The Alternative Year: What kind of year has it been? Four sparks of hope from 2016

For progressives, 2016 has felt like the season finale of an Aaron Sorkin drama. The political world seems to have fallen into a very dark, and rather conspicuously, 1930s shaped hole. Neoliberalism's war of attrition on public services has taken a deep toll and ordinary people face a difficult future. From natural disasters to terrorist attacks and wars, to the humanitarian catastrophe that is the refugee crisis, people have died.

Amidst all of the upset and unrest, the far-right are back and they're getting into positions of influence and power. Russia, America, Hungary and Poland all have authoritarian governments, while France, Austria, and the Netherlands have far-right parties within touching distance of power. Britain, Germany, Italy and others are being deeply affected by far-right populist movements.

What anyone with empathy is looking for now is hope - a sign that humanity's ongoing journey, its progress from the darkness into the light, has not stalled or ended.

Away from politics, there are still plenty of signs: the Ice Bucket Challenge worked, with money it raised being directly credited with a huge breakthrough in the understanding of ALS (Woolf, 2016); Starbucks worked with charities to make perishable foods donations, from end of day leftovers, possible - making tracks into reducing the West's copious food wastage and tackling hunger (Addady, 2016); clinical trials are being carried out for precision cancer treatments, that medical professionals hope will usher in a new era of higher survival rates with lower toxic side effects (Boseley, 2016); and, after bans on CFC aerosol chemicals, the Ozone Later is recovering (Milan, 2016).

We can make a positive difference. We'll be back in January 2017 to continue advocating for the progressive alternative, but in the mean time - to focus on the positive - here are some of the political events of 2016 that show that the progressive view of a humanity still holds true.

Liberalism in Canada

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau at Pride, August 2016. Photograph: Pride Parade 2016 by GoToVan (License) (Cropped)

Now technically, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada was elected in October, and entered office in November, 2015. Yet their first year in government was all 2016. So it counts.

What the election of Trudeau and the Liberals in Canada showed was that social liberalism - open, positive, progressive and tolerant attitudes to others - can win. That matters.

Regardless of what you think of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or whether his Government will deliver, or of liberalism - which many seem content to conflate with neoliberalism right now, and leave to burn with it in the rising nationalist flames - their election win matters.

Trudeau and the Liberals stood as openly feminist and multicultural, proposing to intervene to help those worst off - including reaching out and openly welcoming refugees. Not only did they win, their polling numbers have risen and remained high.

Amidst intolerance and closing doors, it is important to know that open, decent, tolerant social attitudes can win elections, and emphatically at that. As with Syriza in Greece, it is important to see these progressive ideas reflected in a government.

The Majority in America

Hillary Rodham Clinton's long career, that seemed destined to peak in a return to the White House as President, came to a shattering end with defeat by Donald Trump. Photograph: Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at UW-Milwaukee by WisPolitics (License) (Cropped)

It might be small consolation at this point, but Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote in the US Presidential Election, and by some three million votes. In fact, along with the socially liberal Libertarian and Green party candidates, that's a socially progressive lead of some six million - a 52% to 46% lead.

And, as journalist John Harris cautioned after the Brexit vote, you cannot conflate all the poor and desperate people voting for the Right with the hatred and intolerance of the people they vote for. Most are afraid of the future, feel excluded and justifiably want change.

Despite all of the hate and vitriol, and Trump's self-aggrandising and media-hungry campaign, only a quarter of US voters turned out for Trump. More turned out for Clinton - and she wasn't even, perhaps, a favoured candidate for the Centre and Left.

As with Brexit, the fully roused expression of anger and hate, poured through a political funnel, has produced a dramatic victory for the Right. But it is based on a much smaller cross-section of society than people fear. It's still an unrepresentative minority, amplified by adversarial political systems.

It is important that progressives see that. Progressive politics in the US needs fixing, that's for sure. Too many people have been alienated, driven into dangerous arms. But it's fewer than people fear, and the majority of those are just people looking for a better life, for a better deal.

The Far-Right's first big defeat

Alexander Van der Bellen, former leader of the Greens, stood for the Presidency as a unifying Independent and defeated the Far-Right. Photograph: Alexander Van der Bellen by Franz Johann Morgenbesser (License) (Cropped)

In Austria, the first far-right Head of State since the second world war was narrowly avoided as Alexander Van der Bellen - a former Green who ran as an independent - won the Presidential Election for the second time in a re-run.

It is the first major defeat for the Far-Right in a contest they were thought to be ahead. However the Far-Right Freedom Party, for whom Norbert Hofer stood as a Presidential candidate, remains a rising force - currently the third largest group and polling high.

The alliance that defeated them was a broad spectrum - perhaps too broad to realistically maintain a united front. But what matters at this point is that a majority in Austria rejected the Far-Right. As important as it is to see progressive ideas in government, it is important to regressive ones defeated.

The Municipal Movement

Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona who has been a leading figure of the municipal movement. Photograph: #‎PrimaveraDemocratica‬ amb Pablo Iglesias i Ada Colau by Barcelona En Comú (License) (Cropped)

And finally, to municipalism. It is an idea whose time appears to have come. Emerging in Spain, in Barcelona and Madrid the city governments are being run by citizen's municipal movements that are trying to radically change the way that cities are run.

On the ground, these municipal movements, like Barcelona En Comu led by Ada Colau, have brought together citizen campaigners, all with a local focus, and pursued a fascinating course. Their focus has been on trying to build spaces around the people who live in them and to bring more power over decisions to them - an essential priority at a time when so many people feel alienated.

And their work doesn't stop there. These municipal movements have been at the heart of effort to build pan-continental networks of cities, helping to tie the European continent together in new ways. For progressives, this work aught to be a lighthouse in the storm.

From housing, to utilities like energy and water, to facing the refugee crisis, the municipal movement has brought these issues into the local sphere. They're engaging people, in the places where they live and work, with tough issues and empowering them.

Lessons for 2017

That is world's away from the walls of silence, disengagement and alienation that proceeded the rise of the Far-Right. If progressives can take anything positive 2016, it can be this: social progressives are the majority, their ideas can win, their ideas can engage and empower, and the Far-Right can be beaten.

The first task for 2017 will be to build bridges. To build networks. To include and empower. To give a voice. The Alternative be back in the New Year to help progressives with that task as best we can.

