Oldham will be the first preview of who is winning the political battles in the public eye

Oldham will host the first by-election of this parliament, triggered by the death of Labour MP Michael Meacher. It will be a set piece political event that might just offer some small insights into whether party ideas are capturing the public imagination. Photograph: Oldham Town Hall by Mikey (License) (Cropped)

On Wednesday the Conservative fiscal plan for the next four and a half years was laid out by the Chancellor. Complete with politically considered back tracks and U-turns, George Osborne's spending review laid out the cuts, caps, and the phasing out and shifting of burdens that we should expect.

Yet, even with all of this information now on the table, the question of how to oppose the Conservative approach is putting Labour in a bind. Labour are trying, though not too hard, to avoid fall into a civil war - the result of which would almost be that the New Labour faction would be forced to leave the party and could even taking a majority of Jeremy Corbyn's party MPs with them.

These events are all very poignantly timed, as the first test for all sides - an important trial run, almost - is coming on the 3rd December in the form of the Oldham West and Royton by-election. From its result, it will be admittedly difficult to extrapolate anything particularly substantial.

Not until April, and the National Assembly and London Mayoral elections will we see a full appraisal of the response of the country to the election of a Conservative majority, its policies on human rights and austerity, and Jeremy Corbyn's new approach as leader of the Labour Party. Yet next Thursday's by-election might just provide a small preview.

Voters in Oldham will be the first to pass direct comment on what was, effectively, Osborne's third budget of the year. Those that turn out at the polls for the by-election will get a chance to say what they think of the Chancellor's offerings.

Despite the fact that the focus for most people will be on the headline of Osborne's likely-to-be-popular U-turn on Tax Credits (BBC, 2015) - and the U-turn on cuts to police budgets that he tried to pass off as a Labour idea - there were other policies to be found in the spending review.

These policies include the gradual phasing out of tax credits, to be replaced with the less supportive universal credit (Allen et al, 2015); a new cap on housing benefit (Cross, 2015); and the replacement of grants for student nurses with loans (Sims, 2015).

According to the assessment by the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), the poorest will be the most heavily impacted by these changes (Allen et al, 2015) - although that is disputed by Conservatives. Critics have also been sure to point out that austerity is far from over (Wearden, 2015). Further cuts or tax rises may even be necessary if Osborne's gamble on the OBR's positive outlook fails to pay off (Peston, 2015).

Osborne's domestic reforms also appear to match the ideas in his recent speech laying out his plan for the European Union - another issue that may well be on voters' minds. For the Conservatives, the aim is clearly for a deregulated EU that is for business (Sparrow, 2015), rather than citizens - reserving free movement only for trade and money.

Leading the progressive opposition at this point should be the Labour Party. However, Jeremy Corbyn's opposition to intervention in Syria (Wintour, 2015), at least in the present terms and under the present conditions, is proving to be just the latest opportunity for a divide to open up between Corbyn, along with his supporters, and the party's mainstream - particularly in the parliamentary party.

It doesn't seem to be helping to quell the dissent of the few - at the moment, at least - in the Labour Party who support intervention, that even Conservative commentators are saying that the UK's most powerful role right now may well be diplomatic rather than military (Davis, 2015).

There is also the likelihood of a hugely significant event on Tuesday, just days before the by-election, when NHS doctors go on strike, to be followed by two more days of action later in December, if renewed negotiations do not achieve enough ground (Tran, 2015).

Politically, ideologically, there is a lot of pressure building. Yet it won't all be about objective analysis of the impact of policies. Politics is also a contest over the popular perception fought in, and often with, the media. In that game, the Conservatives have tended to fare best, and Osborne has managed to make all of the headlines about how he is protecting, for now at least, those already in the system.

What it is essential for progressives to get across, and rally support behind, is that this is something the Chancellor has only achieved through the shifting of burdens and letting new entrants be hit by the deepest cutbacks (Allen et al, 2015, Cross, 2015). Yet it is always difficult to make heard the narrative based on those who will be hurt in theory, when up against a narrative of those will not now be hurt in the present.

