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.