A New Party? Opportunists wait in the wings to seize upon a Lab-Con governing impasse

This weekend revealed that a number of rich donors are working on putting the pieces in place for a new political party. The revelation did not go over well, with a lot of criticism aimed at a party based on money first, and supporters second.

There is a strong impression among commentators that the plan is for a new party of neoliberalism and vague bureaucratic centrism, to unite the Blairite trend of New Labour with the Cameron and Osborne wing of the Conservative Party.

Is that really where the future of British politics lies?

Well the certainly times haven't been favourable to the Liberal Democrats, for instance, whose Orange Book wing that led them into The Coalition represents this same kind of neoliberal platform. They have largely been forgotten by the electorate - though there are more complex reasons for that.

Is a new neoliberal party the catalyst that will 'remoderate' an electorate that the 'centrists' perceive as being torn apart by the militant division between the Tories turning rightward and Labour turning leftward into Corbynist socialism?

Who would even lead such a party? Are Tony Blair and George Osborne hoping to make a dramatic political comeback? Maybe the plan is to push forward Yvette Cooper, the Labour leadership contender and figurehead of 'moderate' Labour?

This kind of party certainly seems to be a long term aim of Tony Blair, as we previously wrote about the direction he took at the helm of New Labour, steering Labour towards being a sort of big tent, middle ground, Democratic Party.

Blair and New Labour did not, however, complete their 'modernising' project. He and others tried to have things both ways - clinging to left-wing pretensions, and trade union backing and funding, even as they embraced right-wing economics - when an irreversible transformation of British politics was in their hands.

But that moment has passed. How would such a party even launch in the present climate and who could stand for them as a candidate?

The only practical route to such a party would be to rip the Labour Party in two, perhaps with some sort of agreement in place, at least in the short term, to not stand against each other - a possibility even Owen Jones has acknowledged.

The time when this might be a realistic possibility is not now, but in the aftermath of the next election if Labour do not beat the Conservatives. Would those who are anti-Corbyn leave or use the opportunity to topple him?

Whether to stand or walk is a dilemma the so-called centrists have been wrestling with. So far they have favoured staying and fighting. But with the strength of Labour's left-wing - pushing Corbyn to two leadership elections and gaining control of the party - if power isn't a prospect, then maybe the so-called centrists will see exiting as their only way to pursue their electoral agenda.

It has to be noted that new parties have little luck on the British political scene. The anti-EU movement had more success out of Parliament than breaking into it. Ripping current MPs and their seats from current parties, en masse, would increase the chance of success.

So another possibility, that might have more pull with 'moderate' Conservatives, would be for a party to launch in the aftermath of the election if Labour win only a minority government - but with more seats and votes than the Tories.

In that scenario, a new party would be able to prey on the opportunism of MPs on all sides of the House amid what would be seen as a very unstable impasse, with the Conservative Party humbled but Corbynism unable to deliver a majority.

However, there would seem to be little inspiring about a party of opportunists assembling to break an impasse. Would voters be grateful to them or see them as responsible leaders? And does such a 'party of the centre', a big tent Democratic Party, even have much of a vision to offer?

There is nothing convincing in any of this. It is still the view of The Alternative that - far more than a new party - we need political plurality and a Progressive Alliance fighting for a proportionally representative electoral system.

There's no such thing as politics without ideology - only policy made in the context of hidden or unexamined assumptions

George Osborne and Tony Blair took some time out of their busy, and well-paid, post-government lives to talk to a conference in Dubai about the "moderate, pro-business, socially liberal, internationalist" gap at the 'centre of politics'.

The centre that both have in the past claimed and which both have claimed to be a non-ideological space. It's a common claim, mostly levelled at Labour and it's Bennite left-wing, which Theresa May has used against both them and the EU.

But the use of 'ideology' as a pejorative misses one crucial thing: there's no such thing as politics without ideology - just policy made within the context of hidden or unexamined assumptions.

So what is an ideology? In short, it it comprised of: a philosophy of what the world is, an ethics of how people should behave in that world, an ideal of how society should function, and a politics laying out how to get there.

Politics is active element of ideology. It represents the structures, or absence of them, intended to shape society in a particular way, towards particular outcomes.

Comprehending this is crucial to understanding the Tories' time in government. While accusing their opponents of abandoning the centre for polarisation they oversee policies that, from a progressive perspective, have impoverished working people amid widening inequality.

When the evidence appears to be staring us in the face, when it seems so obvious to progressives, and yet conservatives do not see it, there has to be a bigger picture. That is ideology.

Consider the government's housing policy, born during the Coalition. The plan was to convert social housing into affordable housing, to support private sector house building with a higher rent threshold, thereby saving taxpayers money by reducing government housing spending.

This came with the acknowledged cost of a rise in housing benefit payouts, but it was believed that it would balance out in the public favour. It was, in basic, an attempt to shift an expenditure off the public books.

Yet the move in favour of privatised house building has not delivered for ordinary people. If there are benefits to tax payers, they are not balancing out the rise in average rents that has come with the collapse in social housing construction.

The government pursued a similar course with tuition fees. The cost of higher education was shifted onto the shoulders of students. This private, regulated, debt burden was deemed manageable by the Treasury and preferable to it contributing to the the national debt.

That demonstrates a rather cavalier attitude to private debt and Theresa May recently promising a review shows the government is feeling the need to moderate it's position against pushback from opposition.

So why continue with such policies - on housing, on tuition, on healthcare, on welfare, on so many core parts of society - even after it seems so clear, to progressives at least, that it isn't working and people are suffering?

The only sensible answer is ideology - the belief that the pain is a transitional phase, in a journey towards an ultimately more beneficial light at the end of the tunnel. Or, more darkly, that the pain is the point.

Macron appears to have consolidated power, but is there anything for 'centrists' to learn from his success? Not really

Macron's landslide was not quite what it appeared, exposing how neoliberal Centrism depends upon disinterest and abstention. Photograph: Emmanuel Macron campaign poster 'Macron President' in Paris by Lorie Shaull (License) (Cropped)

Nearly three-quarters of a year has passed since Emmanuel Macron took up the post of President of France. In that time he has seemingly managed to consolidate power (despite of some rocky moments). So: job done, new centrist model ready to roll out? Not so fast.

Well, let's look beneath the surface. The election landslides for Macron and La Republique En Marche were always going to provoke a response, especially with the near wipeout of the old centre-left Parti Socialiste (PS).

One small, but significant, reaction - an indication of how sizeable a reorganisation of French politics Macron has caused - is the reunification of the old Parti Radical with the breakaway Radical Party of the Left, as the new Mouvement Radical.

For years, the two radical parties - in former times a powerful party of government - were occasionally a crucial coalition partner of the larger parties. But they split from one another down the old left-right lines.

