Budget 2018: Chancellor does the minimum to avoid austerity deepening, but this was no windfall budget to undo the hurt

By the end of the next five year period, the government will be spending £30 billion more a year - the largest rise in public spending since 2010. That's the headline that the government will want to see rolling out.

But that is only the surface appearance. The reality is - as Institute of Fiscal Studies Director Paul Johnson said - £30 billion was the minimum to stave off deeper cuts. And the benefit of that spending goes squarely to the NHS.

While no one is going to dispute the NHS feeling the benefit of increased public spending, in this budget the increased spending on healthcare disguises the reality underneath of public spending stagnating - the cuts of the past decade are not being undone and departments may face more cuts ahead.

Measures in this budget were plentiful, but it was money spread thin. Just £800 million for local government, £1.0bn for Defence, £160 million for counter-terrorism policing, £400 million one-off emergency fund for schools, £420 million for highway repairs.

There was a range of handwaved increases for tech and infrastructure to the tune of £1.6bn plus. A mixed bag of measures for apprenticeships worth £650 million. A package of complex investment incentives made up of reliefs and loans.

A 'co-funded' £650 million to renovate high streets. The headline Business Rates cut (said to cost £900 million) - a policy where it is still unclear who will bear the burden, the Treasury or local councils, as the Chancellor has already announced the intention to let councils keep larger percentages of the rates. There was a few hundred million to speed up housing developments and around £4bn for the city regions and the devolved administrations.

For households, there was a £200 million a year increase to 'transition support' for those moving over to Universal Credit and the work allowances were to be relaxed to, at a cost of £1.7bn, to mitigate the impact of the new welfare system on the poorest for which the government had been criticised - but only once the roll out is completed, which could be deferred for a long time at this rate.

There is also the cost to be calculated of tax cuts, including the freezes to a series of duties and the further increase in the personal income tax thresholds - up to £12,500 for earnings before tax applies and a higher rate threshold increased to £50,000.

In total, there was about £7bn spread over the next few years, plus the cost of tax cuts, with perhaps less than £4bn in new one-off spending - and a little under £2bn deferred until the rollout of Universal Credit has been completed. It appears the NHS will get an amount reaching more than £20bn a year by 2023.

The economic forecasts, and tax receipts, gave the Philip Hammond what he wanted: the ability to achieve a surplus and completely wipe out the deficit, so the debt could begin to come down at a faster rate. However, the needs of the NHS in crisis seem to have pressed the Chancellor to action.

Otherwise, Hammond stayed true to form. He preferred to use his room for new measures on tax cuts - to 'keep money in pockets' - than funding public services in plight. In fact, to keep in track, how the Chancellor used his headroom means that there will probably be more department funding cuts to come.

Austerity is not over. At best, the Chancellor Philip Hammond has stumped up the bare minimum cash to stop austerity further deepening. Even then it is a temporary measure, as the Spending Review he announced for next year will likely reveal that there are still more cuts to come.

Spring Statement: Even with the deficit reduced, the Tories continue to sacrifice the present and future of ordinary people

Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

On Tuesday, the Chancellor Philip Hammond is set to mark the end of the financial year with the government's report at the Spring Statement - and will perhaps mark the near elimination of the budget deficit.

This month has already seen his predecessor and former boss, George Osborne and David Cameron respectively, pat each other on the back for setting in motion the policy of wiping out the deficit that Hammond has overseen in it's latter stages.

With the deficit is reduced, and a bumper year of tax receipts as well, surely austerity can be eased now? No, is the answer from the Chancellor. There will be no new spending because there is still a debt to pay off. So says the Chancellor.

As a result, the Spring Statement is set to be a plain response to the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) biannual forecast - and will likely be taken as an opportunity for the Conservative government to revel a little. However, Hammond is expected to be as cautious as ever.

In 2013, then Prime Minister Cameron told the gold plated, black tie, Lord Mayor's Banquet that austerity should become a permanent feature for ever - to produce a 'leaner' and 'more efficient' state that could be afforded in the long term.

That isn't good enough for the worst off. As with the closing of the coal mines in the 1980s, austerity is slashing the state and gambling on the private sector picking up the slack - and perhaps the pieces of those people whose lives were shattered and were left to fend for themselves.

Yet the Conservatives double-down on austerity every time - even when their doesn't really chime well with reality. For instance, the current budget has largely been in balance - taking day-to-day spending against tax revenues - for years. And the national debt is not the product of reckless public spending, but of quantitative easing (nationalising huge corporate financial debt to save the banks) and borrowing to invest in the future.

However, the Conservatives have pursued balancing spending both for the present and for the future against current receipts. They have managed to nearly eliminate this definition of the deficit - but they have done so on the backs of the poor, sacrificing their present and the future for their children in the process.

Squeezing both present and future spending into today's tax receipts makes today harder for the worst off, while hurting our ability to lay the ground ready for the future - especially since borrowing for long term infrastructure investment is so efficient.

The present fiscal situation is not exactly a resounding success story either. The Conservative plan is long beyond it's target year and still borrowing around £40bn a year for investment. And, while growth has helped, it is a very minor up tick to 1.5% - which is simply less bad than thought. The same goes for productivity.