Working Poverty is appallingly high and social care is in a funding crisis - the 'Big Society' was a cloak stolen by a wolf

David Cameron deftly altered the image of the Conservatives and his success has left us with a society in crisis. Photograph: Prime Minister David Cameron - official photograph by Number 10 (License) (Cropped)

Under David Cameron and George Osborne, the Conservative Party worked hard to change its image. With Labour in power, and getting very comfortable within the establishment, they sought to present themselves as warm and compassionate with just a light fondness for tradition.

Part of that 'compassion' was to roll back the 'nanny state' - to stop big government looking over people's shoulders. The counterpoint was to instead get society, out of charitable and philanthropic instincts, to pull together and support each other in their own communities.

But the 'Big Society' disappeared quickly. But then it had already served its purpose, as the sheep's clothing for the wolf - just the latest in fashionable lines, taken from progressives, that the Right had shrouded itself in to slip unnoticed amongst the livestock.

And if anyone still believed in the Conservative vision, after years of austerity had stripped their community of libraries and investment in roads, schools and healthcare, and left social care in a near terminal crisis (Triggle, 2016), recent reports should dispel the illusion.

The most recent damning report is that of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which reported that seven million people in Britain suffer from working poverty (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2016). That means that, despite earning an income in work, these people are still unable to make ends meet.

More than any of the other reports, working poverty is the most damning betrayal of the promises of Conservatives, and of neoliberalism. The basic promise, that hard work will bring reward, that will people will gain on merit, has been broken.

Conservatives, neoliberals, the purveyors of 'free' markets and small government - they sell privatisation with a promise: with no government restraining or filtering, there will be innovation, and the entrepreneurial will be allowed to get ahead, to take what they are merited.

But the 'Big Society' brand, the promises of liberty, conceal a darker reality. They neatly package selfish individualism for sale by disguising what it brings with it: disconnect, loneliness and isolation. Consider that, even as work is delivering poor rewards, the job centres are facing closures (BBC, 2016).

As a demonstration of how much it is being put upon any one person to carry the weight of their own obstacles, the closure of job centres is illuminating. People are being cut off from one another, with little power or means to change their situation. Merit, it seems, requires an inheritance to get started.

Conservatives and neoliberals want to package this as 'liberty' and 'individualism', but that's only half of the story. Their liberty is negative liberty, believing only in removing barriers. What that won't address is the crushing inequality that goes untouched, except by charitable disposition - something that itself comes under attack by the deeply conservative notion of neoliberal individualism. How can charity flourish amidst an a conception of the individual that is hierarchical and dependent upon competition, selfishness and greed?

The impact of the neoliberal and conservative ideologies is destructive. They're reducing society to a mad scramble that turns communities first against each other, and then inwards upon themselves, as individuals must put aside their social bonds to pursue their own interests.

But in fighting that destructive impact, in undoing the pain caused by the neoliberal ideology, that glorifies selfishness, we mustn't give up or suppress individuality. In fact, it would be a sore loss to give over individuality to an ideology that reduces it to little more than greedy consumption and extraction.

Individuality can be so much more. Instead, a social fabric needs to be woven in which individuals live ever with the support and cooperation of others. Where people realise the fullness of themselves in collaboration with others, rather than competition with them. A positive liberty, that raises people up as well as removes the obstacles from their path.

Conservatism, as it represents the establishment, has ever kept itself relevant by gobbling up the language of progressives, turning the words of hope into tools for their own designs. Individuality becomes selfishness, community becomes sectarianism, the balance and moderation of civic republicanism becomes a 'centre' captured and dragged ever to the Right.

We have to stop handing sheep's clothing to the wolves. We have to stop letting conservatism take our words and twist them. Ideals, art and culture are created by and belong to the 99% - the 1% just exploits them for profit. We must fight for every word.

Italian Constitutional Referendum: No wins and Renzi to resign - what next for Italy?

Matteo Renzi staked his Government on the referendum and lost. Photograph: Matteo Renzi a San Giobbe, October 2015, by the Università Ca' Foscari Venezia (License) (Cropped)

On Sunday, voters in Italy rejected the proposed constitutional reforms on which Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has staked his Government (BBC, 2016). Renzi put voting Yes in the referendum as the condition for his continued leadership - and with it the seeming last piece of stability in Italian political life.

Ahead, in the not too distant future, seems to be an election where the rising populist parties will pit themselves against whatever the coalition the establishment can assemble. But no deadlock has been broken and the politically divided do not look likely to be united.

It was just these interminable political stalemates Renzi's referendum reforms were aimed at ending. Yet the centralising - to its critics, executive power-hoarding - aims of the proposal had alienated groups across Italy's political spectrum, from Left to Right.

The Prime Minister's proposed reforms included weakening the Senate and the Regional Councils in favour of further the House of Deputies, while furthering the majority prize electoral system - in all, handing an extraordinary amount of power to a future Prime Minister through a guaranteed and untouchable lower house majority.

The idea of such centralised majority power is in itself controversial. Even on the Left of Renzi's own Partito Democratico, veterans like former leader Pier Luigi Bersani warned that the reforms would create a "government of the boss", centred on a strongman who would control the Parliament (Follain, 2016).

Perhaps for precisely those reasons, business and investors were supportive of the changes, so that the reforms they believe necessary to sort out Italy's economic problems could be passed with greater ease (Kirchgaessner, 2016).

Yet other moderate, and even 'establishment', opposition shared the Left's criticism of the proposals - fundamentally, that the reforms did not address what is actually wrong. While Renzi's reforms sought a solution to legislative paralysis, critics thought that dealing with the country's economic stagnation and corruption were the higher priority and strongman government no solution (The Economist, 2016).

The primary opposition to Renzi's proposed changes, and further to his government, are Beppe Grillo's Movimento 5 Stella - the populist and anti-establishment Five Star Movement. First made their first big breakthrough on the national scene in 2013, where they took the largest share of votes amongst parties, though Italy's complex electoral system assured they would receive a smaller share of seats.

Grillo's party are a strange mix. In some ways they're like UKIP in their internal incoherence. The party's membership includes everyone from young progressive libertarians to anti-Europe conservative nationalists. In the European institutions they've associated with the continent's far-right.

The Five Star Movement have set themselves up as anti-establishment, as the opponents of cronyism and corruption, a post-ideological party for the disaffected. Yet the party mixes its appeals to the Left with anti-immigration rhetoric and stood in the way of same-sex civil unions (Kirchgaessner, 2016{2}). The party is also a focal point for anti-media sentiment and for a counter-truth, conspiracy theory culture (Nardelli & Silverman, 2016).