The Radical Party of the Left would partner with the Parti Socialiste and the centre-left, and the Radical Party would partner with the various centre-right parties. It appears that Emmanuel Macron has helped to settle the dispute between the two.

The reunification of the Radicals is a small thing, but also suggests that Macron's victory (and the collapse of PS) was big enough to put into abeyance the question of whether to partner with left or right. The radicals are happy with the centre.

That perhaps also says a lot about where Les Marcheurs lie on a political spectrum: European Federalist, social liberal, and for equality of opportunity (rather than of outcomes) within a free market.

Those were also the bones of Macron's pitch at the election. An election that left Macron with a severely weakened opposition, a a left-wing reduced to around 50-60 social liberals, social democrats and socialists, and a right-wing of around 130-140.

One potential problem Macron faced was if those with divided loyalties between En Marche and the social liberals and social democrats in opposition organise, Macron might face difficulty from a voting-bloc under his own left-wing.

However, the Left is still in disarray - and the Radicals seem set jump ship. The election was a disaster for the Parti Socialiste, it's bastion, who fell from 280 seats to just 30. Even their 2017 Presidential candidate Benoit Hamon has walked away.

Hamon has formed a new party, Generation.s, which has formed a tentative European alliance with Yanis Varoufakis and DiEM25. It had been hoped that Hamon might do for PS what Corbyn did for Labour in Britain, but now he will have to start from scratch.

There are also two separate far-left groups in the National Assembly, that have yet to find a way to work together - France Insoumise with 17 seats and Gauche Democrate et Republicaine with 16 seats.

With the collapse of the Left and, so far, no sign of a new rallying position, Macron has for the moment usurped the place of the Parti Socialiste in two-party system. Does this mean that the centre is saved and the model can be copy and pasted elsewhere?

No.

The hope for a centrist revival is not giving due credit the particular circumstances of Macron's victory - nor that both Macron and Les Marcheurs won, across the board, as the least worst option amidst raging disinterest. Not exactly an inspiring rallying call.

Macron's victory also has shadows of the upswell that took Barack Obama to  the US Presidency in 2008. Macron, undeniably a member of the party establishment, rode on the back of a movement that was then jettisoned when office was achieved.

The leading talents of that movement were absorbed into the government machinery, while the movement itself has been left without it's leading figures and central purpose. Will it survive or find a new role?

That Macron has succeeded in consolidating his position must still be put to the test at the ballot. As Obama learned, when you set high expectations, the movement will want practical changes it can touch. A legacy they can touch.

What Macron has right now is a governing majority. He doesn't even have a campaign machinery for himself or his supporters to sustain their agenda. Nothing has really changed over the past year.

Copy the En Marche model at peril. Macron's was a victory for charismatic leadership, but it's hollow inside. The future, never mind success, will depend on the support existing parties like MoDem and the Radicals, and the creation of some sort of plain, traditional electoral machinery for Les Marcheurs.

Macron's victory was a lesson in how to get into government, not in how to stay there. He made waves, a tidal wave, that upset the system and forced some realignment. But politics is fickle.

Alliances can seem unbreakable, until they aren't. Break ups are forever, until they aren't. Just ask the Radicals.

Liberal Democrat Leadership: A chance to breathe progressive energy into a party sorely in need of a fresh start

Last month Tim Farron chose to resign as leader of the Liberal Democrats. This article won't focus on that, other than where it affects the way forward. However, his resignation does present the party with an opportunity.

The party has been on a rollercoaster, from their first experience of government in decades to a catastrophic loss of public trust that resulted in an electoral collapse that lost the party all but eight seats in the Commons.

Under Farron, who had no part in the Coalition, it appeared that things were turning around. Recoveries in council elections, and the remarkable by-election upset in Richmond Park, suggested that the pro-European party would do well at a general election.

The results were, by most measures, disappointing. Yes there were gains, with some of the party's bigger names returning - even as others departed. But the party went hard on one issue and it didn't land. And there were also unhelpful distractions.

With yet another election unlikely to be far away, the party is at an impasse. There was no election surge and the party has no resonating message. It now has no leader either.

Contenders

The next leader has to grasp these challenge quickly and get on top of them. There can be no room for looking inwards. When nominations close in a week's time, the contenders putting themselves forward must give the party moving forward.

At the outset, it seemed like there would be an a list of experienced contenders to debate just how to do that. The favourites included the experienced former ministers Norman Lamb, Ed Davey and Vince Cable.

But the strong favourite was Jo Swinson. Not only would she have have been the party's first female leader - an important statement in itself - the party would have had in Swinson a liberal feminist at the helm outspoken and capable.

The biggest difficulty barrier ahead of her candidacy, it had seemed, was her time as a minister in the Coalition. Yet her early Parliamentary career was so tangled up with Cabinet collective responsibility, that her voting could only really be seen as representative of the Coalition as a whole.

That gives Swinson, in her return to the Commons, something near to a fresh start. A chance to establish her own agenda and to define herself, and her party, anew.

However, despite being labelled the favourite (by a wide margin), Swinson chose not to stand. She was promptly elected Deputy Leader, however, so her voice will not be missed at the head of the party.

Her choice not to stand would become a trend. Soon after, Ed Davey and Norman Lamb both announced they would not stand either. With no challenger yet coming forward, Vince Cable is at present the only candidate to become the next leader.

Renewal

Over the years, the liberal parties in Britain have found themselves caught between two movements. The free marketers have been pulled rightward by the Conservatives and the social liberals have been pulled leftward by Labour.

And yet, the Liberal Democrats seemed to be making inroads as an alternative progressive party to Labour until the 2010 general election. In longstanding liberal tradition, the party announced it would respect pluralism and go into coalition with the party with most seats and most votes.

That decision, that led to Cameron and Clegg announcing the Coalition in the Rose Garden, ultimately proved wildly unpopular. It hangs over the party two years on. As the presumptive next leader, Vince Cable needs to address weaknesses like these.

To his credit, Cable has already taken steps to head off those concerns that more collaboration with the Tories awaits in the future. Cable described working with the Tories was like mating with a praying mantis - not something you're likely to survive twice.

It helps that the party has been clear that it won't be making any deals and in the election campaign, even Nick Clegg spoke of the need to work constructively with Labour in the aftermath to oppose the Tories - a clear sign that there is no going back.

The break from the past could bring with a fresh start on policy too. At the centre of the their 2017 campaign was the call for a second referendum. But it didn't really get traction. It was a policy that seemed to have missed a change in the public mood.

There is a growing sense that people have accepted that Brexit is going to happen and are focussing now on the future - a mood that makes the Lib Dems position seem nostalgic, or even conservative.

