Labour's crisis could be the opportunity to create a Progressive Alliance to unite against the Conservatives

Unless Boris Johnson has his way, the next general election is likely to come much sooner than planned (Walker et al, 2016). Upon resigning, Prime Minister David Cameron called for a new Conservative leader to be elected in time for the party conference in October.

That would put a new election in November, at the earliest. Yet that timetable has been pushed up - maybe due to pressure from other EU members who want the British exit resolved soon. The new aim for electing a Conservative leader now seems to be September, which could put an election as soon as October.

With the Tories split, with the country split, and with some clear rallying points appearing - not least a sudden sparking of pro-European sentiment and campaigns pushing back at intolerance and ethnically-charged abuse - it would seem to be a golden opportunity for Labour and for progressive parties in general.

A progressive alliance - a pact focussing the electoral efforts of progressive parties from Labour to the Greens to the Liberal Democrats against the Conservatives and UKIP, rather than each other - is surely more likely now than it ever has been. The situation is critical and need for solidarity is great.

Yet at precisely this point, Labour's Right-wing decided it had tolerated Jeremy Corbyn's leadership quite long enough (MacAskill et al, 2016). In a matter of hours, Labour had fallen into so deep and disreputable a mess that party supporters of even the most deep convictions where sleepless with anxiety that the party's complete ruin was imminent (Jones, 2016).

So divided is Labour, it seems now that the two sides are reduced to squabbling over who gets to keep the name and history - even as the party itself appears to be little more than a hollow and decaying husk.

If the MPs successfully topple the leadership, with Angela Eagle appearing to be the challenger (BBC, 2016), it would alienate the membership and almost certainly trigger an exodus. The Left of the party waited too long to put its candidate forward and is unlikely to want to wait around through another Blairite New Labour experiment (Hinsliff, 2016).

However, despite the doom and gloom, it could be that a Labour split could be exactly the catalyst that is needed for the Left. For a long, long time the Labour Party has dominated the progressive wing of politics, squeezing out any alternatives and campaigning forcefully for themselves as the only progressive alternative - a power obsessed position that make an pact with other parties unlikely.

Yet Labour has now learned some stark lessons. Its connection with its old heartlands has been shattered, possibly irreparably. It chance of winning a majority has been drastically cut by its loss of support in Scotland. And the trust between the party's wings seems to have been broken. In such realisations lie the fire and motivations to finally push on and make positive changes, if it can be seized.

If the Left and Right-wings split, these lessons must surely lead to an electoral pact between them to avoid immediate competition that would only inflict further damage by splitting support in the constituencies (Jones, 2016{2}). Such a pact could form the ideal base for a broader progressive alliance.

With the Momentum movement, Corbyn and whatever MPs remain his allies, and the trade unions rallying around, for instance, Left Unity - a party almost ready made for such a Left Labour breakaway - and the Labour Right as something along the lines of  the Democratic Party in Italy or America, or New Democrats as in Canada, the argument for getting the main progressive parties cooperating would be impossible to ignore.

It would be much easier to imagine Left Unity and the Democrats being convinced to work alongside the Liberal Democrats and the Greens towards the common goal of defeating the Conservatives in England than would convincing Labour to put aside its majority ambitions - it might even be convinced to work with Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland.

The Liberal Democrats and the Greens both campaigned strongly for the Remain side in the referendum, with the Lib Dems in particular seeing a boost in support, identifying themselves closely with the post-referendum pro-Europe outpourings (Chandler, 2016) - with its Lib Dem Fightback now seeing membership rise to 70,000, higher even than in 2010 (BBC, 2016{2}).

Both parties have shown themselves willing and able to work with other parties on the Left. In Wales, the Lib Dems are currently in coalition with Labour and the Greens have been arguing since the 2015 election for the building of a progressive alliance to end the damaging splitting of the progressive vote that helps Conservatives win (Lucas, 2015).

In the aftermath of a disastrous 2015 election and a country-dividing referendum, progressives need a positive mindset more than ever. While the breaking of the Labour Party would be as painful for many as the referendum result, there is a need to look even at a split in such a historically consequential party in a positive light.

The division of one creaking edifice of a party could be the spark that ignites a much broader progressive unity. If it leads to better relations on the Left, to more cooperation and on better terms, to a pact and an alliance that brings progressives together to advance, and to defend, the most important of causes, then even a party as significant as Labour is just a party, a means to and end, not an end in itself, whose interests should not be put above those aims for which it was formed to achieve.