As for other progressive opposition parties, like the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, they will just want to be heard and to see a decent turnout. They both risk being drowned out by the larger narratives coalescing around the two big parties, yet there is room for them to still make an impact. For the Greens, the UN climate change summit in Paris puts the environment and clean energy in the public eye (Vaughan, 2015), while the Lib Dems have been vocal in their opposition to the government over human rights and the rights of refugees (Riley-Smith, 2015) - a key pillar in their plan for a 'Lib Dem Fightback'.

However, set piece events like Thursday's by-election only offer a snapshot impression of where the different factions and parties are, relative to each other, and who is hearing the message sent out by who. The big question - which will likely only be answered in subtle shades of grey - will be whether Osborne has succeeded in getting out the message he wants heard, and whether Corbyn's approach can produce in terms of practical results.

Autumn Statement: Osborne's spending review takes risks & makes U-turns to dodge political storms - but only in the short term

George Osborne wants to be seen as a builder and as a friend to workers. Lower borrowing costs allow him to cut less this time around and tax rises offer more apprenticeships, yet it all rests on a series of gambles. Photograph: The Chancellor with guests at Port of Tilbury on 1 April 2014 by HM Treasury (License) (Cropped)

This was expected to be an announcement of ever deeper cuts than ever before, with £20bn needed to keep on course with Conservative fiscal targets (Kuenssberg et al, 2015). With George Osborne as Chancellor, however, it was never quite possible to be too sure.

The big unexpected move this time around was the Chancellor's decision to drop the proposed cuts to tax credits (Robinson, 2015). Announcing a better than expected fiscal situation, and saying he had listened to concerns, Osborne said it was easier simply to avoid the changes altogether (Politics Home, 2015).

That was accompanied by the announcement of no cuts to police budgets and the frontloading of NHS funding at £6bn next year (ITV, 2015; Dominiczak, 2015). In sum, these announcements gave the impression of a much less stringent budget, on the back of an Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) assessment that more money would be available, with lower borrowing costs, and so less would need to be cut (Reuben, 2015).

These announcements followed the Osborne's habit from previous budgetary statements and announcements, of pulling out a surprise. And yet, for everything that Osborne hasn't cut, he is still gambling on the market bailing him out later by delivering the OBR's predicted strong economic conditions, rewarding him with higher tax receipts, if he is going to meet his own targets.

If expectations and receipts fall short then cuts will still have to be found later. In fact, the observation has been made that the backdown on tax credit cuts is only a temporary stay, as the cuts will still come with its phasing out to be replaced with the universal credit by 2020 (Kuenssberg, 2015; Eaton, 2015).

Burdens are once again being shifted by the Chancellor. Along with the private debts taken on over the last five years by students, joined now by student nurses (BBC, 2015), there will be caps on housing benefits (Peston, 2015). There was also no relief from the Tampon Tax, with the odd decision to maintain the tax but to use it to fund women's charities (Richards, 2015).

The burdens are also being stacked onto local government and the private sector - with new taxes on business to pay for apprenticeships and local government expected to raise local rates to cover certain services (ITV, 2015{2}; Wintour, 2015).

Full analysis of the line-item details will follow from all corners of the media and political world.

Yet the initial impression is that the Chancellor is once again taking a risk. Osborne is gambling on markets and the broader economy to perform well enough to buy him time and space until the political storms blows over - which allows him to wriggle around on the nose cuts, in favour of less dramatic phased changes.

Spending Review Preview: Osborne has led government to bet the house on policies like Right to Buy cutting cost of living

The government's Right to Buy scheme is no more than a stop gap measure in the battle to deal with the housing crisis and does little to shelter the poorest and most vulnerable from affordable housing shortages.

On Wednesday, following PMQs, Chancellor George Osborne will make his Autumn Statement (Parker & Giugliano, 2015). The statement serves as a spending review, assessing how the treasury is faring with its budget plan, a plan that is dependent upon many factors.