There is, perhaps, a need to draw a line under staying in - following what might be considered two defeats - and to realign thinking toward the future. Not to stop being pro-Europe or even pro-Remain, but to think about what these mean going forward rather than trying to undo the past. Three points to consider would be:

• to scrutinise and campaign for the least damaging Brexit,
• to support the right for individuals to retain their EU citizenship,
• and, to start talking about pathways back to European cooperation in the future.

The key is to start taking the initiative and look forwards, not backwards. To get back to basics, like questions of individual's rights. That idea doesn't just extend to policy on Europe.

Perception

At the heart of being forward-looking in developing policy and taking stances is public perception. For smaller parties it is a difficult, and sometimes perilous, tightrope to walk. But at it's heart, there are practical limitations these parties face and they must tailor their message to that reality.

When he resigned, Tim Farron drew a link between his decision and questions that arose in the election campaign suggesting a conflict between faith and politics. Farron portrayed the conflict as only the perception of an intolerant illiberal secularism.

Now, it certainly isn't incompatible for someone to be personally conservative and yet politically liberal, open and tolerant of others, and respecting their right to live their own lives.

But it is a hard stance to hold as the leader, as the figurehead, of a liberal movement. When asked to assuage doubts about his stance on LGBT and abortion rights, Farron failed to offer reassurance - focusing instead on himself.

Politics is a game played in soundbites and shorthands. The grand rhetoric and inspiring thought absolutely matters, so very much, but it isn't the gateway - the access point. Image and perceptions matter.

For the smaller third parties - for whom taking symbolic stands are one the few opportunities they get to show the public who they are - the leadership has to be a beacon of the values of that party, without equivocation.

The Coalition interfered with the Liberal Democrats' ability to make themselves distinct. The comedown from the personality politics that grew up around Nick Clegg has tarnished their image, along with the links to the Tories.

The party's long held commitments to plurality, to compromise, to democratic cooperation and serving the national interest above the party interests are all worthy. But little of it ever makes it to the public eye and is rarely interpreted as intended.

The party also seems to have struggled to establish what it is for, pitching a stance of 'equidistance' under Clegg that didn't really change under Farron. While there is nothing wrong with Centrism, it shouldn't be confused with just splitting the difference.

As a small party, the Lib Dems can't afford those confusions. It needs a clear message. For a good example, consider the party's 1997 manifesto. It called for active government that would strengthen liberty, promote prosperity and widen opportunity. There is what liberalism is supposed to stand for, summarised in three words: Liberty - Prosperity - Opportunity. Hopeful words that focus on the future, not just management of the mediocre present.

Foundation

The 2017 general election established a Liberal Democrat baseline and perhaps new foundations. Even with just a dozen MPs, the party still have the ability to put forward a capable frontbench team, with recognisable names associated with positive progressive campaigns.

From Vince Cable, with a long history as a treasury spokesperson and minister, and an economics expert; to Ed Davey, who was minister for energy and the environment; to Norman Lamb, who was a minister in the Department of Health, is an outspoken advocate of parity of esteem for mental health and now also chair of the Science and Technology select committee; there are strong credentials. In addition, both the returning Jo Swinson and the brand new Layla Moran are MPs who look like future party leaders.

There Lib Dems survived their mistakes and have decent foundations to build upon. But there are decisions to be made if the party wants to make it back from the brink - for the second time in it's history. But do so, the party needs to be much more self-aware and it needs to be clear.

There is still a place for liberalism under a broader progressive banner, but it has to commit. Even standing as centrist, with its cherished value of inclusivity, can be progressive. But the centre is not to be found halfway between Labour and the Tories.

Vince Cable, increasingly likely to be the next leader, has made positive steps in that direction. He has affirmed the "no deals" stance, with particular venom towards the Tories, supported the Compass campaign for a Progressive Alliance over the past few years and received cross-party backing in his own seat of Twickenham.

The last liberal recovery was founded in localism, campaigning and standing as a progressive party. The 2017 manifesto showed that the core of those ideas remains unchanged. What the party have lost their identity. It must be the new leader's priority to get it back.

The Yellow Tide isn't what it seems: The neoliberal centre has depended upon abstention and prevails amid disinterest

Macron's landslide was not quite what it appeared, exposing how neoliberal Centrism depends upon disinterest and abstention. Photograph: Emmanuel Macron campaign poster 'Macron President' in Paris by Lorie Shaull (License) (Cropped)

The rise of Macron was met with a chorus of celebration from some corners for the resurgence of the 'Centre'. In France, we are to believe, the neoliberal Centre has recovered. But has the centre really found a new revitalising note?

In the presidential election, Macron prevailed as the neoliberal Centrist candidate thanks to a number of factors: the collapse of social democracy, repeated Centre-Right scandals, and because the Far-Right was sufficiently repulsive.

Now, even with the Left non-committal, Macron did secure the support of around 45% of registered voters in the head-to-head with the Far Right. But was the high water mark.

At the legislative elections Macron's party, La Republic En Marche, took a landslide majority. Yet it came amid a low turnout. While his party took 49% of second round votes, just 43% of voters turned out - giving them the support of only about 20% of eligible voters.

The neoliberal Centre is holding on to power, but it doesn't seem to be the result of its own arguments. If anything, it seems as if the Centrists are standing still as the turbulent waters wash around them. As protest votes and popular dissensions of the Left and the Right ebb and flow, the stagnant Centre appears to rise or fall.

Just look at Italy. Despite losing a crucial referendum in December and resigning as Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi won back the leadership of the Partito Democratico in a landslide. And judging from the polls, he will likely return as Premier at the next election.

If he does, it would be explicitly at the head of a party of Renziani Centrists and neoliberals, looking to replicate Macron's success. That comes thanks to the Left-wing of the party going through with its threat to leave if Renzi won back the leadership.

Under former party leaders Pierluigi Bersani and Massimo D'Alema, the Centre-Left walked away to work towards concentrating all of the many Left factions - including their own Democratici e Progressisti vehicle - under a single progressive banner.

This move leaves Renzi as the undisputed leader of a definitively Centrist party. Matteo Renzi again proves himself to be - in the years of turmoil created by Berlusconi finally, if only partially, falling from grace - pretty much the last man standing.

But what else does Renzi have? Other that his political skill that earned him the nickname 'il Rottamore' - the scrapper. He lost the constitutional referendum on which he staked his Premiership and the Renziani approach has alienated the Centre-Left and driven them out of the party - much as the Hollande governments did and Macron risks doing with his programme.

Furthermore, it was his political skill - not electoral success - that saw him rise to the position of Premier, after a succession of resignations when the Democrats under Bersani failed to gain enough support to govern with it's Centre-Left platform in 2013.

While the Democrats had consistently polled well under Renzi, up on 2013, their lead has slipped and the recent turmoil has seen them fall into a neck and neck race with the populist anti-establishment party Movimento 5 Stella (M5S).

