living crisis would need to be coherent, with a core idea and theme that would bind the various parts together.

It would need co-operation and mutuality in all sectors, to give people the power to ensure they receive a proper relative share. It would need guarantees of basic economic securities that would have a minimal distorting affect upon the costs of business, such as a citizen's income. And, it would need to tackle the oligarchic rentier control over the basic fundamental resources such as energy and housing that siphon off so much of a wage - particularly in the housing sector where, both in ownership and rental, costs have spiralled up beyond any semblance of reality under the inefficient system of private landlords that blocks the positive affects of economies of scale.

While presenting a progressive alternative would be a gigantic challenge, it also presents a clear and distinct path forwards. In a mainstream assembled around frustratingly similar politicians offering bafflingly similar ideas, a distinct and coherent economic alternative could be electorally popular as well as economically necessary.

A sudden, stark and tragic turning point for our common humanity

Yesterday, the British media at large made a dramatic U-turn. After years of pushing aggressive and insensitive attitudes towards migrants of all kinds, the death of one small boy - an image thrust right into face of people across the UK - has produced a dramatic volte face (Wintour, 2015).

Suddenly, the reality of the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Syria and by the other ongoing conflicts in North Africa - such as in Libya and Iraq - was out in the open. These people were no longer dehumanised 'immigrants' out to steal jobs. They were human beings again, terrified strangers fleeing for their lives.

With the apparent shift in public opinion represented by the change in the media's tone, David Cameron's Premiership is suddenly under substantial pressure (Wintour, 2015{2}). While Cameron has stood resolutely aloof, governments across Europe have at times creaked with the strain and ordinary people have taken the responsibility upon themselves to save lives and to shelter them (Duffy, 2015; Moore, 2015).

The shift in the media tone may well be the signal for the government to now alter its policy with regards to the crisis - in particular accepting more of the refugees from Syria. But, behind the present crisis, there is a dangerous matter just as large that the shift in tone may begin to address. And that is the dehumanisation that has crept into public attitudes over the last decade (Kingsley, 2015).

Those attitudes, of reducing human beings to crude caricatures based on simplistic, grim and derogatory terms, posed as much of a threat to the internal workings of British society as it did to outsiders unfortunate enough to cross paths with it. It turns people cold towards outsiders of all kinds - including the least fortunate in their own communities, who find themselves suffering from cruel stigmas and draconian crackdowns in addition to poverty and homelessness (Sparkes, 2015).

Hopefully - and it should be stressed that this is hope - this one tragedy, and the sudden stark turning point it has made possible, can at least have a decisive impact and force a step forward in the recognition of our common humanity.