The review will give the country a chance to peek inside Number 11 and discover, through the obscuring lens of politics-speak, how the Chancellor intends to achieve his planned cuts (Wheeler, 2015) - particularly after the damage done by Lib Dem, Labour and Crossbencher Lords to his attempts to cut spending on tax credits (BBC, 2015).

The view amongst independent assessors is that Osborne's cuts are set to have a drastic impact on those carrying the heaviest working burdens for the least reward (Ross, 2015; Milligan, 2015). With more money now having to found to lessen the burden on those losing tax credits, there are clear fears that those funds will be found simply by taking even more away from others (Wintour, 2015).

There is only one thing that can temper the impact of Chancellor Osborne's cuts, and that is the much vaunted efficiency of markets that those on the Right put so much faith in. Without increased efficiency, most tellingly demonstrated by a fall in the cost of living, the impact of welfare cuts will be drastic and long-lasting.

By far and away the most impactful part of the cost of living is the cost of housing. The Conservative's darling policy for this end is their 'Right to Buy' scheme, yet the scheme is controversial. The project offers huge discounts for housing association tenants to buy their rented houses, with certain terms and conditions (Sarling, 2015). Yet the project will be costly and the losses could very well fall most hard upon the housing associations themselves and councils, especially in the most deprived areas.

The intention, plainly, is to increase the number of houses on the buyers' market, so as to increase supply, and so competition, in order to decrease costs. However, the plan can only represent a stop gap, buying time for building of more houses. It cannot be a replacement for it.

Back in 2014, Alicia Glen, New York's Deputy mayor for housing and economic development, assessed the issue of housing affordability by drawing attention to problems with the UK's private rental sector (Murray, 2014). Glen remarked that the private rental in the UK is comparatively small and that management of private rental properties on a small scale is expensive and inefficient, stressing that only at a large scale can its costs be effectively reduced.

"The problem is if you don’t do affordable housing as rental housing by definition you’re going to lose that unit unless you have incredibly aggressive enforcement on resale. You could say - and a lot of conservatives would say - there’s nothing wrong with subsidising the production of a unit if a poor person lives there and 10 years later they sell it for a gazillion dollars - they’ve made money and that’s wealth creation. But you’ve lost the unit and so you’re not making any sort of long-term dent in the affordable housing crisis."

And yet, reports are pointing out that the scheme is already failing to tackle the essential problems of the housing crisis (Gallagher, 2015). Instead of increasing the availability of affordable housing, as many as two-fifths of Right to Buy properties have simply been let out privately by their new owners.

This so-called 'pillaging' of social housing is only a temporary means of diverting the housing crisis (Hutton, 2015). It takes affordable housing away from the poorest and most vulnerable to temporarily increase housing supply for those on middle incomes. Yet it doesn't break the cycles of debt and lending, along with asset investments which all drive up prices, and simply adds more properties to yet another housing bubble.

With Osborne's budget, everything depends upon the cost of living consistently falling. Yet without breaking the housing bubble, without a large increase in supply and competition, and without a scaling up of the operation of private rental - a project in which co-operatives should not be ruled out - the essential problems are not going to be fixed. The cost of housing will not fall, and so the cost of living will not fall.

If the cost of living does not fall, then Osborne's huge contraction of state spending, and the services and safety nets that funding supports, mean that the poorest and most vulnerable will be trapped. With cuts to support, along with wages and hours being reduced and made ever less secure, the poorest will be even further excluded - with housing, left in the hands of schemes like Right to Buy, becoming just another social mobility ladder that has been kicked away.

Universal suffrage, for all adult citizens, is a basic principle that should be without controversy - including votes at 16

On Wednesday, the Lords voted to defeat the government on the matter of Votes at 16 (Watt, 2015) - which would allow those of the ages 16 and 17 to vote in the EU referendum. Putting aside for the moment the odd fact that the unelected chamber has intervened once again in pursuit of a progressive purpose, the vote in the Lords has brought back to the table an important matter.

Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, put it succinctly (Farron, 2015):

"It is hypocrisy of the worst kind to argue against votes at 16 for the EU referendum. The government accepts that at 16 you are mature enough to serve in the Armed Forces, be married and pay tax, and they should now give these same people the right to vote."

The past two centuries in Britain have seen a long, and slow, progressive march towards ending democratic discrimination. First came the ending of class and wealth discrimination that excluded the 99% who were not aristocrats or wealthy property owners. Then came, in slow and apportioned amounts, the end of gender and race discrimination at the ballot box.

None of those gains have been perfect. Lords and Bishops still sit in Parliament without election. Women are still sorely under represented in elected offices, as are representatives from minorities. Wealthy and propertied men still far exceed those from poorer backgrounds. And, age remains a barrier for those of the ages of 16 and 17 - despite their ability to actively participate in society.

It is a basic liberal democratic principle that, should you have to abide by the rules and customs of a society, you should have the right to a voice in deciding those rules and customs. A society can only be said to have true universal suffrage when all those who are adult citizens have access to same rights for compliance with the same duties.

Only through being consistent and inclusive, as well as promising representative results, can democracy invigorate and engage rather disenchant. Electoral reform is sorely needed, and an important part of those reforms will be votes at 16.

Efforts to extinguish the light of human progress sometimes cause the candlelight to flicker, but it always burns the brighter after

Peace for Paris. Photograph: From Subjectif Art, design by Jean Jullien (License)

The world is moving inexorably forwards. More freedoms, more rights, more equality. That progress has been tempered time and again by horrifying bouts of violence and war, psychotic acts of terror and ruthless acts of sectarian cleansing. Yet humanity has continued to stumble its way out of the darkness.

Acts of violence, counter-revolutionary reaction and suppression by those would keep the world trapped in the darkness, rear up with each step forward. They attempt use fear to control and dissuade, to put out the light. Yet each act of violence has changed humanity. It forges an ever growing, ever spreading, solidarity against violence, ignorance and selfishness. It simply makes the case, and support, for peace, liberty and tolerance stronger.

Vaclav Havel was a writer and playwright who became a political dissident against totalitarian communist rule and went on to became the first President of the Czech Republic. At the height of the constant, suppressive, threat of arrest and imprisonment, Havel wrote The Power of the Powerless. In it, Havel described how under the rule of even the most desperate and tyrannical of police states, the light of dissent and liberty can flicker into life through simple acts of disobedience and the refusal to comply with the wielders of power and fear. That in these simple acts, an individual:

"...rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth."

For many, the events in Paris, or in Beirut, have extinguished their ability to see that light - or so dimmed their sensitivity to it beneath a howling storm of pain and loss that they may never see it again. For those people, there is perhaps little comfort in knowing that despite, and maybe in spite of, atrocities, the statistics say that there are only positive trends when it comes to human health and prosperity.

To those people, it may well be cold comfort that the light continues to flicker, let alone that it will grow stronger. Even so, we cannot give up on, or ignore, that flame. By its light, people have changed the world for the better with even the smallest acts of freedom.

Whether it's the struggle for human rights, civil rights and liberties, and democracy around the world, or their particular manifestations in the rising visibility of struggles for Women's rights, LGBT rights or for recognition that Black Lives Matter, the movement towards equality and respect is irresistible.

Cameron & Osborne's long term plan for austerity is now deep into territory even Conservatives are finding hard to accept

David Cameron's long term austerity plan is starting to worry Conservatives, but he and ministers seem to be blissfully unaware of the human impact of cuts upon even working families. Photograph: Prime Minister David Cameron - official photograph by Number 10 (License) (Cropped)

With their defeat in the Lords on Tax Credit cuts, the Conservatives seem to be in a bit of a crisis (Morris & Grice, 2015). While Chancellor George Osborne has assured anyone who will listen that he has found his next round of cuts (BBC, 2015), a massive 30% from departmental budgets to be announced at the spending review, he has faced opposition from his own party.

Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major called for a rethink of the government's approach in light of rising inequality and the impact of policies upon the poorest (Quinn, 2015). There has even been opposition from the Conservative controlled work and pensions select committee.

The members of the select committee argued that cuts are at their limit and urged the Chancellor to take a pause and rethink his priorities (Wintour, 2015). Combined with the Conservative MPs who spoke out against Tax Credit cuts and those that would not back a slackening of Sunday trading laws (Dathan, 2015; Lansdale, 2015) - which led to that proposal being withdrawn (BBC, 2015{2}) - the government is under growing pressure to back down and change direction.

Yet it seems unlikely that, in the long run, David Cameron's Ministry will deviate from its general course. The broadest evidence for that is the Prime Minister's own bafflingly ill-informed letter to Ian Hudspeth, the leader of his native Oxfordshire county council, criticising cuts to services (Monbiot, 2015; Oliver, 2015).

Cameron's apparent ignorance of the depth of impact from his own economic policy is yet another example of the Conservative failure, or refusal, to address the human cost of their policies (Morse, 2015; Stewart & Elliott, 2015). According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the burden of cuts has been falling almost squarely upon those least able to bear it (Hastings et al, 2015).

Essential services like social care are being stretched thin and, as Cameron himself notes, staples of British civil society like libraries and museums have already had their funding cut (The Independent, 2015). And yet, the most well off have been sheltered.

Opposing and mitigating the deeply negative impact of the cuts on citizens requires two things. First, the progressives on the opposition benches have to unite behind broad, common positions. And so, second, moderate Conservatives willing to rebel against government policy can move decisively to check negative plans. It has been seen before over the seven months of this government: only a broad Parliamentary effort can successfully defeat the government's, albeit thin, majority.

As John Major admitted, inequality isn't about skivers or scroungers. It's about those with opportunities and those without them - and that second category is at risk of being flooded with the 'working families' Conservatives have tried to make a staple of their support.

The key for progressives is to make sure concerned Conservatives see how much hurt austerity can and will bring down upon the very people they depend upon for votes in their constituencies - to show them just how toxic it can be to have a lack of compassion and consideration.

Junior doctors strike ballot exposes reality of human cost behind Tory laissez-faire

Junior Doctors at Castlefields Arena in October, taking part in the People's Assembly Take Back Manchester protest march that was held in parallel with the Conservative Party Conference.

Last week ended with news that ballots had been sent out a for vote on whether doctors should go on strike (The Guardian, 2015). The decision follows the latest developments in the dispute between junior doctors and Conservative Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (The Economist, 2015).

With Prime Minister's Questions as a back drop, Hunt attempted to see off possible strike action with an offer of higher pay to junior doctors (Campbell, 2015). Yet his offer of an 11% rise was heavily criticised for being massively offset by the redefining of working hours to run longer into the evening - cutting what could previously be defined as out-of-hours pay during anti-social hours.

A vote for industrial action will surely reignite the tense clashes between government and unionised public servants that have been so much a feature of the Cameron ministries. As with the tube strikes, fears over long shifts worked during anti-social hours have led to stand offs and tense meetings between public sector union leaders and Conservative government ministers (BBC, 2015; Cooper, 2015).

For the Conservatives, their response has been consistent. They have refused point blank to see the human impact of political and economic decisions. The approach of the Right over the last five years has been to simply dismiss or condemn public servant strikes as "irresponsible" and inappropriate (BBC, 2011; Wardrop, 2011; Evening Standard, 2015).

Yet Conservative decisions are having profound affects upon the lives of many people, not least public servants. There have been public sector and private sector job losses, a more frightening prospect for many as unemployment support has also been cut and restricted, and invasive pressures have been put upon public servants.

From doctors to tube workers, to low pay workers, the balance between work and life is being drastically tipped by a lurching grasping attempt by the market to snatch up the personal time of citizens (Jeffries, 2014; The Guardian, 2015). Hours are running longer and later, more temporary and more insecure. Refusal runs the risk of dismissal in favour of someone who will accept the conditions.