Progressives need to focus on the future: The first priority is guaranteeing basic rights

Night falls at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Photograph: European Court of Human Rights by Francois Schnell (License) (Cropped)

The referendum is over and Brexit has won. It might have been a flawed way to settle a dispute, with an awkward result that has split the country nearly completely in two, ensuring an outcome that will not be representative. But progressives have to push on.

The necessity now is to focus on future. Leaving the EU will leave holes in our rights protections, and the Left needs to give consideration as to how to plug the new gaps. That means getting behind a push for new rights protections above and beyond just legislation.

As the Labour Party's senior Brexiter Gisella Stuart was keen to remind us all during the referendum campaign, the UK certainly does have rights legislation of its own - gathered in a long history of campaigning and political reform (ITV News, 2016; ITV, 2016).

"It's been strong trade unions and strong Labour government which have produced that. If you look at any of the rights which we have, either started here or are better here. It is a nonsense to think that the EU protects us from ourselves."

The traditional approach of the Left, as Stuart alluded to, is to rally a movement, in this case the labour movement and unions, to build and maintain majority pressure for new rights and ensure the vigilance to watch over previous gains. That might be described as the 'democratic' approach.

What this approach is not, is a substitute for guaranteed rights - inviolable by the state, with the individual holding the legal power to challenge the state where it infringes upon their essential rights. Such protections are the 'liberal' approach.

In the referendum campaign, these two approaches - one democratic, one liberal - where presented to us as opposed to each other. The liberal guarantees where presented as unnecessarily safeguarding against ourselves, as an undesirable restraint on majority power.

Yet the point of both democratic and liberal protections is to check the abuse of power. Democracy holds individuals in positions of authority to account - as Tony Benn put it, "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?". Liberalism complements it by holding the majority to account, protecting the individual, or minorities, from the wrath of the many.

Combined together, the democratic approach with the liberal, provides an intricate web of protections ensuring progress made, opening up liberties and removing barriers, cannot be lightly undone - or casually put aside in a moment in which they are considered an obstructive inconvenience.

With Britain's exit, the protections for the individual provided by the EU's social chapter - negotiated and enforced across all of the EU's member states in cooperation, presented - will be withdrawn. That creates a large hole in the UK's rights protections.

That hole could be widened by an ending of the UK's commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) - put at risk in the UK by Brexit, thanks to leading Conservatives like Theresa May, seemingly likely candidate to run against Boris Johnson to be the successor to David Cameron as leader of the Conservatives, expressing a loathing for the ECHR and a wish to withdraw the UK from it (Asthana & Mason, 2015).

For progressives, this marks out clear territory. On the one hand there is a need to reinforce that which the EU's social chapter previously protected - particularly the rights of women and of workers - and on the other to ensure protections remain in place for essential human rights. These hands must work together.

The only current effort to provide some kind of domestic level of protections had been the Conservative promise to introduce a British Bill of Rights. Yet that effort has never fully materialises, and what information has come out of the process has been roundly criticised.

Bella Sankey, Director of Policy at Liberty UK, stressed that 'British' Bill of Rights proposals represented a fundamental diminishment of the protections of our basic rights and put the most vulnerable at risk (Sankey, 2016, Sankey, 2014)). The Conservatives bill risks creating tiered rights, that fail the universal test and hand powerful vested interests the right to decide whether an individual should be protected by human rights, in order to make a crudely naked nationalist pitch.

Sankey goes on to argue that the 1998 Human Rights Act, which set the stage for British judges in British courts to rule on human rights claims domestically, is still the far superior protection. That makes defending the UK's place upholding the ECHR essential.

As for workers' rights - in Europe covering everything from maternity leave to fair treatment for part time workers (Inman, 2016) - it has long been an aim of the Conservatives to 'repatriate' powers over employment legislation, what the Tories call the EU's bureaucratic red tape (Syal, 2013).

Apparently to help reduce costs for businesses, the Conservatives have said they want to cut back these restrictions. What they don't disclose is that most of these 'restrictions' were basic workers' rights, public health & safety standards, and legislation designed to ensure the common market could function as easily as possible by all businesses working according to the same harmonised expectations - basically helping to maximise marketability.

