General Election 2017 - Liberal Democrat Manifesto: Practical pitch to rebuild trust

Change Britain's Future is a practical pitch to rebuild trust - but that's a difficult task to accomplish.

Unsurprisingly, the Liberal Democrat promise of a second referendum on the final deal for leaving Europe has dominated their manifesto launch. It's in the manifesto's leading pages, at the head of Tim Farron's speech and all over the news.

However, at the front and centre of their election pitch the Liberal Democrats have put a collection of policies aimed at young people. Rent-to-Own, where rent buys a stake in a home that becomes outright owned over thirty years.

The restoring of young people's housing benefit. A new young person's bus pass. Universal free school meals at primaries. More money for the pupil premium. More investment in schools and colleges. Reinstatement of maintenance grants. More apprenticeships. Even votes at sixteen.

These policies are very much about practical things that can be done today to help build towards the future. In all areas, this manifesto has the same focus - what measured step can be taken now that prepares us for what's ahead?

But for the Lib Dems, the central aim at this election can only be to regain trust and recover ground. Tim Farron admitted as much at the Royal College of Nurses as he explained his party's spending plans for healthcare.

The Lib Dems have reached back into the vault and dusted off their Penny in the Pound plans, from the days when Charles Kennedy was the party leader. At that time, it was for education funding - and was proposed for such by Willie Rennie in Scotland.

For the UK, Tim Farron has called for this extra penny to be used to fund healthcare. It's a progressive tax, that will raise far more from those at the top than the bottom and would raise £6 billion a year, a significant addition to NHS funding.

But what is particularly important about the pitch is that Farron connected this policy with the need to be and honest about what it takes to fund the things the public wants.

That concern runs through the Lib Dem manifesto. The pitch to young people is full of practical affordable measures. Proposals that would be uncontroversial to deliver, but which could have profoundly positive effects.

On the NHS, the Lib Dems spell out exactly what it will cost people to support public healthcare as it presently stands. That includes levelling with working class people that they'll pay on average £30 more in tax each year.

The money raised would to go to restoring the NHS budget, to repairing ailing social care and supporting mental health care. These funds would accompany a review of how to better integrate these elements - and create parity for mental and physical health.

On the economy, the Lib Dems call for more investment to end the reliance upon a finance sector feeding on a bloated housing sector and dangerous levels of private debt. And that means being prepared to spend money in government.

While the party commits to balancing the government's Current account, they also call for £100 billion in Capital spending over the long term - on projects like broadband roll out, expanding and modernising schools and hospitals, along with roads and rails and coordinating with private investment in renewable energy.

And that extends into housing. The party promises to achieve the rate of 300,000 new homes built a year, for sale and rent. End the sell of Housing Association homes, let local authorities borrow to build and enable them to levy a 200% Council Tax penalty on second homeowners or landlords who leave homes empty.

On work, there are commitments to an independent review of the Living Wage and how to make it work, to stamping out the abuse of Zero Hours Contracts and encourage more employee share-ownership.

This is joined by reforms to welfare. Giving parents more earning leeway on Universal Credit, end the benefit freeze, reverse cuts to Employment Support Allowance, scrap the Bedroom Tax and Work Capability Assessment and more paid paternity leave.

There is also a direct stab at the Conservatives in a pledge to reverse tax cuts and remove loopholes to get the wealthiest "paying their fair share". These include reversing the Corporation Tax cut, that lowered it from 20% to 17%, and ending a series of tax 'relief' policies given to the rich.

The whole manifesto reads as a practical pitch to rebuild trust.

What it is not, though - to be realistic - is a manifesto that will see action in government. Tim Farron has ruled out entering a coalition after the election and it would take perhaps the biggest electoral upset in British history to get the party in government.

That makes it important to consider the Liberal Democrat pitch as part of a broader opposition picture and ask: are there grounds for cooperation with other progressive parties?

Both Labour and the Lib Dems have called for a major programme of capital investment. They both want significant increases in house building. Their is a willingness in both parties to raise taxes, weighted more on the rich, to fund essential services.