And with Renzi's defeat, the Five Star Movement are the only force that really stand to be empowered.

Italy is going through its second major political transformation in two decades. The old parties and figures are fading away and crumbling, while social democracy is struggling with itself as elsewhere around the world. As in 1994, when Silvio Berlusconi rose to the political pinnacle he would occupy for the next twenty years, populism is taking its opportunity.

That hard situation now falls on the shoulders of the Italy's President Sergio Mattarella. His first task will be to decide whether to accept the resignation of Renzi, with no other obvious choice for a stable government. But keeping the Democrat in office will do little at this point to maintain stability.

So ultimately Mattarella must find a new government and lay out plans for a fresh election. That task will begin within the factional chaos of Renzi's Democrats. But after short term stability must come a longer term democratic solution.

An election would surely herald strong numbers for M5S and also for Matteo Salvini's Lega Nord - the less equivocally right-wing, anti-establishment, anti-immigration party. But there is not necessarily an indication that they could muster the support necessary to govern (Kirchgaessner, 2016{3}).

The most likely outcome seems to be more political paralysis, though not as a result of Italy's pluralistic system, as Renzi appeared to believe. Rather, the cause is instead the deeply partisan divisions between Left and Right in Italy, and European interference due to the country's substantial public debt.

These conditions have made only certain governments possible, with no regard for party, that pursue 'corrective' economic measures - that have been consistent from Prime Minister to Prime Minister, through Monti, Letta and Renzi - that are fundamentally neoliberal and pro-austerity.

That deadlock needs to be broken. Public trust is being severely tested and when it shatters neither Left, Centre or Centre Right, in Italy or across Europe, will be the benefactor. Populists will feed on the fear and mistrust, and fuel it further, to their own benefit.

Italy is deeply in need of a way to rebuild some semblance of what used to be termed republicanism - a government of balance, in a civic space built on bi-partisanship and pluralism, in the name of the public good. The old pluralism of Italy died amidst cronyism and corruption. The mistrust that collapse created has spent twenty years dividing people in the political space and continues to spread.

Pluralism has to be taken back. Any plan to build a progressive alternative for Italy, has to put returning pluralism to Italy's political sphere at its heart. Italy needs tangible solutions, but even the best of policies are no good if they do not reach and include those in all corners of a society.

Richmond By-Election: Lib Dems take an upset win, but all progressives must now keep their eyes forward, take the lessons and repeat the success elsewhere

For Tim Farron, the Richmond Park win is the perfect start to his second year in charge. Yet he and other progressives leaders must be aware how entangled are the fates of progressive parties. Photograph: Tim Farron at the Lib Dem conference rally on 19 September 2015 by Dave Radcliffe (License) (Cropped)

Last night the Liberal Democrats pulled off a pretty spectacular upset, overturning Zac Goldsmith's majority of 23,000 to oust him from his seat. Goldsmith, who though having stood down over Government plans to pursue Heathrow expansion nonetheless appeared to receive Conservative backing, was defeated in a second major election in a year.

But the win was not for the Liberal Democrats alone. Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem candidate and new Richmond Park MP, received support from the Green Party, some Labour MPs, the Women's Equality Party and other campaigners, all uniting around her as the progressive with the best chance to topple Zac Goldsmith - who had endorsements from both the Tories and UKIP.

That tentative venture into Progressive Alliance politics was soured a little by the hostile attitude of the official Labour position, but otherwise it proved a limited but important point: an alliance of progressive parties, behind a common candidate and on favourable ground, can defeat a Conservative candidate.

But perhaps the clearest lesson from Richmond Park, and perhaps it is right to include Witney as well, is that the Liberal Democrats pose a genuine threat to Tory seats - a lesson that should not be lost on Labour. Labour cannot topple the Tory majority alone: they need the Lib Dems to take seats away from them as well, in their head-to-head contests.

In the post-result speeches, defeated Labour candidate Christian Wolmar told Olney that Labour voters had lent their votes to her to defeat Goldsmith. But Labour need to keep in mind the reality that it is Labour who stand to gain most from Lib Dems taking seats from the Conservatives.

Especially if boundary changes come into force, Labour needs to take a pragmatic view of the challenge ahead. To defeat the Conservatives and get back into government, the shortest route will be to back whoever the ideal progressive candidate may be to challenge in each constituency.

While the by-election itself was pitched as a battle over Brexit, or over Heathrow, the reality is that the main impact will be on the Government majority. Theresa May was already governing with an extremely narrow majority, making it hard for her to ignore her own party's loud and organised far-right backbenchers.

As her majority is whittled away, the Prime Minister will have to chose between picking up votes from her backbenchers by pushing more starkly conservative positions, or finding opposition support for more moderate measures. And being caught between such forces, that limit her available moves, makes a fresh election look all the more desirable.

In a final note: Zac Goldsmith went from the favourite to be the next London Mayor, to being bounced out of Parliament in a by-election, in the span of just six months. If that sends no other message, hopefully it might serve as a reprimand for his horrid negative campaign to become Mayor.

A candidate who ran a divisive campaign for Mayor and had the backing of the forces of division, of cuts and Brexit, has been rejected in favour of one calling for openness and tolerance, with the backing of progressives of all stripes. In a tough year, that's a nice change.

Social Security: Winter is coming and the Government appears content to leave the ramparts unguarded

A homeless encampment in Manchester last year, one of the signs of the growing strain on Britain's social security safety net. People are falling through the system into poverty.

The first signs are appearing of the hard times ahead, forecast by the Autumn Statement. It has been less than a week since the Government announced its budget priorities and already it is under pressure over the gaps in social security created by the lower funding brought by six years of austerity.

People are falling through the cracks because, from social care to free school meals, the safety net is becoming porous. In some areas, people don't know they have a right to support and in others there simply aren't places for them in programmes.

At the root of these issues is funding. In their quixotic crusade to tackle public spending, that they sees as an unnecessary waste, the Conservatives have chipped, slashed and removed whole sections of Britain's social security safety net.

As Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has pointed out, the Conservatives have slashed spending even where spending would ultimately save far more money in the long run than cuts will. The onward rumbling housing crisis has proven particularly expensive for the Government.