Outside of the EU's system of mutual guarantees, covered in legislation applying to all member states, workers fall back to trusting to the reliability of political parties and movements to be a bastion for their rights at work.

Under Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system, that has meant clinging to Labour even as the party has drifted to the right and accepted the neoliberal consensus. That simply trammels voters, restricting their freedom to choose - as splitting the vote between other parties, in pursuit of other objectives, would risk letting down the guard protecting workers, preventing voters holding parties like Labour to proper account.

The situation calls for a solution that gives people reassurance that their rights at work have protections even when absolute vigilance isn't possible. To that end, the next step for workers rights should be a charter that, either by international treaty like the ECHR or under the domestic protection of the Supreme Court, guarantees employment rights beyond simple majority influence.

Beyond the reach of the EU and European rights protections, the ability of citizens to hold governments to account is reduced to a desperate struggle - between Unions and employers, and for voters between their ideals and pragmatic necessity in their choice of political parties. The UK's time in Europe has shown a glimpse of how things might be done better, that the fear and tension that comes with the uncertainty of whether your rights will survive the next election or cabinet whim could be reduced.

The task ahead of progressives now is to think constructively about the future and build a consensus to set basic rights, in Britain, in adamant.

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: A progressive response to the Leave result

How soon the UK will withdraw its representation from a European Union it no longer supports has yet to be determined. Photograph: Espace Leopold in Brussels from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

With the painfully, aggressively, nationalist suggestion that 'without a bullet being fired' the United Kingdom had declared its 'independence', Nigel Farage claimed victory for the Leave campaign at 4am. Tactless as ever, the UKIP frontman put in his claim early to define the Leave campaign's victory. It is important now that progressives and moderates do not allow this outcome to be defined purely in his or his party's terms.

The Left has to avoid ceding control over events. For instance, immigration looks like having been the dominant factor, trumping the economy at the last. Social tensions, that saw tolerance failing amongst financial struggles and their attendant fears, are clearly present in communities that have been unable to diffuse them with integration.

Progressives can't be sucked into acquiescence to the popular narrative that wants to take the easy road and blame immigrants alone for these stresses and pressures. Progressive policy has to be to heal divisions and to keep making the argument for public investment - in services, in housing, in jobs - as the real solution to the UK's difficulties.

And yet exiting the EU looks likely to drive more wedges between the people of Britain before it heals them. Not least does it raise the spectre of another Scottish Independence Referendum. Nicola Sturgeon was emphatic that Scotland had voted comprehensively for a future in the European Union - in dramatic contrast with England. There has even been a call from Sinn Fein to respect Northern Ireland's pro-European position with a referendum on Irish Unification.

With the result split 52%-48% in the UK as a whole, with Scotland and Northern Ireland moving toward the EU, and England and Wales away, there is as much of a macro divide in the UK as there are regional and local divides. Those divides will not be helped if the British economy takes a further tumble thanks to the isolation of exit.

The European Union itself will also likely suffer for this result as well. The Far Right has already made gains, making strong showings in France, Austria, Poland and Hungary. That sense of Nationalism will only likely be inflamed by 'Brexit' in the elections in European countries over the next couple of years.

What this result cannot do is end the progressive commitment to an internationalist vision of the world. The future for progressives, and the solutions to many of the biggest problems - on the environment, on corporate tax dodging, on managing international debt - remain international.

But maintaining an international view now comes with the much more difficult job of getting to work on building a new pan-European democratic movement, to fill the hole left by the British exit. A key part of that will be going back to the start to make the arguments, from the ground up, that expose the real and dangerous flaws in insular, nationalist and intolerant thinking.

Only by working from the ground up now can progressives break through and begin to change minds. Only from the ground up can progressives unpick the hostility towards Europe, and the false beliefs underpinning it, that prevents us from seeing our commonality, our common values and challenges, and what we can accomplish together.

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 reasons Progressives should reject Nationalism and choose Remain

The final week of Britain's EU referendum campaign has begun under a dark cloud. The death of West Yorkshire MP Jo Cox, allegedly in an act of Anders Breivik-esque murderous Far Right terrorism, has led to outcry over the tone of the debate - with particular concern regarding the Right's rhetoric on immigration.

It has been easy to think these things don't happen in the UK. People are shot in the street in America, bombs go off amongst civilians in the middle east, violent clashes between the police and the public happen on the continent - extremism may be a way of life for others, but not in Britain.