On the Conservative part, there is a denial of responsibility. As Conservatives shift the duties and burdens onto the individual, they stand by their laissez-faire position that it is not the place of the state to 'interfere' with how markets are shaping people's lives.

Yet the Conservative use of the laissez-faire approach does not seem to reflect its liberal origins. The difference between laissez-faire in the hands of the Liberals of old and the Conservatives of today, is that the Liberals saw work as a means to personal self-improvement and liberation.

In pursuit of those aims, of ensuring that "individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly", Liberals moved away from laissez-faire - towards a more interventionist approach - when the realities of exploitation and poverty where exposed. The ideological and economic ground they abandoned has been occupied by the Conservatives.

In Conservative hands the high aims of laissez-faire look more like propaganda. The economy, as they're managing it, is hugely unequal. Their 'apparent' prosperity is built around the statistical distortion caused by the concentrated wealth of the 1% - through property and other assets holding inflated value - and through "competitiveness" - where investors and employers can be guaranteed cheap labour, from workers who live increasingly fragile and temporary lives filled with stress and anxiety.

This is laissez-faire within a strictly hierarchical, deeply unequal, conservatism organisation of society. A society where free time is treated as the privileged reward of success in a system based around wealth, assets and property. That system locks out the poor and the unfortunate, who have no chance of owning property at grossly inflated prices and for whom social progress requires some combination of debt, nepotism and extreme good fortune (Mason, 2015).

What the junior doctors are campaigning for affects all citizens. Safely run services and respect for the rights of citizens to lives outside of work. It isn't unreasonable to put alongside to those demands the right to some sort of security & consistency, and a guarantee against poverty, as demands on workers become greater and the safety nets to protect them become thinner.

The market may have competition but it is not fair, particularly in a society suffering from massive inequality. For a government to choose to stand by as people are stretched thin, used up & exploited, or cast recklessly adrift by market forces is for it to neglect its duty to social welfare. Whether they like it or not, Conservatives have to face to fact that the state has a duty to interfere and that it can do so for the common good.

Intervention doesn't have to mean state ownership. There are decentralised alternatives like co-operatives and a citizen's income that could empower workers and make them more secure. But what it does mean, is that a government has to be prepared to act and to look beyond the appearance of prosperity, as reflected in short term profits, to find better alternatives.

Can Guy Verhofstadt's four steps to reforming the state help bring together progressives of all stripes?

In July, Guy Verhofstadt outlined to Alexis Tsipras the steps he believed where necessary to reform the state. Photograph: Press Conference from ALDE Communication (License) (Cropped)

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Liberal caucus in the European Parliament, was amongst those to congratulate Justin Trudeau on his party's victory in the Canadian general election. The former Prime Minister of Belgium praised the inspiring example set by the Liberal Party of Canada's positive campaign (Verhofstadt, 2015).

Trudeau's team sought to rise above their opponents' negative campaigning and pledged investment in much needed infrastructure - with the promised benefit of stimulating the economy - and to pursue progressive policies like a positive climate change policy, taking the pro-choice side of the abortion debate, and seeking to heal the wounds from internal conflict over indigenous rights (Hays, 2015; Phipps, 2015).

It is unsurprising that Europe's liberals would be looking for the lessons they can learn from the success of their counterparts in North America. In the European Union, liberals govern in only 7 countries, their European Parliament group holds only 9% of seats, and in countries like Germany and the UK the long established liberal parties have faced electoral wipeouts over the last five years.

Yet the elections in Canada - as well as elections in Argentina, Poland and elsewhere over the past week - confirm one thing very clearly. Overcoming the Conservative establishment and fending off the efforts of Right-wing populists to assume control, isn't something that one progressive faction alone can accomplish.