As a result of a failure to build new social housing, and the determined sell-off of present stock, far more is spent on Housing Benefit to keep people in more expensive, and often less satisfactory, private rented accommodation.

Investing funds in social housing could, in fact, drastically reduce the housing benefit bill, by perhaps billions, all while tackling one of Britain's a major infrastructural problem. The key that the Conservative seem to be missing is the vital role to be played by smart spending.

The Conservatives have certainly tried to portray themselves as embracing the idea of smart spending. When it comes to funds, the Government has been keen to say that it has extended certain tax raising powers to local government to cover the increased cost of social care. And the Prime Minister continues to repeat the '£10bn for the NHS' figure.

Yet their claims are belied by reality. The £10bn figure has been debunked and its continued use criticised. The extra funding for social care, the Social Care Precept - that lets local government keep a 2% greater share council tax receipts - has been dismissed as wholly inadequate. The Chancellor pledge in invest in infrastructure resulted in just 40,000 new homes being promised.

There is even talk today of the pension age being pushed back again. Even as the living standards of all workers, especially the most vulnerable, continue to fall, the Government still whittles away at the public sector and turns to the market.

Winter is coming and the Government appears content to leave the ramparts unguarded - believing perhaps that people should secure their own fences in a market for social security. That is a plan that progressives should comprehensively reject.

Prioritising opportunities for the affluent and thrusting over security for the vulnerable isn't just unethical and economically unsound, its also a social disaster waiting to happen.

It is the very thing that feeds the desperation, that in turn feeds the far right. The neoliberalism of the Centre-Right is laying the shaky foundations of its own collapse.

So what does that leave for progressives to do? Yanis Varoufakis has put it the simplest: first, stabilise and save what we can of value in the present system, and second, develop a real, working and unifying alternative. The costs of letting the house of cards fall - personally, socially, economically - are just far too high to do otherwise.

Autumn Statement: Austerity hasn't worked, yet Chancellor's response is much smaller than Britain's big problems demand

House building pledge typifies problems with Chancellor Philip Hammond's Autumn Statement - it's too little action to tackle a much bigger problem. Photograph: Regency Houses from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

John McDonnell, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, described the Autumn Statement as a budget that does not make up for six wasted years. That after all of the sacrifice, over more than half a decade, despite continuous failures, austerity will continue.

That is not an unfair assessment. For this statement, Chancellor Philip Hammond had to juggle the policy inheritance from George Osborne, meeting the promise of Theresa May to help those just getting by, and the economic pressures that are depressing growth, disincentivising investment and pushing up debt.

The result has been a budget statement that sticks close to the status quo, with only some token, already scheduled, easing measures: the personal allowance advancing to £11,500, the 'national' living wage to £7.50, and the welfare withdrawal taper rate down by just two pence in the pound.

The Chancellor's focus remains upon the broader economy, not least with tax cuts continuing for big business as Corporation Tax falls again to 17%. The promise that these subsidies, and policies like the productivity fund, make to people is that if they help the economy, that prosperity will extend to them.

Yet many of the Chancellor's announcements were effectively cancelled out by the facts. He lauded the fact that the UK has its highest employment and lowest unemployment, with a labour market recovery serving everyone. Yet much of the new work has already been reported as being unstable, insecure and precarious.

Despite confirming plans to increase public investment, that comes on the back of years of delayed, stalled or unfunded infrastructure investment plans that have been shifted from announcement to announcement. Meanwhile economic growth is depressed, private investment remains low and debt is still rising.

And on house building, a necessary step to tackling the damaging housing crisis, Hammond has said he will lead a step change in progress on getting them built. Yet his commitment extended to just 40,000 new homes - a long way short of the hundreds of thousands needed, let alone tackle prices and rents escalating beyond what could be credibly referred to as affordable.

While Conservative spokespeople on the cycling news coverage are keen to deflect their failures onto the uncertain circumstances of the times, the reality is that six years of fiscally conservative government has led to a rise in borrowing and a vast increase, even a doubling, of the national debt. Austerity hasn't worked.

Those 'just about managing', as the Tory government labels them, have made huge sacrifices - with less welfare support, with their frontline services embattled, with work that is more precarious for lower pay. But after six years, there is still no pay off. There is no easing. There is still no succour for falling living standards.

If the Government is serious about helping the poorest, the most vulnerable, those most distant from opportunities and living precarious lives, it needs an alternative plan. Fiscal discipline, bringing down debts to reduce the cost of servicing them, is important. But no major economy is working well enough to provide prosperity for the people they're supposed to serve without help from public funds.

Progressives have to construct an alternative plan, that can return more prosperity to the communities that have made big sacrifices to achieve it, but have been alienated from the rewards by austerity. That means getting on with the work that has been put off, like building homes and infrastructure, tackling the cartels that lock communities out of the product of their own resources, with ideas like community energy co-ops, and doing more to support the most vulnerable with healthcare, social care and welfare.

Autumn Statement Preview: Hammond looks likely to ease austerity, but progressives have to believe we can do more

What awaits Britain under a new Chancellor? Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

On Wednesday, Chancellor Philip Hammond will present the Autumn Statement, the half-year update on the Government's progress towards their budget targets.

Under previous Chancellors Gordon Brown and George Osborne, the Autumn Statement became virtually a second budget, a second for the Government to manage and tweak the country's finances. Osborne in particular liked to tinker at every opportunity, adjusting targets again and again, an announcing new surprise policies to keep political opponents off balance.

The new Chancellor, Philip Hammond, as befits his reputation as 'dull', has suggested he'd like the Autumn event to go back to being just a rudimentary update, rather than a full blown budget adjustment. And considering the economic situation, that might not be a terrible idea.

An economy runs principally on the basis of confidence and Hammond has everyone to reassure: Brexiters and 48ers; the banks; businesses big and small, and workers. Whatever advantage Osborne's constant surprises afforded him in the political arena, would only have been yet another element of volatility in an already volatile time.

As well as provide assurance of a steady hand, Hammond must also find a way to satisfy his party's extreme right-wing - while, for sake of the appearance of competence, avoiding the complete repudiation of the actions of the previous Conservative ministry. That means maintaining at least token continuity with his predecessor's insistence upon tackling the deficit at the expense of front line services.

If those matters weren't hard enough to juggle, Hammond must also find a way to meet the new commitments made by the new Prime Minister Theresa May. That means, at the least, finding some way to slow down austerity just enough to help those who are 'just getting by'.

