To achieve its goals, the Living Wage must be part of a comprehensive policy of reform

The Living Wage Foundation has designated this week as Living Wage Week, with the aim of spreading a broader awareness of the measure and what it fights for: the right to a decent standard of living (Ainsley, 2016).

Its launch coincides with the announcements today of the recommended living wage, as part of the voluntary living wage scheme, being instituted by civil administrations in London, Scotland and Wales along with a number of major firms (Living Wage Foundation, 2016) - the actual Living Wage, higher than the government's 'National Living Wage'.

At a time of rising prices and economic uncertainty, an increase in pay will be a very welcome boost for many of the most vulnerable and those facing hard times. But the idea of minimum wages has been controversial in economics. There are sore divisions over the idea of an intervention through the law to 'artificially' raise wages.

For those on the neoliberal economic right, setting minimum wage thresholds are an artificial inflation of the costs of business, where costs are seen as the primary problem. From their view, the priority should be to reduce costs, so to increase competition, and through both together to reduce prices - allowing market-set wages to go further (The Economist, 2015).

On the interventionist economic left, there has been a delicate negotiated balance to strike. With trade unions for instance, there is a need achieve better returns for workers on the one hand, while also ensuring the long term affordability of pay so as to avoid future closures and lay offs.

What particularly concerns both Left and Right is that business, faced with wage inflation, may decide they have little choice but to begin to replace many basic low pay jobs with cheaper automation (The Economist, 2015{2}).

It is absolutely clear that it is just that people get proper returns for a their labour. And further, it makes sense. The OECD has stressed that economic inequality hurts economic growth and therefore the general prosperity (OECD, 2014). That makes measures of redistribution from shareholders to workers, and a fairer distribution of the 'rewards' between them, essential.

However. There can be no complacency. An economy is an intricate web and pulling at one string has knock on affects for the whole network - especially when progressive administrations are not the only ones pulling strings that have decisive results. To achieve the aim of a decent standard of living, just wages must be seen as an integral part of a broader policy of reform, which must look also to the other side of the equation: the cost of living.

In two key sectors, in housing and in energy, high costs have a devastating impact on the economy and the lives of all citizens, especially the most vulnerable. A secure wage goes hand in hand with secure housing and affordable energy - a Living Wage needs the companionship of a Living Rent.

The third aspect of any broad progressive economic policy has to be tackling the thoroughly unequal distribution of power over economic decision-making. Too much decision-making power is concentrated in the hands of too few, creating vested interests inclined to behave like cartels.

Only with all three together - giving citizens the guarantee of a reasonable reward for work, the security of basic housing and energy, and enfranchisement in the making of economic decisions - can the economy serve the needs and wishes of citizens rather than just those of narrow and self-serving interest groups.

And, as a final note, the fear of automation must at some point be addressed. With it, there will also need to be an assessment of our attitudes to welfare, to how work is rewarded, and even our definition of work itself. Above all pursuing one goal: that progress should serve citizens, not disinherit them.

Richmond Park By-Election: Zac Goldsmith's horrid London Mayoral Campaign should be lightning rod for rallying progressive support behind a challenger

Zac Goldsmith, once the darling of 'decent' liberal conservatism, chose the low road against Sadiq Khan in London. Photograph: Zac Goldsmith MP at 'A New Conversation with the Centre-Right about Climate Change' in 2013 from the Policy Exchange (License) (Cropped)

Zac Goldsmith's promise to resign should the Government go ahead with plans for Heathrow expansion was triggered on Tuesday. Theresa May's Ministry gave the go ahead to Heathrow plans, triggering a by-election in Goldsmith's Richmond Park constituency (BBC, 2016).

Goldsmith will nominally stand as an Independent, but with the Conservatives not standing a candidate against him - for the clear tactical reason of knowing Goldsmith will vote with them on most issues and so wish to avoid splitting the conservative vote - he remains a pro-Government candidate.