Relying on the distorting effect of electoral systems that force voters into unrepresentative concentrations, or hitching the party wagon to a popular carthorse, cannot be considered lasting strategies. In what is clearly a pluralistic and divided political arena, the alternative has to be the building of alliances - and that means finding common cause between liberals and democrats, socialists and radicals, that can hash out what it means to be progressive in opposition to conservatism.

Back in July, Guy Verhofstadt used a visit by Prime Minister of Greece Alexis Tsipras to the European Parliament to challenge the Syriza leader on the need for political reform in Greece (ALDE Group, 2015) - a confrontation that was at least softened with support for finding a solution to the government of Greece's need for serious debt relief.

In his speech, Verhofstadt laid out a series of reforms Tsipras would be required to take if Greece was going to get the support it needs. Condensed into four steps, they were:

• Bring an end to clientelism & establishment privileges,
• Downsize the public sector,
• Privatise public banks, and
• Open up employment to give young people access.

If these four steps can be taken to represent a condensed version of the reforming aims of modern liberalism, how do they match up with the aims of other progressives?

In Greece, Tsipras and the Radical Left Syriza party have been struggling under stringent fiscal and economic conditions to press on with reforms (Hope, 2015). Tsipras choice to accept Eurozone terms for a further 'memorandum' bailout, to get access to the funds to continue reforms, even caused a split in his party that saw first Yanis Varoufakis and then later the Left faction of his party leave (Farrer, Rankin & Traynor, 2015; Henley & Traynor, 2015).

In his efforts to find a solution to the recurring crises, Alexis Tsipras' pragmatic radicalism has seen the Prime Minister of Greece drifting into the same political territory as that occupied by Prime Minister of Italy, and Partito Democratico leader, Matteo Renzi.

In Italy, Renzi has faced many of the same problems as Tsipras: unemployment, particularly amongst young people; clientelism and corruption; and a public and private sector heavily intertwined (Kramer, 2015). His approach has been to try to work within neoliberal models and play by its rules - a big centrist democrat legacy of Tony Blair (Day, 2014). That has required the pursuit of "competitiveness", including making labour more "flexible" - meaning making the cost of business cheaper, by making the cost and permanency of labour cheaper and weaker (EurActiv, 2014).

In the run-up to the UK general election in May, BBC Economics Editor Robert Peston described Ed Miliband as in the mould of Margaret Thatcher in his attempt to react to the times, and the debts held by the state, to tried to find solutions that did not involve the state being in control or ownership (Peston, 2015). In seeking decentralised solutions, Miliband was crossing into traditional liberal territory, but he struggled to sell them or inspire support with them

With Jeremy Corbyn taking over the helm of the Labour Party there have been fears of a sharp shift towards state ownership. Yet the ideas of the his economic advisory council are fundamentally mainstream and his 'renationalisation' plans have been more about co-operative public ownership than state control (Cortes, 2015).

In Greece, Italy and the UK, economic conditions are forcing parties of the Left to look for solutions that would certainly fall within two of Verhofstadt's recommendations: to downsize the public sector and privatise public banks. The question then becomes whether progressive parties can find an economic approach broadly acceptable to all sides.

As for political reforms, the situation looks trickier. In the UK, support for electoral reform towards something more proportional and bringing an end to an unelected Lords is growing, but is far from certain. In Italy, proposed political and constitutional reforms remain controversial in their attempts to strengthen the executive over the legislative (Politi, 2015), while Italy, and Greece, remain in an ongoing struggle to tackle corruption.

With regards to youth unemployment, in both Italy and Greece, tackling that specific problem seems a long way away as both countries grapple with the broader crisis (Totaro & Vasarri, 2015; Howden & Baboulias, 2015). In the UK, the Conservative government is pursuing apprenticeships as its go to measure, a pledge matched by the Labour Party during the election campaign (Wintour, 2015).

The need to find broad agreement across the Centre and Left is hastened by the dangerous rise of populism in the hands of deeply sectarian factions and moved along by popular nationalism and popular traditionalism (Roubini, 2015). Critics of conservative populism call for a Keynesian response that boosts aggregate demand with job creation and economic growth, that reduces income inequality and increases opportunities for the young.