For the Chancellor, this appears to be a sign of work still to do. But there are questions that need answers. There is still a shortage of homes. A necessity for food banks. Household debt being driven by a struggle to afford even necessities.

The Chancellor is flying in the face of opinion by pursuing debt reduction over ending austerity. Economic growth has been strangled and the UK national debt is not proving to be very worrying to anyone. He has room to manoeuvre.

But Hammond is the model of a fiscal conservative. He wants rid of the debt and to put something aside for a rainy day. That means another £40bn or more is still to be cut from public spending - either through budget cuts or raised in taxes.

At the weekend came the news that around a £1bn went unspent from the housing and local government budgets - which was ostensibly for building affordable homes - and was recouped by the treasury.

While there are people asking why was this money not spent and if it will it be reinvested in building affordable homes, the reality is that it simply be squirrelled away for the rainy day fund.

It is telling, perhaps, that the Chancellor and the Government don't seem to see this as a rainy day - perhaps looking gloomily ahead to the impact of Brexit? But there are many people out there in the real world who may very well disagree.

It is understandable to rule out major changes to taxation and rules - the IFS were among those recommending it stop. Doing so twice a year is a lot to keep up with. However, no one struggling under the burden of austerity is looking for a complicated readjustment of fiscal rules and tax brackets.

For those who have carried the burden of getting to this point, they want a little more support. A little more investment, or cheap credit, that could create a few more opportunities. Some surety of a roof over their heads and a means of putting food on the table. Care they can rely on when they're ill or retire. None of this should be considered too much to ask.

The questions the Prime Minister doesn't answer are usually the important ones, like Layla Moran's question on free childcare

Photograph: Child Care by Lubomirkin on Unsplash (License) (Cropped)

On Wednesday, new Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran attempted to ask a question at PMQs. Her effort was drowned out - and ultimately upstaged by - the Tories' reaction. The bad behaviour of MPs got the headlines and successfully buried the lead.

Getting the media to write headlines about bad behaviour - the proverbial dead cat on the table - rather than the substance of policy is the basic aim of cynical political strategy. For the Conservatives, that's a point scored.

Moran was finally able to ask her question, though, and called on the PM to take action on the problems that have arisen with the Government's longstanding pledge to expand free childcare to thirty hours a week for 3 and 4 year olds.

The Prime Minister's response was less than convincing and that shouldn't be a surprise. The problems encountered in delivering this flagship policy underline the fundamental failings of the May Government and it's predecessor.

The plan to expand free childcare, a major campaign promise, has run into major problems. The moderated version of these events are that some thousands of families can't access the service thanks to 'technical issues'.

However, Layla Moran turned a light on the deeper problems underlying the implementation: the Tory claim that they were offering so called 'free' childcare masks the fact that they're not paying the full cost of the childcare.

This is a persistent habit of the Tories. They make big pledges, but then shift responsibility for delivery, and for raising funding, to others. Local government has also been hurt by this Conservative approach.

The Tories hand off ever further responsibility from central government, while drastically reducing funding as they devolve control over it. Social care in particular has been badly hit, even as the costs in the sector continually rise.

It's worth noting it was Theresa May's attempt to respond to that self-created social care crisis that hurt the Tories so badly at the election. The party's new plans for social care - to raid middle class homeowners - didn't survive beyond the manifesto launch.

In the case of childcare, it means that many providers won't offer the service as it is simply not finacially viable to do so. That will restrict access to free care. For others, it will mean increased costs as providers are forced to spread the costs across other service users.

This is a trend with the Conservatives, one that has plagued the policies enacted by the government. Privatised delivery has produced poor results and ethical violations in the provision of welfare. Local government has had funding taken away and then been called out for not keeping front line services, such as libraries, open.

Outcomes can be explained away. They can be put down to ideological differences as to the end goals, or dismissed with excuses blaming past governments or other bodies. But the failure of flagship policies shouldn't be shrugged off.

The expansion of free childcare is a long standing promise, but one that has had a cloud over it for most of that time. Failure to provide the plans with adequate funding was pointed out as far back as the end of 2016.

Problems have been noted and gone unaddressed, undermining the fundamental promise contained in the pledged policy. Failures like this need to be catalogued, because it keeps happening under these Conservative governments.

Shifting responsibility to others, denying funding. At some point, the buck has to stop and the Conservatives have to be held to account for their policies and their failure in the delivery of them.

General Election 2017 - Tory Manifesto: Demanding unity, making no promises

Theresa May has called for unity and social harmony, but she offers little to ordinary people in return.

This manifesto is Theresa May's belated opportunity to stamp her identity of the Conservative Party. In what became her very short campaign for the role of Conservative leader, she chose to emphasise the Unionist element of the fully titled Conservative and Unionist Party.

At the 2017 manifesto launch, "Forward Together" was written on the front of May's podium as she strained to come across as a 'compassionate conservative' and the word "Unionist" was restored to the party's name on the front of the manifesto.

Inside the document, there was an effort to rewrite what it means to be conservative. It called for "commitment to country and community", "belief in national institutions", and obligations to one another stronger than individual rights as community and nation demand.