For the main opposition in the area, the Liberal Democrats, facing a conservative support split between two Tory candidates would have been a gift. But as it is, the seat remains one of the best opportunities the party will get to demonstrate its 'Lib Dem Fightback'.

The Richmond Park constituency was in fact a liberal seat from 1997 until 2010, when an upsurge in people voting in the constituency tipped it into Conservative hands. Goldsmith defended his seat with an increased majority in 2015.

Yet that defence came under peculiar circumstances. The Lib Dem's general collapse found its way to Richmond Park, where the party lost around half of its support, to the benefit of all the other challengers.

But, regardless of the party voters chose in 2015, the constituency as a whole still seems to be pretty liberal in its make up. At the referendum, going against the Eurosceptic Goldsmith, the area voted by 75,000 to 33,000 in favour of Remaining in the European Union (Dixon, 2016).

What should go a long way towards advancing the challenge of the Liberal Democrats is that certainly no progressive should be giving Goldsmith any consideration after the horrid London Mayoral campaign run his name - with its blatant racial profiling and anti-Muslim attempts to smear Khan as a friend to extremists (Jones, 2016).

In fact, that makes Richmond Park look like the kind of idealistic rallying point for which a Progressive Alliance is intended to represent. Some sort of united progressive stand against the overwhelming majority of Tory policies that Goldsmith still represents and his disgusting divisive tactics in the London campaign would be entirely justified.

With the Lib Dems as the clear sole challenger - it being formerly their seat, the seat being very pro-EU and the Lib Dems sharing the anti-Heathrow expansion position of Goldsmith and Richmond constituents - their candidate would ideally, and tactically, be the focus of allied progressive support against Goldsmith.

Certain Labour MPs have certainly expressed their openness to such an arrangement (Casalicchio, 2016). Sian Berry, Green Member of the London Assembly and their 2016 Mayoral Candidate, has already stressed that she won't let anyone forget Goldsmith's divisive campaign in London (Berry, 2016).

However, officially, Labour have said they will stand their own candidate. But that does not necessarily mean that they ultimately will- or that, having stood a candidate, they will necessarily campaign as hard as they could.

For the Lib Dems themselves, this is clearly a great opportunity. While they will need a huge 19% swing, they achieved that at Witney - and in Witney they showed how thin the Conservative majorities are were they benefit previously from the fall out from the Coalition.

For progressives more widely, the Richmond Park by-election is the first clear chance they've had to significantly defeat the Government at the polls. Local council and Mayoral defeats have been waved away with excuses. But a progressive topping the poll at this by-election would be a serious indicator that the Tory majority was even more tenuous than it already seems.

However Goldsmith and the Government may try to make sure the 'Independent' label sticks, Goldsmith stand with the Government majority on the rest of its programme. Rallying to defeat his candidacy would be a definitive rejection of the Government's policies. It would also demonstrate that even the largest Tory majorities are far from safe when a new election comes around.

Progressives must see the common ground between refugees and the precariat and press for holistic compassionate action

The Calais 'Jungle' is to be broken up, with its ten thousand inhabitants to be dispersed to smaller centres scattered throughout France. Photograph: Calais Jungle on 17 January 2016 by Malachy Browne (License) (Cropped)

Immigration returns to the headlines today, across Europe, as the French Government sets about the final break up of the Calais 'Jungle' camp (Chrisafis et al, 2016). After what is now years of being the last stop for refugees headed for Britain, the camp's inhabitants are to be dispersed in small groups to smaller processing camps scattered right across France.

For Britain's Conservative Government, seeing the Jungle broken up means showing some sort of progress on crude pledges to tackle migration. For the French Socialist Government it means breaking up the most visible of symbols of immigration that Far-Right parties twist into provocation.

The desperation of the French Socialist ministers to avoid provoking the Far Right speaks to the deep trouble progressives are having with the issue of migration. In the UK, the Labour Party became so desperate during the last election campaign that they virtually wholly swallowed anti-immigration rhetoric and produced a commemorative mug to prove it.