But it isn't true. Britain and Europe have their own long histories of extremism, all too easily encouraged and inflamed. Our own particular flavour of extremism in Europe is Nationalism. Here are our 4 reasons to reject Nationalism in favour of the EU and Internationalism.

I: The EU was an effort to bring a continent together...

The European Union, formerly the European Community, was founded as an effort to get Europe to think beyond National limitations - not to abandon ethnic, provincial or municipal differences to gentrification, but to accept difference, embrace it and build for the future using diversity as an advantage. It was an effort to try and think bigger and broader, to develop a broad view of humanity and how we might live in peace.

The founding tool of that effort was economics. Free Trade and a Common Market were the starting point. Caught between American competition and Soviet collectivism, Europe took a different path, a more cooperative approach - cooperation between government and industry, industry and workers, upon which base was built for a collection of negotiated minimum standards.

National interests have used their influence in European politics to hijack that agenda over recent years, with conservative austerians using the EU as a vehicle for their policies. Yet the foundation for international cooperation and solidarity remains - it just has to be taken back.

II: ...after Nationalism had nearly destroyed us

Before the efforts to bring the continent together, life in Europe was dominated by Nationalism. Europe's century of nationalism began for real in 1848, the "springtime of the peoples". Europe's progressives rose against their conservative monarchist elites, largely in peaceful protests at first, to demand constitutions and broad rights. Yet the progressive movement split.

Liberals and democrats, in their first expressions, split over their aims. The bourgeois liberals were too concerned about their propertied interests, and the Democrats, who embraced Nationalism as its populist rallying call, drove themselves apart along national lines - sectarian divisions appearing as the general democratic cause was swallowed  and patriotisms with competing interests were pitted against one another. The establishment put down its now divided opposition by force.

But that was not the end of the story of Nationalism. In Italy it found life: Mazzini used it as a rallying call to achieve the unity needed for liberation from foreign rule, then Cavour used it as the means to achieve the unity needed for consolidation under an Italian monarch. In Germany, Bismarck used it as the means to achieve the unity needed for the domination of Germany, central Europe and the continent.

The competing national interests of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to escalation and fear - and then war. Millions died in the Great War, but Europe hadn't learned its lessons and fell back into its divisions. The internationalism of Keynes and his dire warnings of the consequences of letting national interests dominate, with their vindictive agendas, were ignored.

Then Nationalism found its untrammelled voice in fascism, appealing with foreign scapegoats and unifying symbols to a beaten down public, that was impoverished, starved and looking for someone to blame. In desperation and anger, empathy was the first casualty. The result was one of the worst catastrophes in human history.

III: Sectarianism has found a way to creep back in...

At no time has it been more important for progressives to start working to bring back international cooperation. Marine Le Pen, leader of France's Far Right Front National, has announced that she sees, with no irony whatsoever, a new "springtime of the people" emerging along with a renewal of patriotism.

Jonathan Freedland wrote for The Guardian of the extremist poison that has been poured into the public veins, but the reality is that Nationalism is something we have been recreationally dosing ourselves with for decades. Britain has, since the war, managed not to - mostly - do more than just casually dabble in Nationalism, mostly getting out the flags and national pride only for big sporting events or big occasions.

But slowly, this has allowed Nationalism to become not a political position but rather a given - something that people simply are and are expected to participate in. Even after it, finally, very nearly destroyed us all in the 1940s, it seems we still couldn't put the intoxicating brew down, even when we knew it was lethal. Nationalism is Europe's addiction, its sickness, and it is getting close to falling off the wagon again. The spread of the Far Right through France, Austria, Hungary, Poland, even in Germany and Italy, seemingly egged on by Putin in Russia, is alarming to see for any progressive.

IV: ...but the real solutions remain international

The European Union has been an attempt to get Europe thinking differently. Britain came late to the EU, but was a prime mover in things like the European Convention on Human Rights, from the very start, and along with Italy demanded the Regional Development Fund be set up when it entered the EU - investing in the poorest parts of Europe, by region rather than nation, to improve and equalise the standard of life.

For Britain to be the first tumbling rock that begins the Nationalist landslide would a sad state of affairs, with its long history - though blotted with the meanness and selfishness of colonialism - of reaching out to the world internationally. It would also mean the country had turned a blind eye to its real problems.