That definition is unionist to its core. In her first major speech as leader, she listed her hero as the Unionist Joseph Chamberlain. As Mayor of Birmingham, he led the modernisation of the city through public-private initiatives and the establishment of public utilities, in decisive acts of intervention.

There are some among the Tories who are perturbed by what they see as a similar interventionist streak. May's first manifesto and her launch speech seem to have been shaped to confirm that impression. But there is a real contrast between the tone and the content.

The headlines that the Conservatives drip fed to the media over night, before the launch, were all focused on what the party would do to address the dire state of social care - which critics say has seen a funding cut of over £4 billion on their watch.

Theresa May pitched a long term plan. The first step appears to be to launch a raid on the middle class: from their assets on one hand - those with holdings over £100,000 will pay more - to their winter fuel allowance, which will be means-tested to raise £1 billion.

The belt-tightening Tory plan extends down the income brackets. Pensions will again see cuts. With £8 billion already shaved across the Parliament (2015-2020) with the flat-rate pension, ending the triple-lock will be further hurt for the low paid on just the state pension.

While an argument might justifiably be made that the triple-lock has proven very expensive - pensioner incomes have risen 10% above inflation - not enough is being done to lower the cost of living, particularly in old age, to ease such a 'rebalancing'.

It is perhaps this that has motivated an intervention in the energy sector with an unspecified "safeguard tariff cap" on prices and a commission and independent review into how to ensure energy costs stay low, with a promise to ensure fair markets.

But let's be clear: social care changes brought in by raising the means-tested level to £100,000 does nothing to change the conditions for the poorest. These measures raise maybe £2 billion per year, at best, in additional funding to aid an ailing system.

That means the poorest will continue to rely on strained and underfunded care services, while the homeowning middle class will be paying far more for privatised care - and still won't be able to pass on their family homes to their children.

In fact, when you take into account hinted Tory plans to give workers the right to unpaid carers leave, it paints a picture of Conservatives intending to wean people off of state care.

Perhaps learning from the Cameron years, hard targets seem to have been replaced by lots of vague promises: to simplify tax laws, to stop tax evasion, to protect gig economy workers and to put more money in the NHS (despite having yet to meet their previous targets) - though the promises to control immigration continue to be more clearly specified.

But what does not seem to have changed is their attitude to the fiscal role of the government.

Current spending stands this year at around £720 billion to £740 billion in revenue, while Capital spending sits at around £80 billion. As the Tories combine Current and Capital spending to calculate the deficit, it stands at about £59 billion.

With further commitments to eliminate the deficit, across both Current and Capital spending, a National Productivity Investment Fund of £23 billion - even if it turns out to be rebranded rather than new money - heralds more austerity cuts to come, either from other infrastructure spending or from departmental budgets.

And that matters. Britain has already been hard hit by austerity. Yet despite in her manifesto disavowing the liberal conservative legacy of Cameron and Osborne and claiming that the state has a role, May is continuing their squeeze on public services.

Note here, that what can be interpreted about how the Tories will manage the economy has no help from the manifesto, which has no costings whatsoever. Just vague promises and vague numbers with no explanation of where money will be found, or taken.

The reality is that easing the social care strain by having the middle class pay more and by restraining the pensions of the least well off does nothing to increase the stake of ordinary people in their country. May is preaching a new Union, but it's still the same old unredeemed and hard to believe Tory slogan: "We're all in this together".

This is not an inclusive manifesto. It is not progressive. It is social harmony Unionism, putting the vague notion of a 'country' before the needs of the actual people. Theresa May demands unity, but doesn't offer ordinary people a real stake in the country.

Progressives and reformers will also be particularly unhappy to see Theresa May doubling-down on retaining power, with specific commitments to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, preserve First Past the Post and to require voter ID - all measures empowering the government of the day to stay there.

The path ahead, under the Conservatives, will continue to see the burdens fall on the poorest. Nothing in this document changes that. It is imperative that there be a progressive alliance to resist and oppose, because we need a strong opposition.

Asylum distribution scandal less about immigration and more about inequality

Photograph: The clock tower of Rochdale town hall from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Over the weekend, there were reports of anger at the way those seeking asylum in Britain were being distributed across the country. These people were being sent to the poorest communities, while the richest communities often took not a single person (Lyons & Duncan, 2017).

One town particularly affected was Rochdale, a small town with an outsized history as a progressive beacon. It was the birthplace of the co-operative movement and, against the grain in Britain, supported the Union and the abolition of slavery during the American Civil War (Keegan, 2010; Cash, 2013) - despite the pain of the loss of cotton imports from the Confederacy.

Even in a town with that historical backdrop, there is anger that is framed and understood through the lens of anti-immigration sentiment (Lyons, 2017). But that misses the point, as much of the distracting immigration anger has done so far. The real issue is inequality.

As the figures show, without the funding to match, the burden that comes with caring and including those people seeking asylum is being dropped into the hands of the country's poorest communities (Lyons & Duncan, 2017).