The truly progressive position on migration is to take an internationalist view. To see people in a broad, humanitarian way that rejects the sectarian thinking of nationalism - that degrades people by categorising them into those for who we can and cannot care, shutting out the world that lies beyond narrowly defined and jealous borders.

From the internationalist perspective, there are two facts. First, there are a large number of people displaced and facing homelessness and absolute poverty. And second, there is another large number of people who live precariously and see danger in an influx of more poor people on their life chances and opportunities.

For an internationalist, that is the state of things across the whole of Europe, not the unique problem of any one country alone. Whichever administrative division they may be found in, both matter and both must be addressed with care.

One thing that is notable is the absence of any particular effects upon those more well to do and secure. Therein lies an implication that a commonality exists between the two groups, the precariat and the refugees. Both find themselves caught between the hammer and the anvil: extremism and war on the one hand, and an exclusionary economic system on the other.

Embracing the sectarian, nationalist and conservative approach of dividing people, particularly the poor, does nothing but force them into competition with each other for basic dignity. That is inhumane - and doesn't even solve the problems. Instead, it just moves the problems around, pushing them into the shadows or handing them off to someone else.

Progressives must fight the divisive pitting of the precariat against refugees, and dispel the idea that refugees are being cared for at the expense of the precariat. An holistic vision that alleviates the pressure on both groups is essential.

In all of this, respect for the dignity of refugees and the precariat is imperative. Exclusion has bred fear and that has to be fought with hope. The first step in that is compassion - reaching out, listening and offering positive steps that are inclusive and respectful.

Witney by-election suggests Tory support is soft and their majority vulnerable

In hindsight, the Coalition Agreement now almost looks like the first move in a patient five year Conservative strategy to move on the  Liberal Democrats and try to absorb their support. But the gains they made amongst liberals are beginning to look very soft.

By-elections are often tricky to decipher. For instance, sitting governments usually do poorly and lose ground - so that can not necessarily in itself be taken as an indicator of impending defeat at a general election.

However, there are a few things that the Witney by-election, triggered by the resignation of former Prime Minister David Cameron shows us about the state of British politics.

First of all, and of some importance, it is a reminder of just how thin the government majority really is. Cameron & Osborne, and now May, have governed like they have a majority of one hundred and thirty seats, not a narrow thirteen - showing little regard for how divisive their policies actually are.

It takes only a minor disagreement with just a few disgruntled MPs for the path toward Tory goals to be blocked - a clear indicator that, majority or no, the government should be far more respectful of political opinion far broader than the narrow and unrepresentative majority the party holds.

However the second observation is perhaps the most alarming for the Conservatives. Their advantage is not just thin, but also soft. Their majority was attained in 2015 by crushing their former coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, claiming credit for Liberal Democrat policies while specifically targeting their electoral campaign at their seats.

But governing as a majority, unfettered by the Lib Dems, seems to have, perhaps, stripped away the blinkers from those thought that the Conservative & Unionist Party had adopted a gentler, more decent and more liberal way - rather than being restrained by Liberal Democrats in endless policy battles.

And in Witney, it would seem that a significant number of liberals, on the fence between the Tories and the Lib Dems, went over to the Lib Dems - in fact, an entire third of Tory support went over to the Lib Dems, cutting the majority in the seat from twenty five thousand to just five thousand.

What could that mean for British politics more broadly?

David Cameron's former majority, in his recently resigned seat of Witney, has been reduced from 25,000 to just 5000 by his former Coalition partners the Liberal Democrats. Photograph: Prime Minister David Cameron - official photograph by Number 10 (License) (Cropped)

Since 2010, it has been abundantly clear that the easiest way to achieve a progressive government in the near future will be through a coalition. And the only way to make up those numbers would be for whoever is strongest against the Conservatives in a particular area to take the lead.