The sum of this is that in Italy, the 'third way' Centrism - blending social democracy and neoliberalism - may return to power with Renzi, but it's unlikely to do so with sweeping triumph. Again, the waters are moving and the Centrists are not the ones moving them.

In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte celebrated his party remaining the largest and the halting of the Far-Right advance. But the figures tell a different story. Between the coalition partners - the Centre-Right liberal-conservative VVD and the Dutch Labour Party PdvA - they lost 37 seats and 24% of the vote.

For Rutte's VVD, it was the failure of an alternative to muster sufficient support from a fractured and plural political landscape that has kept him in power: they remained the largest party with just 21% of the vote.

It will take an across the spectrum alliance of at least four parties to keep Rutte's VVD in office. While that kind of pluralism is a positive thing, it's not exactly evidence of a great Centre revival.

In Britain, the failure of the Liberal Democrats to increase their share of the vote reinforced the point.

By succeeding in getting people to engage with politics, to turnout and vote, Jeremy Corbyn shut down what appears to be the main avenue along which the neoliberal Centre has travelled: abstention.

If this is the case, it makes the pitch made by the Lib Dems over the last few elections and the New Labourite obsession misguided. Pitching to be the party of faceless bureaucrats, the party of government, the party of business, only seems to work if people have lost interest.

Could a new British party of the centre have done better than the Lib Dems? A party of economically neoliberal social democrats, uniting Labour MPs with some liberals and even some Tories, and pitching to as broad a base as possible, under a leader like Yvette Cooper?

The numbers don't really support it. Even with the Tories and Labour getting their largest vote share for some time, abstention was still the largest block. The reality is that Centrism doesn't seem to have a convincing story to tell and so stands still as events move around it.

Macron was the rallying point to see off a threat. And while Justin Trudeau did indeed lead the Liberals to a huge comeback and landslide majority in Canada in 2015, he did so with the support of just a quarter of eligible voters - the gift of an electoral system - against the waning power of an ever more rightward leaning government.

If Renzi wins back to the Premiership in Italy with effective power, it will also be likely thanks to an electoral system. And, in the Netherlands, Rutte held on thanks to support being fractured across the plural options.

While the Right rallies an angry minority around a crude nationalism that makes wild promises and the Left assembles behind a hopeful interventionism, the Centre mostly benefits from disengagement. The the relative recovery of the Centre comes to look more like a holding pattern.

This isn't the sign of a recovery - it's the absence of one.

The Centre remains with a hand on power because disengagement remains a real issue and neither a Left Alternative nor the angry Far Right have, so far, won over enough support with the broader public.

While this does seem to toll the bell for neoliberalism, Centrism need not necessarily follow it. There is a place for Centrism, but right now it seems like the Centre is struggling to understand itself.

The Centre is supposed to be about balance. About inclusion. That is not the same thing as 'equidistance'. And the occupation of the centre ground by neoliberalism is more about 'received wisdom', the present consensus, than the ideals of the Centre.

In a pluralist society, Centrism has an important role to play. It pursues a stake in society for people on all sides and tries to maximise the utility of the society - to ensure the maximum number of people enjoy the benefits.

What that can't mean is accepting conservative narratives on the economy, the trap that the heirs of New Labour have frequently fallen into. That centrism, of neoliberalism, has become like a technical government, a bureaucratic caretaker while we await something better.

Those that values the ideal of the Centre - inclusion - need to wake up. The revival of the Centre is not what it appears. The politics of management is offering nothing and standing still. People are ready to move. Centrists need an answer as to where.

French Legislative Elections: Macron's ascent asks a tough question of social democrats and social liberals

Macron's ascendancy consumed the parties of social democrats and social liberals, reducing them to a sliver of seats. Will they be represented in his En Marche majority? If Macron doesn't give enough thought to them, the Left opposition will look to build progressive alliances under his left-wing.

Emmanuel Macron has completed what he set out to do. He has won the Presidency and an Assembly majority riding the crest of his new movement 'La Republic En Marche'. However, the poor turnout suggests all is not yet what it appears.

Macron and En Marche won a landslide, yes. But the wave of disaffection was greater still. In the two rounds of voting, just 49% and 43% of the people voted. Macron has a majority in the Assembly, but not yet in the country. Far from it.

That disparity will only make it harder and more desperate, not easier, to win people over. The pressure is now tangible. Macron has to deliver - and not just his own programme. He has to deliver it in a way that meets with public expectation.

People are already disaffected, with turnouts low, and the call for people to rally about the Centrist candidate has not exactly been answered - regardless how it has been portrayed by those excited by a pro-European Centre revival.

Macron's Centrist success also came largely at the expense of the Centre-Left, practically wiping it out save for those who aligned with En Marche.

Leading figures in the social democratic 'Parti Socialiste' lost their seats as the the party was nearly wiped out, reduced from 280 to just 29 seats. The Left-wing Presidential candidate Benoit Hamon and Assembly leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis were defeated - though former Premier Manuel Valls survived, standing as an independent.

Social democracy also managed to take social liberalism down with it. The 'Parti Radical de Gauche', their social liberal allies, lost all but three of their seats, though their leader Sylvia Pinel survived. It is worthy of note that three more radicals survived under the En Marche banner.

That poses an interesting question. How much of these ideologies was carried over to La Republic En Marche? Progressives will be watching closely for the answer.

In the mean time, there are questions of how to go about forming a progressive opposition. The main opposition will be the Centre-Right 'La Republicains'. They also suffered a defeat, though less damaging, and along with their allies dropped to 131 seats.

In opposition on the Left, Social democrats and social liberals are now present only in small numbers - in terms of their traditional, recognisable forms. Their supporters may be forced to look to En Marche and their MoDem allies in government for representation.

There is now, though, the possibility of a clear democratic socialist caucus in opposition. If the Socialists stick to the agenda that Benoit Hamon presented for the Presidential election, there is a possibility of forming a largely coherent DemocSoc group.

While the Socialists hold more seats, the leading voice of that group would be Jean-Luc Melenchon - who performed well at the Presidential election from the Left as the outsider candidate.

His movement 'France Insoumise' gained seats, and with what remains of the PS, along with the support of the PCF (Communists), there is a core of fifty seats with which to build an opposition group. That is enough, perhaps, to put pressure on Macron - and maybe enough to act as the beginning of a new Left alignment.

Macron's new movement - his new party of government, created just for that purpose out of the ashes of social democracy and social liberalism - has work to do.

That work has been described as Nordic in style, mixing controls on spending and cuts to regulation, with public investment and a strong social safety net - shifting the public role from keeping people in work to supporting them when they're not.

But to do that, he must first pull down the intensive labour institutions and the DemocSoc Left will not take that lightly. Expect protests on the streets and, if they can organise, a Left bloc voting against him. They will also resist plans aiming to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.