The situation in Britain is fairly clear: chronic underinvestment, in key areas, by more than twenty years of Westminster government - an effect exacerbated under austerity - have led to a perceived pressure in the form of competition for work and competition for housing. Migrants are scapegoated, but the real solution is proper government investment, in training to end skills mismatches, in supporting newer and smaller businesses, in building homes - a pattern that is replicated right across Europe.

At the European level too can we see the need for an international perspective. The damage to the environment, that knows no borders, nor major corporations dodging tax while pitting workers against each other in a race to the bottom on wages and rights, again unbound by borders, will be tackled at the national level. Yet 'foreigners' and the European Union, itself an organisation that invests, are being made the scapegoats to hide Westminster's failings.

What do progressives want from politics?

The progressive solutions to Britain's problems are shared with the progressive solutions to Europe's problems - we have more in common than divides us. Establishments disconnected from reality and democracy, wealth hoarding corporations and a need to start reimagining how we think about work, wages and economics.

Justice and Liberty - Equality - Democracy - Progress on all of these fronts - these are the things that progressives ask for. All of these things take time, effort and a consensus to construct. A long struggle to build and reform. In just years, or even just days, these efforts can be torn down. But they take decades and even centuries to construct.

Progressives may have been left out of this referendum, as the sides pitched a presently Centre-Right status quo versus the Far Right's Nationalist dream. But the progressive stance is clear: don't walk away from everything we've worked together to build - stay and fight for it, and keep building.

This is Part 4 of  a  four part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 things you should know about Britain's influence, peace and security in the EU

In 2012, the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize. The EU was cited for its work in uniting a continent that, until 1945, had been consumed by interminable war and for it's work advancing the cause of "peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe".

The role of the EU in that peace has been questioned in this referendum campaign by those who believe that this particular pedestal belongs rather to NATO. So it is important to consider the difference between the EU and NATO, their roles and the difference between building a peace and mounting a defence.

Here is our four things you should know about Britain's influence, peace and security beyond its borders, whether in or out of the European Union.

I: NATO is a military alliance, assembled for security not peace

NATO has roots in the Allies of the two world wars. But it was founded as the military alliance of the West - a treaty bound agreement for collective defence against an aggressor - that was sought out as a counter-balancing power to Stalin's Soviet Union, which was casting a large shadow over Western Europe at the end of the 1940s.

NATO, from its inception under American leadership, has undoubtedly been at the forefront of many of Europe's major conflicts and disputes. In the South and East of Europe, beyond its borders, NATO where heavily involved in the former Yugoslavia, intervening and providing peacekeepers after and today in Syria.

Despite far reaching influence, NATO remains a military alliance. By contrast, as the Cold War went on a third group emerged between the Communist East and the Capitalist West, whose structure was instead an economic alliance.

II: The EU began by using economics to bring lasting peace to Europe

The European Union is the result of civil, rather than military, efforts to bring the people of Europe together. From the start, its methods have been classically liberal - a pillar of free trade economics to prevent war, by materially binding countries by mutual dependence, and a pillar of human rights, that guarantees respect for all of Europe's immensely diverse people, whether as groups or as individuals.

In its time the EU has seen the reconciliation of France and Germany, making war between them unthinkable, and the introduction of democracy to Greece, Spain and Portugal - expanding the EU, and European values and standards as they have become members.

The successes of Europe speak to a different approach to security. By building a peace than brings together a group of people, resolved on a set of principles that stretches beyond nations and borders - beyond tribes and their territories - and encouraging people to recognise their commonality, accept their differences, and choose cooperation, there can be the security that rises from peace and friendship.

III: Europe is threatened by a battle of values, not by force of arms

A military alliance can only offer so much influence on these matters. It cannot address matters of domestic politics without wading in very dark waters. Those who would choose the military alliance over the economic would be literally choosing security over peace, rather than trying to develop both.
A military alliance such as NATO may offer some surety against, for example, the rising militarist authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin's Russia. But what about those countries, in Europe, admiring of his example, who have begun to emulate him at home and come under Putin's sway internationally?

From France, with its Front National, Hungary, with Jobbik, and Poland, with the Law and Justice Party, these countries are members of both the European Union and NATO. Would these parties face expulsion from NATO if they embrace the very authoritarianism that it was set up to oppose? What can NATO do, with all its military power, to influence this struggle for the soul of Europe?