If the progressive alliance is going to work, voters need to feel that their tactical vote is going to support a set of broad values regardless of which party is strongest in their locality. So it is important that there is a lot of common ground to be found in these areas across the progressive opposition.

Despite the determination to present Labour under Corbyn as a party of the hard left, progressive parties are standing in much the same space - and that space is Keynesian. Investing for the future and practical spending to address the issues of today.

The big question, in the longer term, for the Liberal Democrats themselves is whether this June they can begin to rebuild trust. Whether they can succeed won't just depend on getting bums in seats on 8th June, but in standing by these pledges in opposition after the dust settles.

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.

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.

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.

The headlines are dominated by the Labour Party, but the progressive movement goes on beyond its factional strife

Progressive politics goes on, far beyond the limits of Labour and its grimly destructive leadership civil war. Photograph: Protesters outside last Autumn's Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.

The summer recess is usually the slow news time for British politics. This summer was supposed to be different. The two big parties, Labour and Conservative, side by side, would hold leadership races, setting the political agenda for the return to business in September. However, the Conservative race saw Theresa May blast away the field in short order.

That left the leadership challenge in the Labour Party to hold the spotlight all by itself. And that contest, with all of its chaos and rancour - including the party taking legal action against its own leader and even its own membership - has been a sour experience for progressives. To try and balance out the negativity of Labour's internal wrangling, here is a look at what other progressive party's and groups have been up to around Britain over the summer.

Sadiq Khan and London

In London, Sadiq Khan has set out early to establish himself in his new role as Mayor of London. One of his very first appearances was at London Pride - a strong progressive symbol with which to start his time in office. There will be arguments about his policies, but what Khan has gotten right, so far, has been image.

If there is anything with which the Left has traditionally struggled, and which can do so much to energise support for progressive policies, it is presenting a bright and positive vision. In Canada, Justin Trudeau led the Liberals back to power with a positive feeling campaign, and the image Khan's has projected bares much in the way of comparison - not least their appearances at Pride events.

On policy, the one issue that has stood out so far, and on which Khan has been particularly strident, is arguing for greater autonomy for the city. Part of the post-Brexit response, but also part of a movement emerging across Europe, Khan wants London to have more devolved powers to help is combat the predicted negatives resulting from leaving the European Union.

Khan has been making a determined push, post-Brexit, with his social media hashtag "#LondonIsOpen", getting celebrities and athletes on board in support. It seems to be the sum and central theme of Khan's start as Mayor: open to all people and open to business, everyone is welcome.

When talking of London, it is also worth mentioning the work of Take Back the City, a grassroots political and community organisation that aims to get directly to people in London's communities and make their voices heard. Amina Gichinga, a member of the group and London Assembly candidate, took part in the Progressive Alliance event in July. Gichinga made a strong and eloquent case, very much worth watching, for what needs to change in how politics is conducted in Britain.

Liberal Democrats

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats continue their rebuilding efforts. The party seems to have returned to what it did best, focussing on local and community politics. At the 2016 local elections, the Lib Dems made the most gains of any party and has since continued to win local elections with growing numbers.

But to restore the party's tarnished image is a much broader work. To that end, on the wider British scene, Tim Farron has been trying put the party to work fighting on key issues. One such issue was Brexit, on which Farron confirmed the Lib Dem commitment to Europe and aligned the party with the 48% who voted to stay.

Most recently, Farron has been critical of vague promises from the Treasury to match European Union funding in the near future. He has called for the government to show where the alleged £350m a week of funding will come from and demanded that long term reassurances be given to those who depend on it can make important long term decisions.

Various leading members of the party have also associated themselves with efforts to build cross-party cooperation. Vince Cable took part in the Progressive Alliance event, proposing an electoral pact come the next general election, and Paddy Ashdown is backing More United, an effort to promote crowdfunding of candidates on the basis of values rather than party allegiances.