Communities that have already been hit hard by cuts to local government budgets (Butler, 2017) - services have been stretched and funds are scarce. It has been Conservative policy for some time to shift responsibilities away from central government without funding.

All the while, the Right seeks to misdirect the anger at this situation onto 'immigrants' - to those fleeing danger and murder, or the refugees of war. But the figures clearly show the real problem: Britain's wealthiest communities are not pulling their weight or sharing the burdens.

This isn't isolated to asylum. Look at the energy and the environment. Communities, particularly Conservative constituencies, have refused green energy technology, like wind farms, as 'eyesores' blighting their communities (Hennessy, 2012). But where is their outcry against their energy coming from dirty plants in poorer neighbourhoods?

While this unequal distribution of burdens paints Britain in a bad light, . Part of the opposition to the expansion of green energy has been the unequal distribution of its financial benefits (Mason, 2012) and in every community there can be a found positive and charitable support for those seeking asylum from danger.

From Saffiyah Khan, the woman who stood up and peacefully faced a nationalist group when they surrounded a counter-protesting woman (BBC, 2017); to the peaceful and charitable disposition found in communities across the country (Lyons, 2017); there are innumerable examples that Britain has broad shoulders and can make light of its burdens.

But not when all of the burdens are dropped on the poorest communities. Not when the wealthiest communities exempt themselves, sending the unfortunate and desperate somewhere else without even the support funding to match.

It's one rule for conservative Britain and another for everyone else. Like in ancient Athens: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". That adage is not good enough and should be left buried in the past where it belongs.

Easter Recess: Time to take stock and give thought to rising uncertainty

Uncertainty is the new reality. With it comes rising anxiety and the prioritising of gain over wellbeing.

It's the Parliamentary Easter Recess and that means a chance to take a breath, and take stock of the present political situation. In short, uncertainty is fast becoming the new definition of life in Britain.

The formal process of Brexit has begun with the triggering of Article 50, which means the scramble to define the new UK-EU trade relationship has begun. The bill repealing EU laws, and replacing them with UK equivalents, has been announced in a white paper. And, another round of welfare cuts are set to begin.

Each of these, in their own way, is contributing to the rising sense of precarity. Each is serving to shape everyday life, and the grander framework it functions within, around the idea of uncertainty - and it is a deliberate ideological project.

Take for example the most pressing of these, the welfare cuts. Up until now, welfare cuts have been focussed on those at the very bottom, who have little voice and who the right-wing press demands be afforded little sympathy.

However, these latest cuts are going to thrust deep into the soft belly of the middle class. Restrictions to child benefit, to bereavement benefits, and to working age benefits will have real impacts even on people who have so far managed to skirt the impact of austerity (Butler & Asthana, 2017).

From those with a disability to young people, there is something in these changes that is, directly or indirectly, going to affect everyone (Cowburn, 2017). The safety net is being disassembled and the Conservatives are justifying it as a way to 'encourage' people 'back to work'.

The white paper for the so called 'Great Repeal Bill' - a name of unlimited pomposity - has only added fuel to the fire. Human rights groups, like Liberty, have already expressed deep concern at tremendous gaps it found in the paper (Liberty, 2017).

A particular controversy lies with the bill granting the government 'secondary legislation' powers - in theory, the executive power to implement and administer what is required by the primary legislation - over matters being transferred from EU supervision (Owen, 2017).

Critics are warning that this provision risks handing the government the ability to sidestep Parliament in altering legislation (Fowles, 2017). At the least, it will allow the government to shape and direct aspects of the law without proper oversight - a power of huge potential.

Those concerns will be hard to assuage, because the final bill will be so long and dense - "one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken in the UK" (BBC, 2017). It could take years of Parliamentary time to scrutinise and this government has shown itself to be neither that patient nor transparent.

Conservatism, whatever Theresa May wants to preach about the return of Unionism, has long since given itself over wholly to an aggressive form of laissez-faire capitalism - and the sharpest lesson of that ideology is the belief that growth is achieved by rewarding energy and dynamism and punishing the 'idle' (George & Wilding, 1994).

In other words, to promote limited precarious rewards, directly at the expense of assurance. Through coercive uncertainty, to build profit on the back of anxiety - mistaking gain and accumulation for progress.

And understanding that should make any observer take a pause, consider and ask: what kind of trade deals the Conservatives are willing to drop the EU and the single market in order to negotiate?

The Conservative long term plan is now nearly fully realised. Uncertainty is the new reality. For an increasing number of people that means the life precarious, filled with anxiety about tomorrow, so some few other can exploit them.

Budget Preview: Will Hammond act to end Conservative pattern of money being redistributed away from most vulnerable?

With the National Debt is still rising, will the Chancellor be able or willing to find some money to invest in essential services? Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond faces his first budget as Chancellor on Wednesday and he has a lot of pressure to handle. The overall Conservative promise to alleviate the country's debt is still a long way from started and there are spending decisions that Hammond will find it difficult to avoid addressing.

Funding plans for Schools, Social Care and Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) all indicate a troubling pattern of money being redistributed away from the poorest and most vulnerable areas that need it most - not an image that Theresa May, if she is to keep her promise of a Britain that works for everyone, will want to reinforce.