Caught in the midst of these struggles will be the social democrats and social liberals - both those within Macron's caucus and those in small numbers outside. They will have a difficult choice over their relationship to the Presidential majority.

Macron will likely have some of his greatest difficulties dealing with the threat of social democrats and social liberals pulling to the Left, if he tacks too far to the Republican Right, and threatening to vote with an organised DemocSoc bloc - perhaps giving both groups more influence than their initial numbers might suggest.

However, right now, Macron has the numbers. If he and his Premier move with energy, the most controversial elements of his approach might be completed early enough that En Marche can ride the wave. But the longer he waits, the harder change will get.

One last note. As a reminder that the far-right is far from beaten, Marine Le Pen was among a handful of Front National deputies elected to the National Assembly.

As Macron and his Centre-Right Premier Edouard Philippe lead the Assembly, they should keep Le Pen's deputies in sight. They represent the cost, for France, of failure to deliver on public perception. En Marche must deliver to France a tangible fresh start.

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.

What kind of economy would Labour's new economic advisory council build?

Photograph: John McDonnell MP, with residents and supporters of Grow Heathrow outside Central London County Court in 2012, by Jonathan Goldberg/Transition Heathrow (License) (Cropped)

John McDonnell, Labour's new socialist shadow chancellor, has moved to rebuild the party's economic reputation by appointing an economic advisory council (BBC, 2015). The council is, by all estimations, a supergroup comprised of the rockstar economists of anti-austerity thinking: Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz, Mariana Mazzucato, Anastasia Nesvetailova, Ann Pettifor and David Blanchflower.

There are two clear aims to this move. The first is to show that, not only is austerity thinking flawed, but that there are clear alternatives. The second is win back for Labour the credibility on economic policy that they had lost, fairly or not, by 2010.

It has been argued, seemingly endlessly, that without both credibility and a clear alternative, Labour's reputation - and so its ability to win elections - will not recover (Elliott, 2012; Kendall, 2015; Reid, 2015). So it is important to know what kind of alternative Labour's new advisors would have them construct.

The resumes of Labour's new advisors

Thomas Piketty is a French economist who had a large impact, in political and economic circles, with his 2013 book Capital in Twenty-First Century. In that work, he puts forward a simple premise and explores it in depth.

Piketty's thesis is that the concentration of wealth, resulting from the rate of return on capital being in the long term in excess of economic growth, is as much a political problem as an economic one. In his assessment, the access to capital brought by inherited wealth and the 'rentier' power it gives, prevents the competition and distribution for which the free market is lauded.

That is an assessment agreed with by the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. They argue that their findings show that income inequality in fact strangles growth, with countries that have a more even income spread actually performing better (OECD, 2014).

Piketty's proposed solution is for progressive taxes to be levied upon wealth and coordinated globally to suit the globalisation of capitalism. The failure to pursue this, in the French economist's eyes, means standing by as the rich consolidate control over society, crushing democracy in their wake by leaving the poor dispossessed and powerless (Naidu, 2014).

This concern with regards to inequality is shared by Joseph Stiglitz, former Clinton advisor and critic of the management of market globalization (Stiglitz, 2000). Stiglitz's work The Price of Inequality argued that inequality was as much the concern of the 1% as the 99%, as 'their fate is bound up' with how the other side live (Roberts, 2012).

To tackle inequality, Stiglitz argues that there needs to be a change in norms. He argues that free markets in fact need the protection of strong regulations and transparent accountability (Edsall, 2012), in order to break the monopolies on power that are used to influence selfish terms - to, in essence, reclaim capitalism.

For Mariana Mazzucato, reclaiming capitalism begins with reimagining the role of the state (Mazzucato, 2013). Mazzucato envisions the state as a risk-taking innovator, the creator and shaper of markets, and the natural agent to act in the 'common good' where privatisation is poorly suited and will not stop public subsidy (Mazzucato, 2013{2}).

She argues that this includes the provision of essential public services like education or health; investments in public infrastructure; investment and support for entrepreneurs, whether in business, for research, or for science and technology - all areas where steady, engaged, long-term investment commitments are needed.

Yet Mazzucato is not arguing for nationalisation or a growing of the state, but rather for a smarter state (Mazzucato, 2014) - bold and able to take risks. Quoting Keynes, she argues for a state that opens up new markets and regulates them:

"The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all."

As for the others on Labour's select list of economists?

Ann Pettifor predicted the severity of the economic crisis with her 2006 book The coming first world debt crisis and, in a very Keynes-esque manner, has worked hard to make clear the dangerous role that debt has played in events (Cooper, 2015). She has also argued that the debt crisis exposed dangerous collusion between governments and the finance sector that broke the 'link between risk and reward' and so chained 'free' markets (Pettifor, 2014).

David Blanchflower, a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, has spoken out against the idea that Labour 'caused' the 2008 financial crisis and against the economics of austerity (Blanchflower, 2015). Blanchflower was amongst the signatories of a letter during the Labour leadership campaign - along with Mazzucato - that argued Jeremy Corbyn's economic policy was in fact the moderate, mainstream response and it was instead George Osborne's austerity that was extreme (Blanchflower et al, 2015).

And finally there is Anastasia Nesvetailova, whose work Fragile Finance warned in 2007 of the fragility and instability of the finance-based economy, upon which the whole political and globalised economic house of cards was based (Nesvetailova, 2007).

The respectable face of economic opposition

So what kind of economy do these ideas combine to form?

In a definite stance of opposition to the dominant, and austere, conservative approach, the consensus running through Labour's new advisors is for the state to have a strong role - though not through nationalisation. The emphasis is placed upon the work the state does to create a framework for society - on infrastructure, on social security, on regulating market activity.

In fact, looking over the recommendations is almost like a review of German economics in the late twentieth century during the time of Germany's Wirtschaftswunder - its 'economic miracle'. The social market, so-called Rhine Capitalist, system that underwrote that economic boom was plush with public-private partnerships.

Inspired by German Ordoliberalism, the state was to act as regulator and facilitator in the Rhenist system (Guerot & Dullien, 2012). The aim was to ensure greater equality, and widely enjoyed prosperity, all while retaining an appreciation for free markets - so attempting to get the social aims and a vibrant market to go along hand in hand.

The ideas also bear some resemblance to those of Liberals and Liberal Democrats in the UK over the decades. Setting themselves apart from the Conservatives and Labour, their approach was to argue that it was not about a large or a small state, but about what the state is and what it does (Brack et al, 2007) - so Liberals might pursue the most efficient solution with the least interference with the individual.

In these similarities with liberal ideas, the approach of Labour's new advisors marks a kind of sharp change for the party, away from the centralised and overbearing managerialism it has pursued since the Second World War. But what stands out most is that, if we can accept that austerity represents a purely right-wing form of economics, the vision these economists are putting forward represent the mainstream - the democratic economics of the centre.