That attitude to cooperation is reflected in Wales, where, now with just one Assembly Member, the Lib Dems have entered into Coalition government with Labour. Former leader Kirsty Williams took on the office of Education - and has stated absolute opposition, on behalf of Wales' Coalition, to the reintroduction of grammar schools.

Caroline Lucas and the Greens

Last, but not least, are the Greens. The Green Party as a whole has made small gains, but still haven't made the major breakthrough - on the verge of which they seem to have been for a decade. In Scotland, at the 2016 elections, the Greens moved into fourth place. Yet in London they merely retained their seats and in Wales got nowhere near the seats.

However, their sole MP Caroline Lucas has been amongst the most active and most visible of the Left's political figures and campaigners over the first half of the year. From her NHS Bill, to campaigning for cross-party cooperation and a Progressive Alliance; Lucas has been the most visible, perhaps bar Sadiq Khan, and certainly the most outspoken, coherent and unabashed leader - not in title but in deed - amongst progressives.

Punching far above the weight of her one seat out of six hundred and fifty, her loud advocacy for pluralism in politics has helped move forward the campaign for proportional representation and for cooperation between progressives. Lucas has announced that she will run again for the party leadership, a move that many may see as important to the party's near future development - considering her visibility and popularity.

Progress and Pluralism

The future of the Left depends on more than who is the Labour Party leader. That's a hard message to accept, particularly for those who feel the blows from the Conservative axe most weightily and fear that Labour is only party with a realistic shot at displacing the axe-swingers. But the party has used that fear as a way to gouge support for decades, while alienating potential supporters all the while and shutting down any plurality of debate.

The Left can be about more than just one, jealous, centralising party. The Left is a place of diversity: civil rights, equality, sustainability, justice, cooperation, feminism, democracy, liberalism, radicalism, the individual and the community - thousands of voices with thousands of issues. Trying to force them all into one tent, to represent them all with one voice, hasn't worked and won't.

Through debate, discussion, thinking, testing and embracing a myriad of perspectives, the Left has the broad resources to build positive and inclusive visions. The sooner Labour embraces pluralism, the sooner progressives can start fighting back against conservatism, in ways that play to their strengths - because the path of pluralism is not division and weakness: it is strength in diversity.

A new realignment of the Left is underway and Proportional Representation and the Basic Income are at the core

In Castlefields arena, Natalie Bennett addresses protesters from many different movements, who came together in opposition to the Conservative government in Manchester last Autumn.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Liberal and Liberal Democrat leaders Roy Jenkins, Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy followed a course that sought to 'realign the Left' in Britain. Powered by the dominance of Thatcherite conservatism, it sought to change the approach of the left and ultimately lead to co-operation between progressive parties, in opposition to the Conservatives.

First through Liberal-Labour pacts, of which there is an even longer history, next through the breakaway SDP/Liberal Alliance, and then in the form of New Labour-Liberal Democrat talks and cooperation. And Kennedy's 'Real Alternative' campaign banner, even in opposition to a Labour government, reflected the general cohesion of aims on the Left, if not of methods.

That particular movement on the part of the Lib Dems ended with Nick Clegg's leadership. Clegg took the Liberal Democrats back to a policy of equidistance between the two big parties, Labour and the Conservatives.

However, the fall of the coalition and succession of a Conservative to a majority government seems to have triggered a new phase of realignment. The resignations of Clegg and Miliband led to the election of new party leaders, seen to be of very different stripes from their predecessors.

Tim Farron, the new Lib Dem leader, is a campaigning Northern MP and former Party President who stood aloof from, and in polite opposition to, the coalition. So far his efforts have been concentrated on focussing the Lib Dem fightback on the party's roots - in campaigning locally for community issues and nationally on matters of conscience.

Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader seemed to send shockwaves through British politics. Portrayed by the media as a move back to some Michael Foot and Tony Benn, 80s-esque, hard Left position, Corbyn has faced disquiet and malcontent within the Parliamentary party since taking over with a landslide of party members' votes.