Schools, even those under financial pressure, face up to 3% in budget cuts. Social Care has seen billions cut from the system. And, Theresa May's government is trying to wriggle out of coughing up more money to cover a court-ordered expansion of the PIPs welfare programme.

How the Chancellor addresses these concerns is important. He has already done the press rounds in the past week to assert there will be no big spending and rolled out, the now standard Tory line, that problems are less the result of low funding and more of not following 'best practice' (BBC, 2017). But will that line be maintained through Wednesday?

On Schools, Hammond faces a situation that will be hard to explain away. The government announced plans for a new funding formula in December, that came with the less than reassuring 'assurance' that no school would lose out by more than 3% (Weale, 2016).

That is hardly going to offer succour to schools in poorer areas. As Andy Burnham (Bean, 2017), Labour nominee for Mayor of Greater Manchester, asked the Prime Minister in the Commons: how does the Prime Minister expect to get more working class children to university by cutting schools funding across the North West?

Meanwhile, Social Care has become the particular Tory baggage with which to pummel the government. With £4.6 billion in cuts since 2010 and shortfall predicted (Full Fact, 2016), it is about the hardest area for the government to argue that funding cuts don't make a difference.

In fact, the previous Chancellor George Osborne did begin to respond - but only with an, at best modest, increase in funding, that was planned to come in with this budget, but would only raise around £200 million nationally (Merrick, 2016; BBC, 2016).

The plan also does not actually involve a boost in cash from the government itself, but rather put it onto local councils to raise more in tax - up to 2% extra. However, the one, and particular poignant, flaw in this approach is that wealthier areas will be able to raise more for themselves than the poorest and most vulnerable who need it most.

Across Schools and Social Care, there is a very clear pattern emerging of money being withdrawn from where it is needed most to make tax savings for those from wealthier areas - simply, regressive economics.

That pattern is reinforced in the government's insistence upon not spending the extra £3.7 billion that an expansion of Personal Independence Payments, ordered by the courts, would call for across four years (BBC, 2017{2}) - less than a billion a year to take care of people primarily with mental health problems.

An aide to Theresa May was heavily criticised for his callous remark that funding need to kept to only the "really disabled" (BBC, 2017{3}) - for which he later apologised - but it summed up the Conservative attitude.

Under Conservative government, the services people depend upon in their everyday lives are being squeezed. Money is being siphoned out programmes that serve the most vulnerable and leaving them to find ways to fend for themselves - whether they're young, old or disabled.

There are rumours that the Chancellor will respond with a little more money than is currently planned (Kuenssberg, 2017). However, a lot more investment is needed to convince anyone that the government is moved by a real comprehension of the difficulties people actually face when the public services they rely on are disappearing.

Chancellor quietly drops yet another target, but Labour infighting means chance to pitch positive alternative case will be missed

Under Chancellor George Osborne's stewardship, the Treasury is going to miss another of its fiscal targets. Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

On Friday, at the quiet end of the week and under the cover of the Labour and Conservative leadership wrangling, Chancellor George Osborne announced that he was relaxing the fiscal rules demanding that the government deliver a budget surplus by 2020 (Ahmed, 2016).

Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies immediately stressed that the measure, though it would allow for more borrowing and so less spending cuts or tax rises to cover the shortfall caused by the post-Brexit downturn, would not mean the end of austerity (BBC, 2016).

On Sunday that was confirmed when the Chancellor announced his intention to further accelerate the reduction of the Corporation Tax rate down to a new low of just 15% (Monaghan, 2016) -  a move entirely consistent with Chancellor's M.O. of managing the economy by creating seductive conditions for major firms.

With targets being quietly missed and dropped, and sweetened tax deals for major corporations being announced, it is disappointing that Labour MPs are too busy completely embroiled in their own mess to take the opportunity for a big public 'We Told You So'.

Labour are also in no position at present to step up the argument for seizing this opportunity to push for the much needed public investment plan that Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has argued the Chancellor's fiscal rule did not allow for (Treanor & Allen, 2016).

While the first announcement was buried beneath other news on a Friday, where missed targets are often hidden, it was a move that brought the policies of Osborne and Tory leadership candidate Theresa May into alignment - as May said in her campaign announcement that she would put aside the aim to get a surplus by 2020 so as to avoid disruptive tax rises (The Independent, 2016).

While suspending the fiscal rule aligns with May's position, the decision to cut Corporation Tax may have a more complicated effect on the Tory leadership contest. Brexiter candidates have been keen to downplay the negative economic impact of the vote to leave and will seize upon any sign that life goes on as usual.

The Chancellor using the new freedom for a tax cut rather than as the first in a package of measures that include the rise in taxes that he previously warned might follow a vote to leave, could play into the hands of the Brexiter candidates. The idea that Britain still has room to manoeuvre, to make a pitch to international businesses that it is still a place to invest, will likely embolden Brexiters who accused the Remain camp of 'Project Fear'.

However, the reality is that public revenue in the UK is already tight and suspending fiscal rule only confirms the fact. Public spending is still in deficit and key benefactors like the NHS still suffer from shortfalls. Abandoning the rule means an admission by the government that only by borrowing more can it now keep up with spending demands - for now.