Like the threat of Islamic extremism, this isn't a battle being fought by great powers - gigantic monoliths possessing overwhelming kill power. Influence in such a contest is won, not by arms on a battlefield, but through thousands of civic debates, through effective public services, through the positive opportunity for integration and in millions of small acts of tolerance, decency and welcome.

With integration over nationalism, open borders over closed, in dozens of policy areas, the EU has tried to promote a set of values that stands markedly apart from those of Putin's national authoritarianism or the fanatic totalitarian religious extremism for Islamic fundamentalism.

IV: In the EU, influence is not restricted to states

The European Union exists to bring Europe peacefully together and comes packaged with a commitment therein to human rights, and to democracy. Europe's incomplete integration ensures that how the politics of these values plays out is advertised usually in the crude terms of British, or French, or German interests, or those of two dozen other nation-state members.

Yet, as the movements offering the greatest source of hope for progressives right now show, influence can be exercised in Europe beyond that controlled by the state governments themselves.

The citizens movements of Spain, governing cities and provinces on the principles of municipalism, pushing the municipal cause have a taken a larger view, one more outward looking than might be expected from local politics. They look to help their communities by building alliances between municipalities, between cities, across the entire continent, to bring democracy closer to the people and to bring those citizens together in solidarity.

To that end, the municipal movement governments of cities in Spain have begun meeting directly with the administrations of other cities in Europe. Therein can be found the beginnings of the next great progressive movement - and it has been made possible in the present by the work of decades within the EU.

What do progressives want to influence?

For progressives, the future, the path to their aims - for justice, liberty, equality, progress - still runs the international road. In Europe, that still means looking outward, looking at politics on a continental scale. To that end, the European Union remains the infrastructure that we have.

The EU certainly isn't perfect, but exiting one continental system without another supporting progressive values to join, when so much for the Left depends on international cooperation, is reckless and wasteful. Between voting to remain and voting to exit, voting to remain is the only option that chimes the broad vision.

But for progressives, matters don't rest there. The EU is incomplete. It is under the control of a austere conservative political consensus and under threat from a set of nationalist authoritarian parties who want to regress politics by a century.

Pulling away will do nothing for the peace and security of those who cherish values like openness and tolerance, who believe in standing for solidarity, standing for common values and standing for the common good, need to stay and engage even as other hearts turn colder.

This is Part 3 of  a multi-part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

PMQs isn't fit for purpose. But it is the symptom not the disease

Week after week, the noise at Prime Minister's Questions has gotten louder. The half hour sessions have been drowned in noise growing more inconsiderate, more deliberately vindictive, with each passing week. Having to listen to the Conservative benches braying, on live television, to drown out the questions of the opposition, can be an exercise in masochism.

It seems pretty obvious at first look that PMQs is broken. And yet, it fits so perfectly within the Westminster system. That in itself is a sign of a much deeper problem in the British political system.

The essential trouble with PMQs is that it fits in a little too perfectly with the adversarial political culture in the UK. The two sides, the government and opposition, line up opposite to one another to, supposedly, hold the government to account.

The trouble is that this polemic is bias refined, a subjective contest where the government holds one view and thinks it is right and the opposition holds another and thinks it is right. What follows is a sparring match between the unstoppable and the immovable.

That contest is perfectly fitted to the UK's us-versus-them, first-past-the-post and winner-takes-all politics. Two implacable foes, coming from fixed positions having arguments that by their nature cannot be resolved. The government will do what it will and the rest is theatre.

There is certainly am uncontestable need for the public to see, in the flesh, what it is that each side stands for, argued for, hopefully, eloquently - maybe even persuasively. Yet PMQs is one the very few public moments in which there is an opportunity to enforce upon the government - handed extraordinary power in the UK - some kind of accountability.

However, when you cross the two purposes, the party publicity exercise and holding the government to account, only one of them is ever going to win. Accountability is sunk beneath bravado, noise and petty point-scoring.

In Scotland there has been attempt to début a revised First Minister's questions, changing up the system to provide more time for a calmer session with more interrogation. But even that is limited in what it can achieve.

It cannot escape a political culture of fixed adversarial positions and that is expressed, at its worst, in an exercise that is not supposed to be 'political' being consumed by politics.