Building an alternative

With these very much mainstream, Keynesian-esque, ideas - based on broad analysis critical of austerity but friendly to markets - accomplishing the task of recovering Labour's credibility should not be such a long shot. Even reaching out to reintegrate the unhappy New Labour-ites should not be impossible.

For restoring their respectability, it is now a matter of building that model and presenting it to the public, which - if done right - could create the base from which the Conservative approach can be disassembled.

That would mean embracing Keir Hardie as Jeremy Corbyn did, in his first speech to the Labour Party conference as leader (Kennedy & Grierson, 2015). The existence of a credible alternative to the rigours of austerity allows the party to challenge the necessity of the suffering it has caused, and to try to 'stir up divine discontent with wrong'.

And yet, while the dry and balanced macroeconomic mainstream vision is the economist's dream ticket to government office, it is not hard to imagine these technical reforms falling short of progressive expectations.

There are radical ideas with not touched on here.

Citizen's income (Razavi, 2014), mutuals and co-ops (Webb, 2015), shorter working hours and the possibilities that automation are bringing (Mason, 2015) - these are all ideas tied closely to questions of equality, accountability and innovation.

However, there is likely more to come from the team of Corbyn & McDonnell - not least the pursuit of rail renationalisation (BBC, 2015{2}) and community owned energy companies (BBC, 2015{3}) - than is being accounted for here. Those extra measures are needed.

If we are to have more equality and accountability in the economy, there needs to be more co-operation. Which means more say for workers in the running of their workplaces and a greater mutuality of aims.

And if people are to enjoy full balanced lives, they also need enough time to embrace more than just their universal human rights to fair paid work and 'rest and leisure'. They need the resources and time to study, to raise families, to assemble, to debate and to act.

And if people are to have both of the above with freedom, from both want and coercion, they need the basic guarantee against poverty and homelessness afforded by a Citizen's Income.

As it says in the old Liberal Party's Yellow Book (1928), written under the deep influence of David Lloyd George and John Maynard Keynes:

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

A true progressive alternative to conservative economics needs to embrace big ideas. It needs to reform, it needs to challenge and it needs to spark hope of a new way forward.

There are two pitches on the table for the future of the political left in the UK - a radical proposal from Caroline Lucas and a pragmatic one from Vince Cable

The September conference marked Tim Farron's first as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Photograph: Tim Farron at the Lib Dem conference rally on 19 September 2015 by Dave Radcliffe (License) (Cropped)

Tim Farron's first speech, as leader, at a Liberal Democrat party conference came at a crucial time for the UK's political Left (Kuenssberg, 2015). Farron used his speech to try and unite liberals and social democrats and relaunch the Lib Dems as an opposition party at a time when the opponents of David Cameron and George Osborne are scattered and divided.

Less than six months after a bad election night for Britain's progressives, the two main parties of the Left have just come out of the turmoil of leadership elections. The internal wrangling, squabbles surrounding their respective contests, and the distraction they caused - particularly Labour's (Bush, 2015) - have allowed the thin Conservative majority to roll on unchallenged.

The question that lingers behind the efforts of figures within individual parties, like Farron, is how progressives of all parties, with their new leaderships in place, should come together to present an opposition to the Conservatives.

With regards to that question, there have been two pitches, each representing a different approach to tackling Conservative dominance: one from Caroline Lucas and the other from Vince Cable.

Shortly after the election, Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP, made the first pitch. She suggested that a progressive alliance be formed in time for the next election in order to avoid splitting the anti-Tory vote (Cowburn & Boffey, 2015). Lucas argued that parties on the Left - again, Labour in particular - needed to embrace multi-party politics and co-operation to counter the advantage that 'split' votes offers to the Conservatives under the present first-past-the-post electoral system (Lucas, 2015).

The second pitch was made by Vince Cable, former deputy leader of the liberal democrats and business secretary. Cable took advantage of the dissensions and threats of splits and defections amongst Labour MPs to resurrect the idea of a realignment of the left (Mason & Perraudin, 2015) - an idea favoured by Roy Jenkins and Tony Blair (d'Ancona, 2015). Cable argues that there is a strong support for a progressive, centrist, party and that moderates from Labour and the Liberal Democrats could unite to fill that space. 

The election of Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron, as leaders of Labour and Liberal Democrats respectively, clearly shows where the hearts of the party grassroots are - deep within the radical left. That certainly suggests that there is an openness to the pitch made by Caroline Lucas for a radical alliance, where co-operation replaces the previous status quo, in pursuit of common progressive aims.

However, the parliamentary Labour Party and the so-called 'liberal-left' media have been cold to those instincts (Blair, 2015; Cook, 2015). Since his election, Jeremy Corbyn has been faced with rumours of splits, breakaways and defections by the self-described 'moderate' elements of his party (Peston, 2015).

Tim Farron has so far seen little of this kind of response, despite coming from the more radical edge of the Liberal Democrats (White, 2015). Yet his speech yesterday still tacked to the centre, using language that would appeal to centrist and Right-leaning liberals on hard work and opportunities and making references - that will be familiar to followers of the Labour Party (Penny, 2015) - to the necessity of attaining power before a difference can be made (Farron, 2015).

Within both the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, there are signs that the old patterns are hard to break. When one party makes a radical move, the other makes a centrist move - each trying to outmanoeuvre the other to be the one, dominant opposition to the Conservatives.

That certainly seems to make Cable's version of the Left coming together more likely. Historically, as Tony Blair has been at pains to tell the world (BBC, 2014), that has been the only choice that has ever been successful.

Yet that does not dampen the desirability of a radical alternative - nor lessen its necessity. Achieving long lasting and much needed change will require more than just an opposition. It needs a compelling alternative. Cable's proposal provides the first, but not the second. In Lucas' pitch, there is the possibility of both.

The austerity narrative, upon which Conservative domination rides, is part of a larger set of systems and presumptions that all need to be challenged - down to their roots. Only a radical alternative can do that - one that is willing to question accepted realities like the two-party monopoly over the electoral system.

So far, radical opposition, across Europe, has been stifled by its isolation (Fazi, 2015). In the UK, however, there are growing opportunities for progressives to work together - and they must if they are to challenge the establishment and the Conservatives who control it.

But before progressives can start down that road they must ask themselves a question, to which the answer matters: will they work together in the pragmatic centre, hoping to inherit control over the establishment, to soften its edges; or will they pursue a more radical course, seeking to challenge the establishment with an alternative vision?

Elizabeth May is right - the real possibility of seeing their ideals represented can bring back disaffected voters

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, at the StopC51 'Day of Action' at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto. Photograph: Elizabeth May at #StopC51 'Day of Action' by Alex Guibord (License) (Cropped)

During Thursday night's Canada leaders debate, Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, stressed that her party did not need to take votes away from the three major parties (Wells, 2015). May said, as she has said before (May, 2015), that her party could instead focus on bringing disaffected voters back into the political fold.