The big question remains as to whether borrowing, for public investment, or limiting and even eliminating borrowing, cutting public outlays and seeking private investment to cover instead - ie austerity, represents the sounder fiscal policy. Which will help produce growth and revenue?

From the OECD to the IMF (Elliott, 2016; Summers, 2014), the argument that the UK needs to borrow and increase public investment, because boosting public investment can drive the growth that delivers the tax receipts (Stewart & Asthana, 2016), has strong support. The economists who have joined John McDonnell on his New Economics tour have also made broadly the same case.

The argument from the Left is that the Chancellor's focus is on entirely the wrong part of the economy with his tax cuts, benefiting the richest in the hope that they see past their short-termist to invest with a longer view (Sikka, 2016). They also warn against the short term focus of austerity, which looks for gains by selling off parts of the government to would be rentiers, as flawed and likely to only increase problems in the longer run (Mazzucato, 2016).

The alternative is to instead start directing investment into ordinary people - whether that be through education, in skills through apprenticeships and training, through jobs repairing roads and other transport infrastructure or building thousands of much needed new homes - with every penny spent multiplying in value as it boosts the economy.

These are all long term projects, aimed at providing a stable and prosperous future. A progressive economic alternative needs to do more - from reforming welfare towards a compassionate Basic Income and improving workers' say and stake in the work they do - but public investment is the starting point.

The Chancellor has taken a step back but the pressures of austerity are not yet relieved. Progressives have to overcome their divisions so they can start building the arguments for a more prosperous future with the common good at its heart.

Local Elections: What can local government do about the housing crisis?

Government's 'Right-to-Buy' policy is a parasite feeding itself on social housing stock, another drain on the scarce resources at the disposal of local government to protect the public welfare of their communities.

Few things symbolise the UK's problems like the housing crisis. The escalating price of housing has plagued Britain for more than a decade, and has roots even deeper than the housing bubble that contributed to the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Beveridge, who had answers for so many other issues of social welfare, struggled to address the complications and implications of the housing sector (Birch, 2012). The housing benefit bill, his stop solution gap, has only escalated.

The housing crisis will be a key issue in this week's local and assembly elections. Studies released suggest confusion over the nature of the crisis, with a misplaced belief that immigrants are somehow responsible for the housing shortages and rising prices (Tigar, 2016) - rather than the more complicated reality behind the broader issue of cost living.

But there are fewer doubts about the impact of the crisis. The overwhelming majority, in a society that places emphasis on home ownership, have been disenfranchised (Helm & Doward, 2016), being effectively priced out of ever taking part. More division and social strife are not going to solve that problem.

The housing crisis, beneath the murky layer of divisive negative politics (Oborne, 2016), has dominated the London Assembly debate. As expected, that has led to candidates making grand promises and trying to find ways to work around Westminster-imposed austerity.

For instance Caroline Pidgeon, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London, has proposed using the Olympic levy to fund the building of 50,000 homes under direct Mayor's office supervision (Hill, 2016) - to be council houses kept safe from the government's social housing draining Rent-to-Buy policy.

A similar pattern has emerged in Scotland. Devolved control over taxation is being taken as an opportunity to differentiate the country from Westminster government policy.

The opposition Labour and Lib Dems have both proposed to use new tax powers to raise tax, by a penny in the pound, to increase education funding - in stark differentiation from the cuts policy of the Westminster government. This follows into housing.

The Liberal Democrats have pledged 50,000 new homes for Scotland, with four fifths being for social rent (BBC, 2016), while Labour have pledged 60,000, with three quarters to be rented out by councils, housing associations and co-operatives (BBC, 2016{2}).

Increasing social housing stock is definitely a good idea, not least for the social security it offers. It is also one of the few ways that has been shown to help in keeping the housing benefit budget under some semblance of control (Johnson, 2015).

So far government aims to encourage home building has stalled in private hands, regardless of policy (Wright, 2016). So the question remains if these devolved institutions will have more luck than Westminster in getting developers to, effectively, act against their own interests and increase the housing supply.

That is a particularly tough ask when councils have been dealt an even shorter leash than other devolved bodies. While some powers have been handed over for various areas, the capacity to fund them has been decreased and the level to which democratic authority extends is being curtailed.

From alterations to local business rates or the administration of schools being made centrally at Westminster and imposed on local bodies (Butler, 2016; Cook, 2016), to responsibility for social care being added to the jobs of protecting front line services even as council funding is being dramatically slashed (Wintour, 2016; Oliver, 2015), local bodies are being handed new responsibilities and poor funding hand in hand.

In the face of these restrictions, how much can councils really do to help ease the housing crisis?

Well, elsewhere in Europe, municipal governments are getting organised - building horizontal alliances with other councils, pooling funds and looking for innovative solutions during times that have imposed thrift on an entire continent (Zechner & Hansen, 2016).

In Spain, Barcelona En Comu have been leading a municipalism movement that has seen it working with local citizens and other cities to overcome the hindrance of austerity. The movement, of whom Mayor Ada Colau is a member, has found innovative and resourceful solutions to increase social housing availability in the city (Rodriguez, 2016).