After the last five years, the seemingly inevitable alignment of the Liberal Democrats and Labour was shattered. It would be understandable to think finding new common ground would be difficult or impossible between the party Clegg had taken to the Centre, even Centre-Right, and the party Corbyn has been accused of taking to the hard Left.

Yet a new realignment of the Left is under way and the policies that will define the shift are already emerging in the policy debates of both parties.

Both the Liberal Democrats and Labour now seem to be on the same page, finally, when it comes to proportional representation. Both Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, from Labour's Left, and Chuka Umunna, from Labour's Right, have expressed support for PR. And both parties are engaged in consultations over their future approach to policy, including the welfare system - debates in which the idea of a universal basic income is playing a prominent role.

Ahead of the EU referendum, Farron has even called for a progressive political alliance on Europe - making internationalism again a core value across progressive parties. That matches, in a limited way, the arguments that Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, has been making since the last election that progressive parties need to start working together.

As for the Green Party, in true Green fashion Natalie Bennett is following Caroline Lucas' lead in standing down as party leader once her term is up later this year. So who will lead the Greens through this new realignment, and how they will handle it on into the 2020 general election, is unknown.

But the challenge ahead of the three leaders of Britain's main progressive parties is clear: to stop the Conservatives winning their way to back-to-back governments. Aligning in support of some core common policies is a start.

The next step is to commit to the kind of cooperation on various campaigns and causes that can foster the good will between parties. That mutual respect will be needed to build a real electoral alliance, that stands together behind a limited set of core ideals in opposition to conservatism.

Local Elections: Conservatism is far from dominant in a divided Britain, but people still await an alternative

Yesterday saw local council elections across England and assembly elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, that emphasised how varied the politics of Britain's provinces is becoming.

With so many pressures, on so many parties, from so many directions, the local and assembly elections were always going to be a fraught and complicated affair. As it happens, the changes forced were in small increments and, in broad context, left matters largely as they were (Kuenssberg, 2016).

But the biggest story of the night is really the way in which politics has taken on different shapes in different parts of Britain. In its different provinces, politics is being reshaped to fit provincial rather than British themes (Mason, 2016; Mason, 2015). Old divisions are being broken down, new ones are springing up and some groups are adapting while others are not.

The broad picture showed the Labour Party largely hanging on, with inconvenient losses matched by surprising gains and holds. However Corbyn still finds himself wrestling with the internal contradictions left to him by previous leaders, who failed to solve the fundamental disconnect between the party and its supporters. The Conservatives too managed to broadly hang on and even made the publicity friendly gain of becoming the official opposition to the SNP in the Scottish Parliament.

The Liberal Democrat slump also seemed to have hit bottom, with the party's vote mostly stabilising at about 8%. Yet there were also signs of life, with some gains won on the back of astounding swings of around 10-15% - an increase in supporters in the thousands - that will provide some useful fuel for their #LibDemFightback narrative.

UKIP's night was largely devoted to establishing themselves, securing their bridgeheads rather than breaking new ground. Their results matched 2015 and followed suit by again paying off in second places, and this time with both council seats and seats in Wales' Senedd.

Yet this broad, federal, party picture hides a much more complicated set of movements beneath the surface.

The results in Scotland redrew political lines to reflect the new reality of debate in the country. The SNP, now without a majority but still in position for a strong minority government, have set out Scottish separatism as the movement with the momentum. The Conservatives are the opposition, and Unionism is their opposing force.

In that debate, other issues are being sidelined and with them the other parties. Labour, who are really struggling to distinguish themselves in the separatism-unionism debate, look the most lost. The social democratic Centre-Left have seemingly rallied around the SNP, while the those following the Unionist cause have unsurprisingly gathered about the Conservatives. The principled opposition to the SNP approach to governing, on issues of civil liberties and the environment, has gathered around the Greens and the Lib Dems. That doesn't leave much room for the Labour Party.