The strategic position of the Liberal Democrats and their support makes them invaluable to putting progressives over the top and into government. The party is the main opposition to the Conservatives in thirty six constituencies - with a particular concentration in the South West - and that number does not include Witney were the party was third along with at least four others were they also fell below second in 2015.

Local election gains, along with a steady rise in party membership, have been all that the Liberal Democrats have so far had to encourage them that a 'Lib Dem Fightback' is under way. The Witney result might be the strongest signal yet - though, even if an election is just around the corner, it is far too early to read much into whether the Liberal Democrats can recover, not least because turnout at by-elections is often far below a general election turnout.

But their result - even if other progressive parties didn't fair as well (Labour fell to third and the Greens took only four percent) - should give progressives some hope, as voters abandoning the Conservatives for the Liberals is one necessary condition for toppling the Tory majority.

That makes for one front in the coming contest, though with some further assembly still required. Work must now be done to ensure that when an election campaign begins in earnest, progressives have opened up a number of other fronts and are ready to take on the Tories.

Theresa May and the Brexit cause, stuck with each other, face being unravelled by a common threat: Few things in politics hit home harder than a rise in the price of food

As prices threaten to rise, Theresa May, pictured in her time as Home Secretary, is faced with the same challenge that took down the plans of her hero Joseph Chamberlain. Photograph: Rt Hon Theresa May MP, Home Secretary, at 'The Pioneers: Police and Crime Commissioners, one year on', by the Policy Exchange (License) (Cropped)

Joseph Chamberlain's vision for Britain was an Empire behind a wall of protectionist trade tariffs - literally taxing imports in order to force the use of domestic and colonial resources. Chamberlain's campaign was ultimately defeated when it became clear that protection also gouged prices, increasing the cost of basic necessities like food.

Prime Minister Theresa May seems set to emulate her hero. In the past few weeks, just the fear and uncertainty of a future Brexit alone has been enough to upset investors, which restricts the access to the credit needed to get things done; to decrease the value of the pound, and therefore its purchasing power; and to start squabbles between suppliers and retailers over the price of food.

That is not a great early sign for the May Ministry. Nothing is likely to threaten the long term longevity of a Government than sharp increase in the cost of food. Most policy can be abstracted or explained away with excuses. But little hits home more directly than it being more expensive just to eat. Having hitched her leadership to the abandoned Brexit wagon, their success and failure now appear entwined.

Remain and Leave

Now, unlike during Chamberlain's days, in terms of how the arguments were made, the debate between keeping EU membership and leaving the EU was not supposed to be a straight contest between free trade and protection. Rather, the two sides were in theory presenting different ways to go about free trade. Supporters of the European system saw a free trade area gradually pushing back barriers, while its detractors saw rules and regulations preventing business exploiting opportunities with the emerging economies beyond Europe.

Yet what looks to be an increasingly drastic withdrawal from Europe looks set to have much the same impact as throwing up a wall of import taxes. Withdrawal from the Single Market, as now seems to be on the cards, would put Britain on the outside of Europe's own tariff barriers. That would in essence subject Britain to all the negatives of trade barriers without any of the benefit of recouping tax receipts, since it would be British exports to Europe facing taxes, not the other way around.

And there is little that could be more damning for the Leavers' approach than driving up prices. If there is one thing that free trade offers, through the opportunity to operate at scale, its a reduction in the cost of doing business and therefore, theoretically, a reduction in prices.

Free Trade and Free Movement

When Richard Cobden and John Bright led the Anti-Corn Law League campaign against tariffs, it was to fight the protection it afforded to landowning aristocratic that drove up the price of bread. Keeping down the price of food was one a core group of goals for the free traders of mid-nineteenth century. They also saw in free trade the chance to build a lasting peace between European nations.

The Single Market, formerly known as the Common Market, was the realisation of a century of efforts by Europe's free traders to realise those possibilities - to bring Europe together in peace with a vast barrier-free trade area.