In times of high drama, a period of calm, anchored in fiscal stability and dullness, with no unpredictable moves and longer term planning - that actually sticks to a long term economic plan - would usually be a thing very welcome, for any economy. If that is what Hammond brings, it signals, hopefully, a return  to managing fiscal matters with a long term view, rather than with short term grandstanding better fitting a corporate boardroom.

However, the new Chancellor doesn't have the luxury of simply postponing a little of austerity programme and holding station. To that effect, Hammond has already deprioritised his predecessor's constantly shifting deficit targets and proposed a small increase in spending to a improve some roads, with May herself adding today the promise of a little more research and development funding. These steps are clearly an effort to show concerns - that withdrawing too much Government money, too quickly, will only make straightened times leaner - have been acknowledged.

Yet Hammond is rightfully under pressure from the Left to do more. John McDonnell, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, has also called for the undoing of tax breaks for the richest that were delivered by George Osborne, eve as frontline services and local councils were subjected to stringent budget restrictions.

With the money saved from reversing those measures, McDonnell has called for dropping the next round of welfare cuts, planned out by the treasury under Osborne - that will hit hardest precisely those who the Prime Minister lately pledged to protect: those 'just getting by'.

Socially and economically, the times have become hard and uncertain, and disproportionately for the most vulnerable - for women, minorities, people with disabilities and the working poor. And each of these groups are exposed to a range of risks, pressures and dangers by declining prosperity and rising desperation, as people turn inwards and shield themselves with hostility towards those who should be their neighbours.

While stability for the Conservatives may stop at settling down jittery markets, progressives want the Government to look further afield: to help calm the fears of ordinary people. Hammond's promises of infrastructure spending and pausing austerity are a start. Yet McDonnell isn't wrong to question the record of the Tories on delivery - Osborne made bigger promises of infrastructure spending, that might have helped stimulate the economy if they had ever seen the light of day.

For progressives, the time is long overdue for a budget with more spending commitments: on research and investment, to help stimulate the economy, creating jobs in the immediate present and to lay the foundation for more down the line; on the critical shortfalls in the NHS and social care budgets; on ending, and even reversing, cuts to welfare, to help people during hard times; and on building many desperately need homes.

All of those commitments are expensive and neither debt nor deficit can be completely ignored. But the present status quo simply is not stable. Worrying  about public debts, themselves fairly stable, weighing on the future as a tax burden is madness when the poor, just to get by, struggle under mounting insecure private debts.

And the Government, on the public behalf, is in the strongest position to help. Even just reversing tax cuts and subsidies for rich corporations and individuals - before you even get to the matter of how cheap interest is on Government borrowing - would go a long way to paying for what's needed.

Stability and reassurance are needed. But the Government must act first to create stability, because right now there is desperation and precariousness bordering on disaster. Progressives have to believe that Hammond can and should do more, before he can declare the ship steady, the waters calm and a course plotted for the harsh waters awaiting Britain outside of the European Union.

Progressives need to find an answer to precarious work, because conservatives back its rise and it in turn fuels the Far Right

The headline figures say unemployment is down, but they cover the fact that welfare is being replaced only with precarity. Photograph: Job Centre Plus by Andrew Writer (License) (Cropped)

In the breakdown of the Leave Campaign's victory in the Brexit referendum, and also that of Trump, the impact of globalisation has been afforded a central role. The shifting of work overseas, and only precarious opportunities at home, has fed fear and hostility.

Even a brief look at the political situation, as it stands in Europe and America, reveals that the main benefactors of the crisis have been anti-establishment populists and the Far Right nationalists and sectarians - from Grillo to Le Pen, from Spain to Eastern Europe.

With that in mind, the employment figures released by the government make interesting reading. The topline is, in a time of meagre of opportunities, likely to be praised: unemployment has fallen to a new low, as more people find a way into work.

But the headline covers up three important facts. First, that 15% of those in employment are self-employed (BBC, 2016). Second that, including the self-employed along with those on zero hours and in temporary jobs, some 20% depend upon precarious work (Booth, 2016). And third, social mobility has stalled in an increasingly tiered society, with the gap between the well-to-do and everyone else growing (Sellgren, 2016).

The impact of this shift has been to reduce the possibility of finding a secure and stable housing situation, career paths and job progression stall in the face of no opportunities, and in all, people can no longer expect to live a better life than their parent's generation.

Even with that damning assessment, the Tories have still found it possible to celebrate the shift towards ever more precarity (Stone, 2016). Damian Green, the Department of Work and Pensions secretary, called the shift away from stable hours, holiday pay, sick pay and pensions an exciting moment, praising the "gig economy" staffed by the "everyday entrepreneur".

The only possibility of finding excitement in these figures comes from an ideological viewpoint that reduces human life to little more than wage labour, and sees innovation only through the prism of strife, competition and exploitation - with social life, enjoyment, fulfilment or self-improvement as petty distractions.

But, as the rise of the Far Right is showing, people do not share that view. If work offers no rewards and doesn't lead anywhere, but to a never ending grind, then work is not a path to liberation but a prison. And that creates an opportunity for others to offer a way out - and to offer scapegoats.

People want more autonomy and elevating them, educating them and giving them more responsibility is idealism at its finest - but not at the cost of their basic life security. But nor should people have to cash in their autonomy, their liberty, in exchange for the promise of succour.

It is the job of progressives to offer a road on which stability and autonomy are wedded and sustainable. To build, not just an alternative view of the economy, but one that includes a path forward, with ongoing improvement of conditions and lessening of burdens built into it.

As the British Liberals of the 1920s put it:

"We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

The aim for progressives must be to have an economy that serves people, not the other way around, and works towards their liberation.

What to expect from President Trump? To see how an opportunist backed by the far right will fare in government, look no further than Italy's Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi, through controversies and legal battles, held the position of Prime Minister in Italy for nine years out of seventeen on the political frontline. Photograph: Silvio Berlusconi by paz.ca (License) (Cropped)

If progressives are going to start building a meaningful opposition to the global rise of far right populism, seen most recently in the Trump Presidential Campaign, they first need to understand what they will be standing against. What will the representatives of the far right pursue when actually in office?

When considering what to expect, its important to look to history. For Trump in particular, there are obvious comparisons to Ronald Reagan (Rich, 2016) - though, it seems, except for those who really buy into the Myth of Reagan but don't like Trump, and so want to distance the two as much as possible.

