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.

References

Guy Verhofstadt's 'Liberal victory on other side of Atlantic. @JustinTrudeau and his positive campaign inspiring example for the Old Continent #trudeaumania'; from Twitter; 20 October 2015.

Matthew Hays' 'Will Trudeaumania sweep Canada’s Liberals into power – again?'; in The Guardian; 14 October 2015.

Claire Phipps' 'Justin Trudeau: who is Canada's new prime minister?'; in The Guardian; 20 October 2015.

'Guy Verhofstadt plenary speech on Greece with Alexis Tsipras 8-7-2015'; from the ALDE Group, on YouTube; 8 July 2015.

Kerin Hope's 'Syriza presents controversial package of tax and pension reforms'; in the Financial Times; 13 October 2015.

Martin Farrer, Jennifer Rankin & Ian Traynor's 'Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis resigns despite referendum no vote'; in The Guardian; 6 July 2015.

Jon Henley & Ian Traynor's 'Greek crisis: Syriza rebels form Popular Unity party ahead of election'; in The Guardian; 21 August 2015.

Jane Kramer's 'The Demolition Man: Matteo Renzi is on a mission to remake Italy'; in New Yorker; 29 June 2015.

Michael Day's 'Is this Italy's Tony Blair? Meet Matteo Renzi, the rising star of Italian politics'; in The Independent; 14 February 2014.

'Renzi clears hurdles over labour reform'; on EurActiv; 13 October 2014.

Robert Peston's 'Miliband as Thatcher not Foot?'; on the BBC; 9 April 2015.

Manuel Cortes' 'Jeremy Corbyn is right, we need a People’s Railway'; on Labour List; 19 August 2015.

James Politi's 'Renzi wins green light for electoral reform'; in the Financial Times; 4 May 2015.

Lorenzo Totaro & Chiara Vasarri's 'Italian Youth Unemployment Rises to its Highest Level Ever'; in Bloomberg Business; 31 July 2015.

 Daniel Howden & Yiannis Baboulias' 'Who’d be young and Greek? Searching for a future after the debt crisis'; in The Guardian; 26 July 2015.

Patrick Wintour's 'Ed Miliband pledges 80,000 extra apprenticeships a year in England'; in The Guardian; 16 February 2015.

Nouriel Roubini's 'Europe’s politics of dystopia: The rising tide of illiberalism and nationalism threatens to break up the EU - What is needed as an urgent priority are policies to boost demand, job creation and growth'; in The Guardian; 29 October 2015.

Yanis Varoufakis and Alex Sakalis' '"One very simple, but radical, idea: to democratise Europe." An interview with Yanis Varoufakis'; on Open Democracy; 25 October 2015.