But building that barrier free area has required a massive regulatory reform process. Some on the Right have portrayed those efforts as a nightmare of expensive and restrictive bureaucratic red tape. Yet to the crafters of the free trade area it has been an essential effort to match up the trading standards, on everything from packaging to safety, in all of the member countries - so that no product or service is faced with expensive and restrictive internal barriers.

That process of taking barriers led one of the biggest, most profound and most controversial removals of internal barriers: free movement of labour. As of the vital resources of business, labour has received the same treatment as other barriers to trade, from the standardization of rights to free movement across traditional borders - allowing labour to be where it is needed most and rewarded best.

Freedom and Fear

It is also the change most provocative to what has become the established European order. Europe that went from being divided between lords to being divided rigidly between nations. It still does not seem ready for the prospect or reality of no dividing lines.

To be clear: it is absolutely right to review trade policy. The free traders of the nineteenth century sought to break open, for the general benefit, a state protected cartel of aristocratic landlords. But today's economy is very different and what might have broken one cartel could easily feed another.

The European system is certainly not without issues. The area itself was formed through technocratic standardization rather than purely through the removal of restrictions on business - enough alone to provoke an argument over the definition of 'free' trade.

However. Going back to a world of trade barriers, of tariffs and protectionist import taxes, opens again the box of vested interests being subsidised by the state and of endless trade treaties that it will take never ending public vigilance to keep in check. And pursuing any path motivated by fear, to throw up barriers and restrictions and take away liberties out of arbitrary discrimination, is dangerous.

The Path Ahead

Europe's social fabric is fraying and the walls between nations are going back up. Fears over living standards, paucity of secure housing and lack of opportunities - fueled by years of austerity's chronic denial of public investment - are closing off the EU's member states one by one and turning them inwards.

In the midst of this, Theresa May has bought into the Brexit cause. She has taken it on as her mandate. Her hero Chamberlain saw his efforts thwarted by free traders pointing out an inconvenient truth: that food was too expensive because of a grain cartel his policies supported.

May's Government has inherited a fragile economy in which food prices are just beginning to threaten a rise. Will the Prime Minister be able to act fast and head off the threat? Or will her government go the same way as the protectionist Conservative & Unionists of her idol?

Responsible government: PM May and Ministers must be held accountable to Parliamentary scrutiny

The principle of responsible government demands that executive power, held by the Prime Minister and the Government, be accountable to the assembled elected representatives.

A word that was thrown around a lot during the referendum campaign was 'sovereignty'. Those campaigning for a British exit from the European Union offered a number of things - not least an increase in public funding - but above all the restoration of 'sovereignty'.

The brexiteers promised a vote to leave would 'take back control' from 'unelected Brussels bureaucrats'. However, while clear who they wanted to take power away from, it has been less clear to who that control will be restored.

From the way Theresa May's government has handled the matter of triggering Article 50 and launching Brexit negotiations, it seems that the intention is to hand the power straight to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

The trouble with that plan is that so much executive power stands against one of the most basic principles of the Westminster System: responsible government. In short, that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet (the executive) should be accountable to Parliament (the legislative).

Over a long period of time, the power of governance in the UK has become increasingly centralised, further and further excluding Parliament. Thanks to the first-past-the-post electoral system, thanks to Parliamentary majorities, the government has been able to increasingly sideline the Commons.

Even with her presently weak majority, Theresa May has managed to so far exclude the Commons from any substantive details regarding what kind of deal the Government will seek in its negotiations with the European Union.

Labour highlighted the paucity of information about what an exit will entail by listing one hundred and seventy questions that the Government needs to answer. A challenge is even being taken to the High Court to prevent May's Government from excluding Parliament from the process.

It is hard to see how anyone could argue that any kind of 'control' had been 'restored' without the return of decisive Parliamentary scrutiny. Swapping one, fairly or unfairly much criticised, continental executive for a national one with no greater accountability represents no step forward whatsoever.