Westminster's support for local government has been sporadic and erratic (Wainright, 2016). To fill the gaps left in budgets, local government has to look to build new kinds of partnerships. And a spirit of cooperation will have to be a part of that.

Regardless of who wins where, all councillors and assembly members will have to be willing to work across party boundaries, and even across local government boundaries. To overcome the challenges ahead, local government needs elected figures with constructive voices who are prepared to cooperate and build alliances across the usual borderlines and divisions, in order to protect vital services and the welfare of their communities.

Britain's tented Hoovervilles show the reality of the humanitarian crisis behind the debt and deficit obsession of the Great Recession

Desperation, in the time of recession and austerity, has led to tented encampments springing up across the UK. This one lies a stones throw from Manchester Piccadilly station.

Iain Duncan Smith framed his resignation as the drastic last straw of a reformer, who's efforts were curtailed by the Chancellor's obsession with austerity (Asthana & Stewart, 2016; Peston, 2016). Whatever the true conviction behind the claim, it highlights something incredibly important.

The economic crisis, to which the Conservatives have ever been keen to keep the eye drawn in the last six years, has masked a wider humanitarian crisis. Only one small moment of the Chancellor's budget statement was devoted to it. He told Members of Parliament that:

"Because under this Government we are not prepared to let people be left behind, I am also announcing a major new package of support worth over £115 million to support those who are homeless and to reduce rough sleeping."

The government tried hard during the election the evade the issue, despite attempts to confront the PM directly with the fact that rising numbers of people were using food banks (Channel 4, 2015; Worrall, 2015). Yet the fact remains that homelessness is still rising (Gentleman, 2016).

In his response to the budget, Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the Chancellor's package of assistance, but stressed that rising homelessness was the result of desperate under-investment by the Conservative government (BBC, 2016{2}). A lack of investment which had starved local government of the resources to help and housing associations of the capacity to offer shelter.

While the Chancellor's budget did offer some funds to 'reduce rough sleeping', it was in reality much less than he previously cut from housing support - estimated at only "£1 in every £5" by Shadow Housing Minister John Healey (Healey, 2016).

It is, however, something more than the approach of some local councils to rough sleeping, which has been less than humanitarian (Ellis-Petersen, 2015). Yet even harsh measures haven't been enough to stop the emergence of small, and not so small, shanty towns springing up in places like Manchester, like the Hoovervilles of the 1920s and 1930s.

Europe and the other half of the crisis

The living encamped amongst the dead, along the Rue Richard through the Cimetière du Montparnasse, in Southern Paris, where tents line the road.

On the face of it, the fact that this is as much a broader European as a specifically British problem, may seem to exonerate the Chancellor and his policies. After all, it would be unfair to blame Osborne for the living lodging amongst the dead on the Rue Richard, at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Yet while Osborne has no part in French system - where, in response to their own crisis, supermarkets are no longer being allowed to throw away surplus food and must donate it instead to help those in need of handouts (Derambarsh, 2016) - he does have a role in the other half of the crisis.

War on Europe's borders has led to a second element of the humanitarian crisis: an influx of refugees, for which Europe was not necessarily lacking in resources to tackle, but certainly appeared unprepared. With the British government unwilling to take on the burden of the refugees, a camp sprang up on the British border at Calais.

That camp grew to become a large slum town, administered by aid workers running soup kitchens and handing out charitable donations. But even that temporary solution could not last and the camp is now being broken up, by force, in order to disperse the refugees (Weaver & Walker, 2016).

Hoover and the Great Depression

As President, Herbert Hoover oversaw the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. Photograph: Herbert Hoover by Opus Penguin (License) (Cropped)

Osborne's approach, pulling back the state and public investment and looking to free markets and civil society to step in to the breach, has made him seem like a man more concerned about balancing his chequebook than acting in the face of a crisis. With that image, he risks receiving the same reputation that marred President Hoover during the Great Depression, as a 'do-nothing' (Leuchtenburg, 2009).

It isn't hard to draw comparisons between some key aspects of the approaches of George Osborne and Herbert Hoover. As US Secretary of Commerce, for two administrations between 1921 and 1928, Hoover was a follower of the efficiency movement - pursuing the ridding of inefficiency and waste from the economy (Hawley, 2006).

As when Osborne's Conservatives came to power in 2010 advocating for a 'Big Society' (Rigby, 2016), Hoover believed that the means of achieving his economic aims was 'volunteerism', as opposed to direction from government - trusting to, and nominally supporting, individual initiative, typified by his role as director of American charitable relief efforts in post-war Europe, particularly in Belgium.

His subsequent time as President, from 1929 and 1933, was however overshadowed by the Wall Street Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression that saw the poor of New York living in Central Park in tented encampments - one of many American shanty towns that became known as 'Hooverville'.

Hoover made more effort than previous Presidents to arrest the severe economic downturn, including some public works projects. And then (Gray, 1993), as now (Pidd, 2016), civil society stepped up to provide aid and relief. Yet when the election came, Franklin D Roosevelt won, and with his New Deal coalition led the United States for four terms, with a comprehensive and interventionist plan to support and rebuild.