The Liberal Democrats night in Scotland lays out their own particularly strange journey. While across Scotland their support seemed to settle to the national average of around 8%, in particular constituencies they won huge victories, even against the SNP, with 15% wings bringing thousands of voters. That was enough to give Will Rennie a constituency seat with a 3500 vote majority in North East Fife, along with gaining Edinburgh Western.

By contrast with Scotland, the election in Wales almost felt like a delayed continuation from the 2015 general election. The Lib Dem vote levelled out at around the 8% margin seen elsewhere, and in Wales, last year, but in this situation that meant Lib Dem seat losses suited to the 2015 slaughter. And yet, party leader Kirsty Williams won her constituency with a 10% swing to increase her majority by thousands of votes.

Meanwhile UKIP gained representation in Wales through the regional list vote, taking seats at the expense of the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, thanks to 13% of the vote gained mostly at the expense of Labour. That number reflected their Britain-wide 2015 performance, and seemed to confirm the Senedd election as almost a rebalancing - representation adjusting to match their performance.

In the local council elections in England, Labour lost seats but - again - largely held their ground. The Lib Dems showed more surprising resilience, taking a projected 15% of the national vote share and even an overall gain of more than forty council seats and control of a council. As in Wales, UKIP appear to be rebalancing, losing votes but claiming some council seats, in seeming redress from a year ago. The Conservatives lost almost fifty seats and control of a council, but for a sitting government the results are as undramatic as could be hoped.

That stands in contrast to London. After eight years of Boris Johnson, with Labour struggling, the Conservatives must have thought that this was a clear cut opportunity. Yet it was Sadiq Khan's campaign that has had all the momentum, despite the dirty tricks and negative campaigning of the Conservatives - run not only by Khan's opponent Zac Goldsmith, but endorsed from on high by Conservative leadership (Hattenstone, 2016).

As the dust settled, Sadiq Khan had become the new Mayor of London and Labour hold a commanding position in the London Assembly. Presented as the candidate representing a diverse and inclusive London, his election confirms the stark contrast between the politics of London and the Conservative majority in Southern England won in May 2015.

The sum of these results is to say that Conservatism is far from dominant in the UK because Britain is, beyond the simplistic divisions of Westminster majorities, composed of a number of different provinces over which Conservatives do not hold sway. London is a progressive beacon in the conservative South. Scotland is dominated by a fundamental question of its identity, while Wales seems to be struggling to find its own in a post-industrial world. Across the North, Labour's former heartlands, that post-industrial world has left Labour increasingly locked in a struggle with UKIP for its soul.

The results show conservatism to be an ideology ruling others from outside, at arms reach. But they also suggest that people are still waiting for a real and clear alternative to be put forward - and for someone to stand behind it. At the moment, progressives do not have a clear alternative pitch to offer and they are too divided into factions, and parties seemingly incapable of cooperating.

There are sparks here and there that show a pitch might be formulated in time for the 2020 general election. Support for Proportional representation is widening. There is growing acknowledgement of the need to tackle the housing crisis, including the rental sector. Welfare, inequality, austerity, basic income - these are all showing up on the public radar.

The future of these ideas, of turning them into policies, will require progressives to recognise the necessity for an alliance backing a clear positive alternative. An alliance internally within Labour, an alliance between Labour and other parties, an alliance between different parties in different provinces. Britain is divided, but progressives can do what conservatives can't and unite it behind a common cause.

Looking ahead to the local council elections on 5th May - what do councils do and who stands to lose or gain?

Manchester Town Hall, where the one third of council seats are up for election. Photograph: Manchester Town Hall by Mark Andrew (License) (Cropped)

The return of Members of Parliament to work after the Easter Recess, is a good time to take a look at what is ahead. For MPs, the impact of their efforts over the next month will be for the benefit of others in their party besides themselves.

On the 5th May there will be elections. Amongst them are the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and London devolved assembly elections. But perhaps most pressing for the situation at Westminster will be the midterm local council elections.