But perhaps a better guide for expectations, both for Trump and beyond, might be the rise of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy in the early 1990s, out of the wreckage of the Italian political system that imploded with the exposure of  huge corruption under the Mani Pulite investigation.

Amidst massive political disillusionment and a global downturn, a seeming outsider, with business credentials, and in alliance with parties of the far right, put themselves forward as the champion of the populist opposition to the corrupt old establishment - despite plenty of their own legal battles, to which their support seems immune.

Sound familiar? Trump's rise mirrors Berlusconi's own route to power. The media chief, and chairman of football club AC Milan, began his long relationship with political power in Italy at the head of his party Forza Italia - named for a popular football chant.

If that does not say enough, as a measure of the man consider that Berlusconi once claimed, with extravagant outrage, that one of his longest running political opponents, Romano Prodi, called him a drunk during a 2006 election debate - and offered him a "no, you are" in return (Popham, 2006). What Prodi had actually said was:

"He uses statistics like a drunk uses lamp-posts, more for support than illumination."

For those who want decency and reason in the political arena, this level of obfuscating outrage is infuriating. When a political candidate is willing to twist anything, to play whatever role happens to be convenient to the relevant situation, coherency be damned, it makes it impossible to get to grips with what that candidate actually believes - and so to have a meaningful political exchange.

But whether that was what he actually believes is besides the point. What that exchange presented was an opportunity. And the seizing of such opportunities defined Berlusconi's career - as it does Trump's as well.

Silvio Berlusconi rose to power on the back of a career as a media personality, a celebrity, just as much as he did on his career in business. His media company took on the establishment and broke through the state owned monopoly on broadcasting - though in part thanks to his connections in that very same government establishment.

And when that - again, very same - government establishment collapsed amidst one of the biggest political corruption scandals ever seen, Berlusconi took to the political field - despite his own connections and the spreading of investigations into his own businesses (The Economist, 2001).

Berlusconi promised to keep Italy pro-Western and pro-Market, create a million new jobs and protect the country from the communists - the Italian Communist Party successor, the Democrats of the Left, were virtually the last party standing in the Italian political system after the corruption scandal.

The coalition he put together to achieve those promises - with the separatist Lega Nord in the North and the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale in the South - backed by a massive publicity campaign on his own TV channels, received the most votes and seats in the 1994 Italian general election.

His first government collapsed after only nine months, torn apart by its own internal contradictions. Yet, though often with only a tenuous grip, Berlusconi returned to power time after time, with rebuilt coalitions that pushed the same mix of social conservatism and economic neoliberalism.

And he was never far from controversy. Berlusconi was accused of being sexism in Italy's most powerful apologist, as his personal life often spilling over into the political and even sparking protests (Marshall, 2016). His legal troubles also followed him constantly.

The same kinds of fate are now being predicted for Trump's Administration, as he tries to marry his misogynist and nativist support with the Republican mainstream - itself a contradictory collections of libertarians and nativist Christian nationalists.

Just as legal scandals chased Berlusconi throughout his career, they're likely also to follow Trump. With numerous cases still outstanding against him, some commentators are even predicting that Trump may ultimately end up being impeached by the Republican-controlled Congress (Oppenheim, 2016).

The election of Trump answered one question to which the answer was already known: that negative campaigning is used because it works - even, it seems, in its most extreme forms. It also drew parallels between Trump and Berlusconi, that suggest that far right populism is unlikely to hurt the Reagan-esque tax-cutting, laissez-faire, pro-business establishment.

But what about about in Europe, where far right parties have pushed their way into the mainstream with fewer compromises and mainstream alliances? As with Trump, promises of social conservatism, anti-immigration and harsh law and order policies have abounded. Yet on economic policy, the stances of far right movements have been inconsistent.

Trump's one elaborated economic policy was for a massive tax cut. That matches up with UKIP's policies, which have historically leaned toward less compromising version of Conservative manifestos, with tax cuts, especially for those at the top and large amounts of deregulation.

Yet while Trump has hinted at protectionism, it has been more strongly pushed in Europe. For instance, Front National have travelled over time from aggressively, anti-welfare, 'parasite' opposing, Reagan neoliberals, to ardent advocates of state control and protectionism (Shields, 2007).

Other far right parties in Europe, such as the Freedom Party of Austria and the Party for Freedom of the Netherlands, or elements of the Five Star Movement in Italy, have expressed a kind of national liberalism, to which the French Front National seems aligned.

The parties are standing, ostensibly, to 'protect' their 'national values', which have over time extended to include liberal tolerance, particularly of native homosexual and Jewish communities; and attempted to reconcile what amounts to 'national welfare', claiming to expel outsiders from the system, with the neoliberal capitalist system.

These positions express profound contradictions: between the rousing of intolerance and promises of social protection, and between deep connections to the low tax, low regulation and big business neoliberal order and promises of economic protection.

Berlusconi showed that these contradictions can be maintained, though not without difficulty and obvious fragility, over a long political career. So whichever way these parties break, caught between intolerant, nationalist and statist demands and their neoliberal connections, progressives need to have a strong argument that counters the flaws of both. And that argument needs to bring together radicals and moderates, democrats and liberals.

Justice, Liberty and Progress; equality, cooperation and sustainability; these values drive progressives. The far right stands opposed to them, picking and choosing between them as it suits their cause. Progressives need to unite around them - whether against neoliberalism or nationalism, as both are disastrous.

Petty squabbles are the opportunities that the Berlusconis and Trumps exploit. They disillusion the public and open the doors to opportunists and extremists. That pattern needs to end, in the name supporting those made most vulnerable by the rise of such forces: women, minorities, refugees, immigrants and the impoverished.

All the pressures of the 1930s were collected in the Spanish Civil War, which reminds us that progressives must unite and start writing the story of our times

Image: Flag of the Second Spanish Republic from Pixabay (License)

This summer marked the eightieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War and this week, eighty years ago, the International Brigades marched into Madrid to defend the Republic from Franco's Nationalists.

The volunteers of the International Brigades came from around the world, including much needed experienced soldiers from the Great War. Of the first three thousand soldiers, most died in the first days of the Battle of Madrid, to stall the fascist advance and delay their victory - even as the Republic's nominal international allies stood by and watched, moderates outraged by Republican radicalism and hoping to merely contain or appease the far right.