To achieve these goals, a way has to be found to overcome the problem of social democratic/liberal positions having become toxic and to embrace the fact that people want something more. There is a general progressive hope, expressed through protests and activism, for a grander vision that focusses less on ambition and wealth, and more on cooperation and on what kind of life, and what kind of opportunities, there can be.

Elements of Guy Verhofstadt's proposed reforms being found in the work of other government's of the Left across Europe, even under huge fiscal burdens, certainly shows that some sort of bridge can be built between the positions of moderate and radical progressives, whether democrats or liberals, to offer a positive progressive alternative to conservatism, nationalism and populism.

But these are only the broad strokes and far more progressive things can be achieved. The next step has to be to embrace movements like Yanis Varoufakis' "very simple, but radical, idea" to build a cross-party EU democracy movement (Varoufakis & Sakalis, 2015). In such movements there is a chance to find common ground in pursuit of reform for the common good.

If Labour is going to compete with the SNP in Scotland, it needs to address its own complicated and confusing politics

Labour have a lot of work to do in Scotland if they are to recover from the landslide defeat that cost Jim Murphy his job. Photograph: Jim Murphy and Eddie Izzard meeting retailers in East Renfrewshire by Scottish Labour (License) (Cropped)

In his speech to the Scottish Labour Party conference, Jeremy Corbyn made clear his intention of facing the SNP head on in Scottish Parliamentary Elections in May (BBC, 2015). Corbyn pulled no punches in the speech, which contained barely veiled criticism of SNP. He referred to Labour as the true democratic socialist party, in both "words and in deeds".

Along with new Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, the Labour leadership face an undoubtedly uphill task. Even accounting for the 'Corbyn Effect' and 'Corbynmania', the general election in May was only the culmination of years of alienation - during which time the popularity of the SNP soared.

If Corbyn wants to outright defeat the SNP, he has to get to grips with Labour's long term Problems. At the last election, Labour lost support in every direction: they lost their base on the Left and amongst the working class by making those supporters feel abandoned; and they lost amongst their targets on the Right because the Tories convinced voters that their abandonment of the Left was not genuine.

Their unclear, inconsistent, positions - that sought to string the Left along without having to pursue Left policies - only led to alienation.

Ahead of Corbyn and Dugdale is the task of making Labour credible again. But rather than how this is usually interpreted - vis a vis embracing mainstream neoliberalism - the renewed credibility requires consistency: clear beliefs, backed by clear motivations, that support clearly communicated stances and policies.

That means Labour has to be very careful of U-turns and wavering - the choice to delay tax credits cuts rather than to kill them outright (BBC, 2015{2}), or Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell's shifting position on George Osborne's fiscal responsibility charter (Perraudin & Wintour, 2015), both being prime examples.

Along with establishing their own position, they also seem determined - if the thinly veiled criticisms from Corbyn's speech tells us anything - to shake the impression people have of the SNP as a true party of the Left.

There certainly are, undoubtedly, some legitimate criticisms to be made with regards to SNP governance (Macwhirter, 2015). And it isn't a departure from reality to suggest that the SNP could be more comfortably described as a broad tent party of the Centre. But the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon is no flash in the pan protest vote, to be undone by the simple bursting of a bubble.

The SNP used disaffection on the Left with Blair and Brown's long rule of Labour to first establish themselves, through Alex Salmond's Scottish minority administration, as a credible party of government. As Labour's credibility sank, the SNP converted that position into a majority in Scotland in 2011 and then a virtual sweep of Scottish seats at Westminster in 2015 under Nicola Sturgeon.

The position of the SNP has been at least a decade in the making. It is a well organised, with visible support that wields distinctive branding and a clear sense of themselves as the opponents of conservatives. Theirs is a formidable position.

If they're to compete, Labour need consistency, clarity and clear communication. Without addressing the complicated and confusing politics with which they alienated supporters as New Labour, they stand little chance of being seen as a credible alternative to the SNP.