If Britain's socially disastrous withdrawal from internationalism is to serve any useful purpose, the least it could do is highlight the inadequacy of scrutiny provided by Britain's electoral system and its deeply centralised Government.

Without Brussels to blame, there will be no excuse. Too many voices are already excluded from representation by the electoral system, without Parliament itself also being excluded. Responsible government has to become the reality - and it is best to start as you mean to go on.

To be 'progressive' is to be hopeful, but progress won't happen by itself: first, the Left has to reach out and connect

Politics returns to Westminster from recess today to a social atmosphere, in Britain and elsewhere, that has become toxic with the noxious fumes spewed by bitterly divided sectarian factions.

Westminster returns from its latest recess today, to a political mood that has rarely been more toxic. Last night's American Presidential debate captured well the noxious fumes, unconstrained by borders or languages, that have poisoned the political atmosphere (Krugman, 2016).

Ignorance and anger abound, and, what's worse, they're being exploited. In the UK, the Conservative Party Conference set official policy at a new low over the weekend when it proposed forcing companies to make open lists of foreign born workers (BBC, 2016; Syal, 2016).

Instead of abolishing ignorance with education and facts - instead of diffusing anger and bringing calm - instead of reasonableness - anger is being inflamed and ignorance reinforced. Politics has lost a sense of reasonableness.

Harsh rhetoric has driven out decency and moderation. Compromise and consensus seem further away than ever. From France to the United States, the political arena has been reduced to a vague political class circling the wagons to see off opponents stoking ignorance and anger to advance their agendas.

All the while, important matters are rendered impossible to address by the partisan impasse created by opposing outrages flung across wide gulfs of understanding between deeply entrenched factions. Whether Europe or America, people need access to affordable healthcare, affordable housing and affordable energy - and all of it stable and sustainable.

For progressives - whether radical or moderate - decency, reasonableness and respect for a plurality of voices aught to be at the heart of any method that pursues those objectives. So for those who cherish these things, the rise of narrow aggressive sectarianism has made politics in 2016 difficult to navigate and hard to bear.

But the only way is forward, and the only way forward is to reach out. At the Compass Progressive Alliance event, journalist John Harris spoke with passion about the people in the abandoned North who voted for Brexit. He said that:

"These are places characterised by fear. Yes, a fear of immigration and the idea that it might make opportunities even more scarce and wages even lower and put more pressure on already way overstretched services. But underlying this all is a very, very cold, frightening really, fear of the future. A fear, when you talk to people, even of tomorrow and next week.

Please, let's not think about the vast majority of the people I've talked about, who voted Leave, as stupid or deluded or bigoted and hateful... If you haven't got a progressive politics which speaks to places which embody the inequality we all fight against, its not worthy of the name."

Before progressives can reach out, they need to understand what it is that they themselves want, and why - and they need to understand what that will mean for the lives and livelihoods of the least well off. And if these two understandings cannot be completely reconciled, work has to begin on a meaningful compromise, on an inclusive next step.

To be progressive is to be hopeful - to believe in human progress, to believe that all people are capable of self-improvement. But it won't occur on its own. It requires defeating neglect with care & listening, ignorance with education & encouragement, despair with hope & opportunity. The norm is adversarial politics that divides to rule. The progressive alternative has to reach for something better.

Theresa May in Birmingham to set out her Conservative & Unionist agenda

Theresa May is setting out her agenda at the Conservative Party Conference at The ICC in Birmingham, city where her Unionist hero Joseph Chamberlain made his name. Image: ICC Birmingham by Bob Hall (License) (Cropped)

This weekend's Conservative Party conference in Birmingham became Theresa May's first attempt to set out a distinct policy platform. A chance to define her own approach to being head of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, separate from that of the Cameron Government that she inherited.