Ultimately, however, the Nationalists conclusively conquered Spain and completed their mutinous coup d'etat. But it would not have been possible without plenty of international help of their own, from the fascist dictators of Germany and Italy - who sent professional forces and materiel to Franco.

These tales of the far right spreading, of progressives and moderates lost and struggling to unify or to recognise their commonality, of strife between progress and tradition, is a compellingly recognisable one today for those watching the rise of Trump in America, or Brexit in the UK and the Front National in France. So too is the appeasement and the retreat to reactive, surrendering the creation of the story of the times to the far right.

Spain's second shortlived Republic died beneath the boot of international fascist cooperation, even as the dozens of progressive factions fell upon each. And with it was swept away the achievements of the Republic's almost recklessly progressive government.

Under Manuel Azana and his Republican Left, an amalgamation of different republican parties, the dismantling of the overbearing establishment began. First as Prime Minister and then as President, Azana led efforts to modernise Spain, to make it secular, open and tolerant.

It pursued the three most prominent aspects of the establishment: the army, the church and the landowners. An Army with 800 generals, but just 16 divisions in need of them, was faced with reforms, redundancies and cuts. The Church, as under the Radicals in France a few decades earlier, faced the secularising of education - ostensibly to take the poor out from under its grip and influence. And an agrarian reform program, sought to confiscate large private landholdings (latifundia) and distribute them among the rural poor.

However, these progressive and secular policies - sought by the Republican Left in a Popular Front partnership with regional nationalists, discontented workers with strong trade unions, and an anarchist movement without parallel anywhere in the world in either scope or success - were being pursued in a country with a deeply embedded and deeply conservative establishment, only recently shorn of its figureheads, that felt vulnerable and was not yet ready for such radical reform. The pressed on, but did not take enough of a frightened people with them.

Violent clashes erupted between the Left and establishment Right. Propaganda was everywhere. Into the vacuum opened by the old establishment's ousting stepped fascism and it spoke to conservatives of all classes: it spoke to their prejudices and condoned them, spoke to their fears and made them feel strong, spoke to their problems and offered scapegoats.

In the time of Brexit and President Elect Donald J Trump, were the centre is failing and the radical Left and far Right are competing for the support of the disaffected, it seems that the problems of the 1930s - crystallised in the factional divides of Spain - have resurfaced.

The poor, the 'white working-class', found themselves on many sides - Left, Right and Centre - in the 1930s, and do so again today. Roosevelt built an alliance with them in the United States, but Hitler rallied them in Germany. In Spain they were divided, progressive from conservative. International allies, progressives and moderates, did not get behind the Republic and only reacted, seeking only contain, embrace and control the far right movements.

The question being asked - honestly, since as long ago as 2008 and the start of social democracy's decline - is how progressives can 'reconnect' with the working class, seemingly more convinced by the far right's appeals to their conservative values.

One argument that has persisted, and has been seen most readily in the UK and distressingly amongst moderates, has stressed the need to at least lightly indulge bigotry with populist appeals. To abandon openness and tolerance, in the name of the allegedly 'greater good' of grabbing power.

The trouble with that argument is that it treats the views of the people as innate and unshakeable values, even adopts them and praises them as 'tradition' - with nationalism, for instance, treated as a universal given. All that has done is fan the flames, encouraging and spreading intolerance, helping it to find a language and context to legitimise itself.

It also discounts the possibility of changing minds. While there are surely some with deeply ingrained and unwaveringly intolerant nationalism beating in their breast, history teaches that most just want a better life and are looking for a compelling narrative that inspires their confidence.

The times, the pressures, and the dominant narratives by which we understand them - these things play crucial roles in where the people will place their confidence, whether in the Left or in the Right. And it is control over these forces that progressives have surrendered, too much for far too long, in the name of an electoral strategy aimed at taking and holding power.

In the 1930s, fascism spread while its opponents were divided and weakened - often co-opting the establishment and its traditional values as its own. The Republic in Spain was left isolated by international allies even as the people took up arms, in many countries, to defend it.

But the Republic also lost an important fight: it failed to organise, to coordinate, to align its factional narratives into a single compelling story. And many of those factions saw those supported more conservative groups as inherently opponents, and attacked them and alienated them.

As in the 1930s, the far right has gotten to grips with the forces at play and produced a seductive narrative, absolving national majorities of fault and offering them simplistic, crude solutions that play to revisionist nostalgia - aided by a conservative elite that still hope to exploit or control these movements as they grow.

But where is the progressive alternative?

The American Presidential Election is yet another warning to progressives, of all factions from radical to moderate, that differences must be put aside in pursuit of the broader aims of justice and liberty, equality and empowerment, and in all of these sustainability.

The issues affecting the working poor are clear: housing and energy cost too much, work is precarious and pays too little, opportunities and security are scarce and fragile. Ideas around community and cooperative action, of democratic empowerment, that confronts these ills even exists.

So where is the progressive narrative?

It isn't progressive to dismiss the fears of the working class, but nor is it to blindly embrace the narratives spread among them by the far right. The reality is that to achieve true progressive reform you must take the people with you.

To do that, if the Left is to reach out to people, it needs its own compelling story to explain the times. That means bringing together policies into a vision, of the present and the future. And for that to be effective, the Left has to stop surrendering to the Right the creation of the story that explains our times.

US Presidential Election 2016: Alexander Hamilton said it had fallen to America to prove citizens capable of unselfish government that served the public good

Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father of the United States and the chief champion of its constitution. Image: Alexander Hamilton from Marion Doss (License) (Cropped)

In The Federalist No.1, arguing for the ratification of America's then brand new constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote that:

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

Hamilton drew up an image of a grave responsibility having fallen upon America, as the symbol and example of citizen government, to prove that government by consent, by reason and by dispassionate and sound judgement was something of which ordinary people - once removed from the compulsions of force or fear or hierarchical and servial duties - were capable.

But Hamilton also warned of the prejudicial interests which the new Constitution must overcome to pursue that ideal. Not least the "perverted ambition" of those who seek to "flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation" or "aggrandise themselves by the confusions of their country".

Sound like anyone?

Donald Trump has, at every turn, taken the path of division and self-aggrandisement. At every turn he has taken the low road, driving wedges into the heart of the country to exploit fear, disenfranchisement and confusion.

As much as the citizens of the United States likes to see their country as something that stands apart, it has nonetheless remained on trend. The rise of the language of far right politics - sectarian, intolerant - is not unique to America. It is feeding on desperation and hopelessness wherever it can find it.