With Jeremy Corbyn's leadership bid, there are few subjects more sensitive for the UK Labour Party than the matter of who they should be looking to for support. May's comments touch on a sore point for the Labour establishment, who seem to have set out, with determination, to put Corbyn down and discredit his supporters (Watt, 2015).

What the mainstream of the Labour Party demands, instead, is a focus on wooing just enough of the two-thirds of Britain who regularly turnout to vote. To gain their support, the party wants policy pitches to be based on opinion poll data of the most popular, currently held, views on a range of issues (Wintour, 2015) - from the economy to immigration.

Between May and Corbyn on one side, and the Labour establishment on the other, there are two very different mindsets at work.

At the leaders debate, Elizabeth May's statement was made in response to accusations that her party would split the, already fractured, anti-Harper vote. Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have led Canada since 2006, first as a minority and then as a majority, through one controversy after another, against an opposition split between the historically dominant Liberals and the New Democrats.

What the leader of Canada's Green Party makes clear is that people will turn out to vote if they believe that their ideals will be represented (May, 2015). Yet, where voters can be split into two distinct groups, progressives and conservatives, by a one-member one-constituency system, there remain obstacles to representation. Despite May's optimism, even if you can bring back the voters who have turned away, you would still risk dividing up the support of progressives between several parties in a manner that allows conservatives to triumph (Lucas, 2015).

In most countries with a one-member one-constituency system, a solution of some sort tends to develop that addresses vote splitting. The solutions vary, ranging from a two party system to the acknowledgement of formal electoral alliances.

For Caroline Lucas, the sole Green Party MP at Westminster, the solution is a one time electoral pact amongst the UK's Left parties, with the aim of reforming the electoral system into a more proportionally representative form (Lucas, 2015). With one more pragmatic vote, cast for an alliance of progressives, pragmatic votes could be a thing of the past.

However, Labour, the biggest party of the UK Left - at least historically - has remained determined to pursue its approach of forcing everyone on the Left to align within one big tent. For the Left, this is a huge disadvantage. The Left is vibrant and diverse. From Liberals to Socialists, to Environmentalists and Feminists, they all have their own priorities - which can be mangled or suppressed by a big tent party with its focus solely upon achieving victory by collecting the 51% of votes.

Labour, in pursuit of that goal, remains focussed on, and talks a lot about, 'the Centre': home to the broadest group of voters. For them, the Centre describes a particular consensus. It is an approach that has led the party steadily to the Right, as they try to suppress the fractiousness of the Left and, under the first past the post voting system, force voters to check their ideals at the polling station door - all in the name of anti-conservative unity.

Yet the Centre can also describe a place of compromise, where you seek to create a balance between the ideals and priorities of the different ideologies. If the aim of Centrism is to be broadly inclusive, then its cause would, surely, be better served, in finding both consensus and balance, by voters being able to choose representatives that actually fit with their priorities.

In Canada and the UK, the Green Party is making the case that people will turn out to vote if they can vote for their ideals - with some legitimate hope that their vote could actually turn a significant, and proportional, percentage of those nominated into representatives. In that task, one-member/one constituency, first-past-the-post type, voting systems are inadequate.

If people are to see their vote count, and have the chance of seeing their ideals turned into policy and put into action, proportional representation and coalition government present the best means. But first come the pragmatic choices.

The parties of the Left have to be willing to stand up for the ideals that make them distinct, while showing solidarity with other progressive parties in the general cause of opposing conservatism and reforming the establishment. If they can respect and nurture their supporters idealism and are willing to support reform that lets it flourish, the voters will return.

As Labour divisions fuel fears of a 1980s SDP-style split, it's worth noting that Tony Blair could have prevented this crisis

Tony Blair at Oslo in 2011, in his role as Middle East Envoy. Photograph: Jonas Gahr Støre og Tony Blair via photopin (license) (cropped)

As, probably, a rather dramatic over reaction, it has been suggested that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the new Labour leader could lead to a split in the party. His election to power representing the party's Left-wing, it is said, could lead to another breakaway akin to that of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 1980s.

That split was led by Centre-Right, liberal and pro-European members of Labour, known as the Gang of Four - namely David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. That group left to form a new centre party, the SDP, in response to the rise of a Left-wing faction under Tony Benn and Michael Foot, when they found themselves unwilling to follow an overbearing Right-wing faction under Denis Healey.

The formation of the breakaway party almost saw Labour drop to third in the popular vote when the SDP, in their alliance (which later became a merger) with the Liberals, took 25% of the vote in 1983. But there was a time when such a split may not have been so bad of a thing for the Labour Party, for socialists, for trade unionists or for British politics.

In the 1990s, Tony Blair came to power in the Labour party and began his 'modernising' project. So strong was his position, he was able to rewrite fundamental elements of the party constitution to allow himself greater freedom of means in achieving the party's democratic socialist ends - his so-called Clause IV Moment.

At its peak, Blair's 'Third Way' New Labour held 418 seats in the House of Commons, had the support of the Liberal Democrats and benefited from the defection of a good number of moderate Conservatives. Only a few steps shy of completing this project, Blair stopped short. Blair could have created a new, broad, Centre party - a UK Democratic Party - that might have absorbed Tory and Labour moderates alike into a new, more progressive, establishment party. Instead, he left Labour in no man's land.

Labour have become a party of professional, pro-establishment, besuited politicians, who won't give up their connections trade unions and Left-wing politics even as they preaches Right-wing economics to an electorate turned cold. The hypocrisy inherent in falling short of a full transformation, by trying to have it both ways, has seen the party's idealistic Left-wing base fragment, scattering into a hundred different parties. The party is bleeding away its identity.

It does now seem as if progressives - of all stripes - may have been substantially better off had Blair, in fact, succeeded in his attempt to modernise the Labour Party into a moderate, centrist, democratic party. Not because Blair's professional Centrism offers a particular boon to progressive politics, but rather because the waters of the Labour Party's identity would not have become so muddy.

The socialists and trade unionists of Labour's left might have become a consolidated rump, a solid, united, party that could have kept together the various disparate socialist parties. It might have been a strong and idealistic voice, alongside Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats, to the Left of Blair's Centrist democrats - a loud progressive anchor, like Sinistra Ecologia Liberta in Italy, to the Left of their own Democrats, or as the SNP have sought to cast themselves.

Maybe Blair's democratic party would have had the courage to introduce proportional representation - ultimately reducing the Conservative to a Far-Right rump, powerless in the face of the support for the Centre and Left. Maybe there would not have been two elections with Labour scrambling ever Rightwards in their desperation to avoid losing power.