Ideally, the process of holding the government to account would be something akin to a committee hearing. The Prime Minister would be brought before them and have to give acceptable answers to fundamental questions: What is your government doing? From where does it derive the mandate for that action?

The government's reluctance to put PM David Cameron into the election debates suggests an immediate weakness to this particular alternative: Would the party political machine ever submit to the Prime Minister and the government being put so clearly on trial? Probably not.

Right now the European Union's democracy is under scrutiny. But Westminster's shortcoming shouldn't be swept under the rug. Winner-takes-all makes a mockery of political representation and the adversary system simply reinforces the alienation of citizens from their government - keeping the real business far from the vigilant eyes of those who would want answers to the difficult questions that could hold it to account.

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 things you should know about TTIP, free trade and the European Union

One of the most controversial elements of the UK's membership of the European Union, at present, is the TTIP - Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - trade deal. Between the United States and the European Union, it is intended to break down trade barriers limiting free trade.

The prospective deal has been controversial from the start - being assembled in negotiations deemed secret, under a cloud of fear that business is being given legal rights to seek recompense from governments for profit-hurting policy, reduce Europe's regulatory standards and open protected domestic institutions to aggressive corporate competition.

I: The EU is only what you make of it

The misconception here is that the EU is a distinct, abstract institution, pursuing its own agenda - thus imagining the deal to be the work of the EU alone, with exit a simple blocking measure. But the EU doesn't work like that. It is driven by a council of the governments of the member states, including the UK.

Right now, Britain's representative are David Cameron's government and the Prime Minister has argued forcefully in favour of TTIP. Leaving the EU is not going to stop the UK's Conservative government seeking the pass TTIP-type trade agreement.

The basic reality is that the opposition to TTIP is to be found in Europe, not out of it. In Germany, 250,000 people have marched against the treaty. In France, the government is opposing the treaty for the way it threatens its protection policy covering certain of its own domestic interests. The movements are right in step with the major concerns over the treaty in Britain.

II: Remember ACTA?

As ever, the problem persists of national governments hiding behind the EU - using it as an excuse or a way to pass policies where the public aren't watching, when it is simply a system whose strings they are pulling.

Consider the controversial ACTA treaty. ACTA, which was intended to ensure an international 'harmonisation' of copyright enforcement, was criticised as potentially allowing private companies to violate basic personal liberties like privacy and even threatening generic medicines to protect the financial interests big pharmaceutical companies.

While many national governments around the world and across Europe signed, including the UK, the treaty was ultimately blocked in a vote by the directly and proportionally elected EU Parliament, following massive public protests across the EU.

III: What is the point of free trade?

On TTIP, Prime Minister Cameron has tried to make out that there are stark lines over the deal. From his perspective, on his side - supporting TTIP - are all those who want free trade and the benefits it brings, and on the other are people who are 'against free trade and wanting to see an expansion of trade and investment and jobs' (Mason, 2016).

It is not unfair to suggest free trade is a worthy principle, but why can't we have it on ethical terms?

In its more idealistic form, the EU is all about constructing an ethical free trade area. In its origins, it was conceived of as a way to end war in Europe by stopping national governments getting into strife with each other over control of the natural resources with which to construct to materiel of war.

Going further back, into the 19th century, the campaign for free trade was about breaking open cartels. Under the system of trade formed by the competing systems of national protection, the basic necessities were made prohibitively expensive by the stranglehold over them of powerful and unaccountable landlords and bosses whose interests where served by national government protection.

The Anti-Corn Law League, the early radical liberal campaign in the UK for free trade, sought to break up these cartels to reduce the cost of basic food and goods, so that the poorest could afford a decent and healthy life. The campaign for free trade was in service to the public against the protected interests of the rich landowners.

IV: What does EU trade look like?

What the EU has attempted, but not completed, is to ensure that the free trade it promotes takes place on a fair and ethical playing field. Basic standards, enforced by regulation (the mythical beast the Right love to talk of slaying), protect workers' rights, prevent animal testing and in a host of other important areas ensure a basic minimum expected of business practice in Europe.

Internally, this comes hand-in-hand with policies like the Regional Development Fund. The fund is intended to invest in the poorest, sub-national, regions of the EU to raise the standard of living up, so no country can look to undercut another on basic standards or be cut out left unfairly behind.