Around the world, opportunistic individuals are stoking confusion to aggrandise themselves and pursue perverted ambitions at the expense of the public good. Trump is part of that: someone who will use the people while they're useful, only to drop them and persecute them the moment they're not.

At the Presidential Election, and at the many Senate and Congressional and other elections happening this week, America faces a stark choice - almost nowhere else in the Western world has two-party politics so deeply embedded itself.

On the one hand, the Republican Party has been consumed by its own folly. Trump is just the vile symptom of a deeper sickness - the boil than alerts us to the plague hidden within. Intolerance and sectarianism were seized upon as electoral tools in the Sixties and the price is now come due: to be overthrown and subsumed beneath an egotistical populist.

For progressives, the failures of the Democrats are different. They are the product of compromise, of playing within the system, of trying to achieve gradual reform from the inside - that has left them tainted by association with those they have had to work with to build consensus.

Hillary Rodham Clinton symbolises those compromises to many on the Left, and beyond, perhaps more than any other Democrat. A life long career of those compromises have also made her perhaps the most qualified Presidential candidate in history.

That is the upside and down of trying to get things done from the inside: there is a cost to claims of being a reformer when you have been part of the establishment for so long. If a person spends long enough in the political arena, it becomes hard to see for what they actually.

But that is where the people come in: the activists, the radicals, the social reformers, ordinary citizens in thousands of constituencies. As Laurie Penny argues, those who want radical change always see those in power as an enemy and Hillary Clinton is the enemy she has wanted all her life.

Clinton is a centrist, a moderate, a woman, a political insider with a lifetime of experience: a graduate of Yale; a consistent campaigner for healthcare reform, achieving successes for children and reservists; as First Lady, she spoke in China to tell the world that Women's Rights were Human Rights; she built an international consensus to pull Iran in from the cold; and her name is cited as a leading campaigner for numerous reforming policies - like equal pay and care for 9/11 first responders.

For progressives, with narrow but stark options, voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election is a vote for the public good. In his own time, Alexander Hamilton stood opposed to the political fortunes of Aaron Burr, because he believed him to serve no interest but his own. Between the pragmatic public servant and the self-serving egotist, there is no debate as to who the arch-Federalist Hamilton would have supported between Clinton and Trump. As Hamilton argued:

"Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good."

But it doesn't stop there. One person alone does not make the future. No President, no leader, of no country, not even America, wields that kind of power. That is the work of movements. Progressives must find theirs and with it their voice. Remember: politics doesn't end with an election.

Vote Hillary, but don't do so expecting that you can just leave everything in her lap. Hillary Rodham Clinton is not a perfect candidate. No candidate is. She is human and flawed. So progressives voters must be prepared to hold her to account, to provide scrutiny and be critical, prepared to demand excellence at every turn.

High Court rejects Theresa May's interpretation that she could exclude Parliament because referendum result gave her executive authority to pursue Brexit

Today the High Court handed down a judgement that Parliament must have a vote on how and when to proceed with Article 50 (BBC, 2016). While the Government will appeal, the ruling is nonetheless a blow to Theresa May's approach so far: to interpret the 'Brexit' vote as a mandate to exclude Parliament and wield the executive prerogative.

If the ruling stands up on appeal, what might be the impact upon any future referendum in the UK? One thing at least seems clear: it would be hard for anyone to argue ever again that it was constitutional to take a referendum was a legal basis for executive action.

In the UK, certain powers are 'reserved' - that is to say, that it does not require the assent of Parliament for the Executive Body (the Prime Minister and the Cabinet) to wield them. These powers are referred to as the Royal Prerogative, thought they devolved to the Prime Minister.

On assuming office as Prime Minister, Theresa May made one particularly huge decision: to interpret the 'Brexit' result she had inherited from the referendum as a mandate to exclude Parliament and proceed with the process by exercising her executive prerogative.

That, of course, provoked a reaction from Parliament. Without pursuing the blocking of 'Brexit, some, including MPs, argued that proceeding without Parliament's involvement and consent would be a violation of Britain's constitutional process (Politics Home, 2016).

It should also raise concerns. Whatever the perception of the referendum, it was legally only advisory and non-binding. To interpret such a mandate - popular acclamation, without legal basis - as justification for wielding unscrutinised executive power, would be to set a very disturbing precedent.

As the High Court ruling itself explains, Parliament is sovereign, with the law and the constitution being assembled and drawing their authority from its Acts. The exception is where it had explicit handed over, or shared, sovereignty explicitly in the form of an Act.

Britain's relationship with the European Union is in fact defined by such Acts of Parliament. These Acts form a part of the UK's constitution - and further, they confer certain Rights and Protections extended to UK citizens by Britain's EU membership.

To try and undo a significant part of the constitution, and to take away these significant rights - including, not least, European citizenship - without following constitutional procedure, was a dangerous path for May to tread upon. So why attempt it?

Perhaps the simplest answer would be that it was the only way in which the result could not be potentially challenged, and so potentially defeated. That, however, confers upon the referendum, retroactively, powers it did not possess. The referendum was not legally binding, yet Theresa May decided to interpret it as being so.

Further, Theresa May decided to interpret the referendum result as extending to her, as Prime Minister, the executive power to alter the constitution and the rights of citizens, without the checks, scrutiny or consent of elected representatives.

If the High Court ruling stands, then that interpretation will be invalidated it what could be seen to be a significant precedent: popular acclamation is not accepted as sufficient grounds for the unscrutinised wielding of executive power.

Yet trouble lies ahead. The ruling puts the Judiciary and the 'Brexit' voters at direct odds in their interpretation of what the majority won by the Leave campaign means. The opinion of Brexiters towards the 48% who voted Remain is already low and suspicious.

And what if Parliament should reject the kind of deal Theresa May is pursuing? Even if only the deal and not the ultimate end of exiting the EU, it may well be taken as a direct affront. There may even have to be an election before such a vote could take place, as the MPs who sit in the Commons at present have no mandate whatsoever for a 'Brexit'.

The High Court ruling has begun a new chapter in the Brexit story. Parliament, with or without an election, must now weigh in on the negotiations - meaning the Government must come clean about its plan and priorities in the process of untangling the UK from the EU. But if the ruling against the appeal is successful? It would set precedents that do not bear thinking about.