Local government in the UK, in the form of elected councils and council workers in their employ, represents a confusingly multi-tiered system that provides or commissions local services (LGA, 2011) - some of which represent mandatory duties while others are discretionary and the council can charge not-for-profit fees for them.

The services councils provide include those for children, like schools; for adults with needs; social housing and housing benefit; scrutiny of local health services; museums, libraries, sports and recreation facilities; care for local roads and co-ordination of public transport; care for the local environment and management of waste collection and disposal or recycling; planning; collection of local taxes like business rates and council taxes; administration of elections; and the keeping of registers of births, deaths and marriages.

After six years of austerity, with as much as 40% of funding cut from their budgets, and likely cuts more to come, there has been substantial discontent on councils, and in party council associations, with the government (Sparrow, 2015) - not least in the Conservative association. That situation has not been eased by the transfer of further burdens not being matched by the transfer of sufficient means of funding, and central government decisions like the substantial cut to business rates included in Budget 2016 (BBC, 2016).

Governments usually struggle during midterms - especially after spending a long time in government. But after years of austerity, with frontline services slashed even, to his great discontent, in the Prime Minister's own council area (ITV, 2015), the Conservatives must be expecting considerable losses.

So for the Conservatives, this election is fairly simple. Lose as little as they can and hope that their opponents, particularly Labour, fall well short of their own targets - from the Conservative view, embarrassingly enough that it becomes an interesting news story.

What the Conservatives do not want is Jeremy Corbyn's Labour to show itself able to beat the Tories in the popular polls. Labour will almost certainly be under pressure to, at least, achieve results comparable with those of Ed Miliband from 2012, which means gaining a not insignificant number of council seats (Labour List, 2016).

However, possibly of greater importance from the view of the MPs returning to work today, is the national vote share. What MPs at Westminster will want to know is whether a Corbyn-led Labour can come first in the popular vote - because that would establish the party as a realistic option come 2020.

Labour's efforts at achieving gains in vote share and seats will be hampered by the array of parties scrapping with each other, as well as with the Conservatives, to make gains (Ford, 2016). In Scotland, the seemingly unstoppable SNP momentum will make life difficult for Labour, while in Wales Plaid Cymru tend to be much stronger when it is Welsh Assembly election time than in the national polls.

In England, UKIP will likely continue to plague Labour - as they have yet to go away completely despite the failure of their big push in May 2015 and the stats saying their vote share has fallen by a swing of around 8% nationally since then (Britain Elects, 2016), not least because of the European Union Referendum scheduled for June.

There may also be some pressure applied to Labour by the Liberal Democrats. It's one thing for the party to talk up its #LibDemFightback, but another for, over the same period from the May 2015 election, the party to see a positive swing of around 4% (Britain Elects, 2016{2}) - putting it well ahead of the other parties in England in terms of local momentum.

Not least do the Liberal Democrats have a reputation for campaigning at the local level, based on a committed and engaged approach to local government and community-based politics that is even acknowledged by their opponents (BBC, 2015; Labour List, 2016). If momentum swings back their way, they may have a positive showing that gives tangible substance to their fightback.

From Labour's perspective, they may help their own cause by establishing these things as limiting factors (Ford, 2016), allowing them to set their own, much more modest, targets. Yet they are unlikely to have that liberty and will probably be under pressure to make real terms gains.

For MPs at Westminster, the next few weeks and the bills that they will debate could have a substantive impact on the council elections. Policy at the national level will be seen through the lens of its impact on local government - at least a temporary boon for local government that can often feel sidelined from political debate and policy decisions that affect them being made centrally at Westminster.

It should be kept in mind, however, that midterm election results can only tell you so much. Local government elections from 2011 through 2014 all saw Labour under Ed Miliband top the polls - though sometimes only barely as the UKIP spectre ate away at the support of both the Conservatives and Labour.

From a country-wide perspective, what midterm local elections can be is a substantive base with which to demonstrate momentum, a fightback, and upon which to build a platform. For progressives from all parties, under a Conservative government and with council services under increasing strain, that will likely be the main hope with 2020 firmly in mind.