Externally the protections, of standards and rights, require trading partners to meet certain conditions for access to Europe's common market - like those of Norway and Switzerland that have been much publicised as alternatives in for the UK during this EU referendum campaign.

All of these ideals depend, however, on who is in charge of policy and negotiation at the EU. Right now, it is the conservatives of many EU member states who are in the ascendency and control policy and decision making at the European level. As a result, the EU's actions have been tinged with conservatism.

Within that system, it has been the Right, and the far right, who have been the ones pushing most aggressively for the UK to do away with the EU's standards - though it has faced resistance. The solution for the Right has become doing away with the EU, but keeping the market intact, as they still want to trade with Europe, but want to be undercut everyone else and help big business pad its profits by doing away with concern for the environment or workers' rights.

What do progressives want from trade?

Exiting the EU will require new trade deals to be negotiated. The conservative Right is unlikely to make those standards and regulations any kind of priority in its negotiations. Maybe, of course, those who want a 'left exit', unrestricted by the European system, will get a government of the Left before too long, to set about forming a new progressive trade policy.

But what are progressives in Britain going to negotiate for, if not an ethical trade area? An ethical trade area underscored by democratic accountability and cooperation?

Even a progressive exit would mean the dismantling of systems of cooperation, decades in the making, that have supported advances in rights, in a move that could only make the Far Right happy - only to have to then try to rebuild it all over again.

Right now for progressives, fighting corporate power and ensuring trade is conducted ethically and with appropriate standards and rights protections, remaining in the EU - not idly, but campaigning for progressive, democratic reforms - is still the best option.

This is Part 2 of  a multi-part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

Spain shows us that to break old status quo and make proportional representation work, we need to outgrow adversarial politics

The Palacio de las Cortes in Madrid, home to the currently implacably divided Congress of Deputies. Photograph: Congress from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

In twenty three days, Spain will go to the polls for its second election in just six months. Its first saw the seats in congress divided between Left and Right in such a way as to make forming a government unlikely (Tremlett, 2016).

Therein lies the challenge of proportional representation. While each political party may be able to make its ideas and its membership more homogeneous, there ultimately remains the need to be able to work amicably with those holding other such 'purified' stances.

Over the last five to ten years, Spain's has seen it political mainstream collapse. New parties of Citizen movements have sprung up, and through the proportional electoral system have found themselves to be collectively a third force, along with the regionalist parties, that must enthrone a new government.

Yet they have found an old social democratic Left, that might make the more tolerable ally, weakened and shrunken and the old conservatives the intolerable but only realistic option. The numbers did not add up and a new election awaits.

In the UK, voices on the Left and Right have considered how the break up of the present political alignment, itself an incoherent and inconsistent series of alliances, might be redrawn with more coherency.

Tim Montgomerie has envisioned Westminster's political parties rearranged into parties for Solidarity (essentially Democrats), Liberals, Nationals (Conservative Christian Democrats) and a party of the Far Right (Montgomerie, 2016). And Owen Jones has argued that Labour's internal strife may not be curable, with a split into more coherent groups inevitable and ultimately desirable (Jones, 2016).

Spain reveals that this is only the first step. In their incomplete breakdown of two party politics, the adversarial division remain. The old grievances are clung to as a marker of identity. The next step has to be maturity.

If the future of British politics splits the establishment in four parties then at least two will have to work together to form a government - and it may not always be the ideal two. That will require the parties to compromise and cooperate, and to find a way to do so without feeling their identity is threatened.

The attitude of the Labour supporters or Trade Unionists who hissed BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg does not suggest a group of people ready to swap the UK's archaic adversarial politics for a system based on tolerances and compromise (Cowburn, 2016). Neither does the unbearable and vicious braying of the Tory parliamentarians every Wednesday at PMQs.

For the Left, finding a way beyond this confrontational, intolerant state is essential. Achieving progressive aims is only becoming less and less likely to be achievable through the medium of one, monolithic, party.

An alliance of progressives, of different strands, each on their own coherent - trade unionism, eco-socialism, democratic socialism, liberalism, social democracy and other various shades of centrism - requires those on the Left to find common aims, and to work amicably together with other progressives, while tolerating fundamental differences in ultimate priorities.

The introduction of proportional representation and seeing the old establishment parties split can only do so much to improve politics. Without the spirit of cooperation, without outgrowing adversarial divisions, we risk falling back into the same divisive patterns.