At the conference some major policies positions were announcement, including setting of a date for the triggering of Article 50, that begins the two-year long process of the UK exiting the EU - for which the government's negotiating position was leaked - and the prioritising, by the Chancellor Phillip Hammond, of spending on housing over the budget deficit.

These policies together produce an image of Britain as the new Prime Minister wishes to see it. But before the larger picture can be assembled, let's look at the pieces themselves.

First, there is the Government's position on Article 50 negotiations. The main thrust of the official announcement was only to establish that the two-year Brexit process will be triggered by the end of March 2017 and that the government was set upon the course to make the UK no longer be part of a supranational institution (BBC, 2016).

From the Prime Minister's own statements, it was clear that she intended to pursue particular priorities, getting UK out of European Court of Justice jurisdiction and establishing new migration controls, that made Britain's continued membership of the Single Market no longer a red line in negotiations (Kuenssberg, 2016) - a huge deviation from the position of the Cameron Ministry and the Conservative Manifesto.

Second, but by no means of less importance, is the decision by the Chancellor to give priority to infrastructure spending over paying down the deficit (BBC, 2016{2}). Few shifts could more dramatically demonstrate that the Cameron-Osborne era is over than to decrease the priority of tackling the deficit, which has been held over all government spending decisions for six years.

Compared to the leanness of Chancellor Osborne's approach, the dropping of the 2019-2020 target for eliminating the deficit and now a plan to invest in the UK's housing and transport, and even new borrowing to do so, is a big leap. Chancellor Hammond has called the shift a pragmatic response to new circumstances (BBC, 2016{3}) - part of the more mundane, pragmatic attitude that has replaced the 'flash' of the Cameron-Osborne era (Kuenssberg, 2016).

Yet despite what the Chancellor says, expert opinion has for years now (Elliott, 2016) called on Osborne to change tack and reject austerity as damaging to economic prospects in the UK. For Labour, who have spent six years being crucified for its pro-spending attitude its hard to say whether they will feel vindicated or bitter at the change of direction in the Conservative Party.

So what kind of picture do these pieces make when assembled? What do these key policies add up to?

Earlier speeches from Theresa May's leadership mentioned her admiration for Joseph Chamberlain and expressed an intention to restore the place of Unionism in the Conservative & Unionist Party. Chamberlain's two most famous projects were to lead, as Mayor, the rebuilding and reordering of Birmingham and, as an MP, to lead the opposition to free trade and champion trade tariffs between the British Empire and the rest of the world.

Chamberlain's attitude made an us and them of the English-speaking British Empire and the rest of the world, putting 'British' priorities first. While the barriers he put up around Britain served to subsidise and protect domestic business, they did so mainly by hurting the poorest - as the Liberals of the day pointed out with cold facts (Marr, 2009). In its day Chamberlain's aggressively nationalist & imperial vision was ultimately defeated by the Liberal Party of Asquith, Lloyd George and Churchill.

That sense of national unity, in distinction between a British way and everyone else, seems present in May's vision - less individual and competitive than Cameron's, more social and corporate. So inspired by Chamberlain does Theresa May's own platform seem, that announcing her positions at a party conference in Birmingham seems not to be a coincidence but rather a purposeful statement. A symbol of the increased prominence of Unionism within the Conservative brand.

In her pursuing her independently British path, some sort of Chamberlain-esque increase in the will to use the proceeds to fund pragmatic interventions that improve the state in which workers live would be appreciated - especially compared to the austere whittling of front line services and civic spaces of her predecessors.

Yet May's own scepticism of 'supranational' institutions risks putting Britain behind a new set of barriers, with many of the same problems as those erected by her hero. Whatever her Government's slogan proclaims - "A Country That Works For Everyone" - Unionism, by its very nature, buys into the idea of exclusivity. The new Prime Minister will have to go a long way to convince progressives that those outside of the highest echelons will ultimately benefit from, and share in, the spoils of this British corporation.