Blair's failure to follow through, along with his more controversial decisions, helped to lay the foundations of the Left's fragmentation. Left-leaning voters, who want to vote 'true to themselves' (Freedland, 2015), have found themselves disillusioned or cast adrift as first Labour and then the Lib Dems sought the Centre-ground in the hope of getting into power.

Yet the progressive parties can still recover. Labour remains the largest Left-leaning party and would need to be at the heart of any recovery. Labour's various factions, if they could work together under a new leader, would be the central pillar of Caroline Lucas' proposed progressive alliance for 2020 - which will likely be the best hope for the Left's election chances.

A pact would need to put electoral reform at the heart of its campaign and aim to confine the iniquities of the UK's political system - that force the creation of these alienating big tents that prevent truly representative elections - to the past. From that point on, the Left could be true to itself. There could be multiple parties, of socialists and liberals, greens and radicals, without each hurting the election chances of the other.

It might end the stifling of legitimate political voices, that denies voters the opportunity to make clear their priorities. The Left could still then work together in government, in the spirit of co-operation and consensus for the common good, to ensure that we do not again have a government of narrow interests ruling on just a third of the vote.

George Osborne's appeal for progressives to back his 'reforms' cover an attempt to dismantle compassionate social security

An old branch of the Job Centre in London. Photograph: DSC_0107.JPG via photopin (license) (cropped)

In The Guardian on Sunday, George Osborne made an appeal to progressives and Labour Party MPs to get behind his welfare 'reforms' (Osborne, 2015).

"We are saying to working people: our new national living wage will ensure you get a decent day’s pay, but there are going to be fewer taxpayer-funded benefits.... I believe this settlement represents the new centre of British politics, and appeal to progressive MPs on all sides to support us."

Yet even as Osborne attempted this appeal to 'moderates' with his new 'Centre', Conservative ministers were floating policy ideas that made it clear the party is not content to settle for just the latest round of austerity cutbacks.

While it has become abundantly clear that austerity is the long term economic plan that the Conservative leadership has taken pains to remind us of, ad nauseum, the ambitious extent to which that plan would be extended was not.

As far back as 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron was telling guests at the Lord Mayor's dinner that austerity measures would, in the end, produce a 'leaner' state permanently (Watt, 2013). The first Conservative budget, divorced from the Liberal Democrat obstructions, then arrived with a prelude from Cameron, announcing his wish for a 'higher wage, lower welfare, lower tax' society (BBC, 2015).

But even the budget, with its cuts to welfare - which have been variously criticised as driving divisions between the old and the young (McVeigh & Helm, 2015), between men and women (Watt & Perraudin, 2015), and between the rich and poor (May, 2015) - only mask a more fundamental change being pursued.

There is a project under way to comprehensively deconstruct the welfare state and the principles upon which it was founded. From the NHS (Campbell, 2015), to welfare (Mason, 2015), to even the post office (Macalister, 2015) and public broadcasting (Perraudin, 2015), the public sector is faced with being stripped back and undone - with tax funding for services being replaced with fees charged to the 'consuming' individuals.

The big question is why? Looking beyond the temptation to suggest a colourful variety of reasons involving detached selfishness and collusion with vested interests, what ideological and theoretical motivations are there to dismantle the systems of social security?

The word that comes up, again and again, is dependency.

From around the 1970s, modern conservatism began to form itself around the long abandoned ideas of classical liberalism, absorbing its priorities of laissez-faire, that is non-intervention, and meritocracy. Those principles are used as the theoretical underpinning of a low tax, low regulation and low equality modern conservative economic system, that acts as the social framework for advancing certain deeply ideological values.

The stated aim is to encourage self-interest, or greed as Boris Johnson championed it (Watt, 2013{2}), while discouraging dependence. It is in particular dependence which these modern conservatives see as the danger inherent to systems of welfare and social security.

The practical application means divorcing the state, acting on behalf of society and particularly of its richest members, from the responsibility of securing the wellbeing of the individual members of society - passing that duty off onto the individuals themselves. Through this means, neoliberal conservatives aim to drive individuals to self-interested action, where their productive work directly links to their social security and makes them wholly dependent upon themselves.

What they do not seem to grasp is that the idea of paid work, in the form of productive labour - with success and wealth marked as the result individual character, and failure and poverty as likewise the result of a personal fecklessness - is a deeply moralistic and ideological viewpoint of how society should function.

The facts do not bear out these moral and ideological beliefs. If you are born poor, the statistics say you will likely remain poor (Harrison, 2013). Whatever merit based rewards that the market might offer are suppressed or distorted by very real social conditions. Liberties and rights become privileges far out of reach for most individuals, who are reduced to factors of production competing with each other for survival.

So busy are neoliberal modern conservatives in trying to avoid dependency (George & Wilding, 1994) - and an escalating collectivism that they fear it would lead to - they ignore, are blind to, or outright disavow, the necessity of facilitating opportunity, for competition to actually be fair and so produce meaningful outcomes, or facilitating justice, where members of community are fairly supported and rewarded for the competitive exploitation of what ultimately belongs to the community.

Neoliberalism also undermines two important factors in any progressive state: social cohesion and the principle of universality. Through progressive tax contributions that pay for general use public services, society is bound in a common obligation (Peston, 2015). A portion of what is made by the individual through the exploitation of other individuals and of community resources, is used to fund care and support for the whole community.

The public sector, from healthcare to education, represents the individual members of society pooling their funds to provide a universal service. Everyone, who can, pays in and everyone benefits, regardless of their bank account, from freely accessible services. Communities, and society at large, are brought together on the basis of compassion, acknowledging the inherent value of one member of a society to another - with each member benefiting from the education of another and from their wellbeing, healthy and free from poverty.

Neoliberalism is neither post-ideological nor centrist. It carries very definite social aims that are focussed squarely upon the destruction of this consensus. In its place is put a highly moralised version of earning a living, where working for pay - however degrading and insufficient - is no longer a necessary sufferance, which radical reforming governments attempt to alleviate, but the focal point of an individual's life and a  marker of their worth (O'Hagan, 2012).

At a time when people are talking seriously of abolishing poverty (Ban Ki-moon, 2015), are rolling out trials of the basic income (Perry, 2015) and discussing the possibilities of a post-capitalist society based on abundance (Mason, 2015), George Osborne is trying to implement a system designed to entrench the old world - and he wants the help of progressives in rewriting that script.

But whatever iniquities the welfare state may have, including its cost, what is there to consider progressive about coercing people into paid employment, however degrading, with the threat of impoverishment? The classical liberals of old were left behind by the modern liberals (1928), who moved on to say:

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

Dignity and self-esteem come from autonomy - which is a far throw from a life lived supported by the ever insecure low pay scraped together from working in poor conditions for exploitative employers. The austerity agenda will not achieve them for any but the very few.