While Osborne avoided the stigma of the crisis hitting on his watch, he has also avoided intervention. Instead he has cut public spending - saying that the roof must be fixed "while the sun is shining". Amidst years of economic turmoil and cuts to social security, while statistics say homelessness has continued to rise (Gentleman, 2016), its difficult to see an application for his maxim.

The cracks and those slipping through

The advent of these modern day Hooverville encampments suggest that there is an unacceptable break down in the welfare safety nets in Britain, in France and elsewhere in Europe. Not all of this can be put down to the pressures of the refugee crisis. There are cracks appearing and people are slipping through.

Throwing money at suppressing the symptoms is not enough. It won't tackle the core problems. As much as the Conservatives want the focus to be on the public debt, in order to justify their agenda, private debt is just as large of a problem. Individuals are hanging on by their fingernails, stretched thin by the high cost of living.

Housing is prohibitively expensive. The cost of energy needs to come down. Work for the lowest paid is too insecure and the safety net too full of holes. George Osborne doesn't have to become a believer in a big  interventionist state overnight to help. At the very least something might be done with small reforms, aimed at properly regulating the energy and housing industry to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and price gouging.

Above all that, Osborne might benefit from accepting a single simple lesson, one that most austerians should take note of: the bad times inevitably end up costing far more than the good.

Budget 2016 Preview: Will the Chancellor again produce an ace in the hole that lets him to put off unpopular cuts?

George Osborne's Autumn Budget Statement promised the UK a bright future. Osborne took the chance offered by predictions of an economy looking more healthy to be a little less conservative with the national finances and drop controversial cuts to the police budget and to tax credits (ITV, 2015).

This time around Osborne is warning of dark clouds and the need to prepare for the worst (BBC, 2016). The Chancellor has been at pains to stress that there will be cuts in order to meet his fiscal targets. There might be some sugar coatings, but the medicine is still predicted to be sour.

However, the Chancellor will surely be hoping to be able, once again, to defy all expectations and match his Autumn reprieves. Yet those reprieves were themselves only temporary. They could only be delays of self-imposed hard choices that Osborne had undertaken to make.

Theresa May stressed that the police would still be expected to find efficiency savings (Travis, 2015) and the dropping of Tax Credit cuts were a diversion, as they were still set to come in later with the Universal Credit (Kuenssberg, 2015). They were also a gamble.

Osborne's Autumn Statement took positive forecasts as an opportunity to not make the unpopular choices, while still working on closing the deficit - betting on the forecasts panning out and with slight tax increases, around the fringes. Attempts were also made to temporarily ease the way for the middle class with the Conservatives' colourfully branded array of saving and house buying assistance - that buys time for much delayed house building (Wright, 2016) by siphoning homes from housing associations, depended on by the least well off, to increase competition in the private markets.

Wednesday's budget might reasonably be expected, by the opposition, to be the overdue reality check for those who voted Conservative last May, with the implementation of all of the delayed austerity measures. All of Osborne's public comments certainly seem to be preparing the ground for the further cuts - 50p in every £100 of government spending as he put it to Andrew Marr on Sunday (BBC, 2016).

Yet its hard to ever be too sure what the Chancellor is planning. Osborne managed expectations in the Autumn towards his plans for cuts to tax credits (Kuenssberg et al, 2015). Yet when the time came, he still found a way to avoid what would have proven a deeply unpopular cut.

This time around, with so much riding on the EU referendum including his own chances of succeeding Cameron as Conservative leader, Osborne is again unlikely to go antagonising voters if it can be avoided. Yet time is undeniably running out to meet his own deadline for eliminating the deficit (Verity, 2016), and small shifts in forecasts could lead to the need for drastically larger cuts to meet those goals.

Hints being dropped about new policies, to be announced on Wednesday, at the least suggest a wish to dampen the impact of announcing cuts. Yet the proposed new savings top-up scheme for the least well off seems to be little but a thin veneer (Mason, 2016) - as it's only likely to help a sixth of those who are supposed to be eligible, with Labour criticising the policy for its unrealistic appraisal of what people can actually afford to save.

Across the floor, Labour's Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said he wants to see more investment (BBC, 2016{2}) - putting money into building up domestic industry as a way to rebalance the economy. McDonnell's advisors, like Mazzucato and Stiglitz, have certainly been making the argument that the state has a role to play in rebuilding the economy.

It is certainly hard to see a way forward without a lot of investment from somewhere. Osborne's own hope has been for investment in Britain to come from 'emerging markets', like India and particularly China (The Economist, 2015). For these private and foreign state investments to take the slack and pump money into sectors of the UK economy and infrastructure, according to market needs, so that the Chancellor can cut government spending.

Considering that, while defending the European Union, Osborne argued it was the UK, not the EU, that was responsible for the 'red tape' that puts off investment (Bloom, 2016) - and the Chancellor's desire to stimulate these private and foreign state investments - it might not be a long shot to suggest some sort of deregulation will be included in the budget. It would certainly offer some 'efficiency' cuts in terms of reduced bureaucracy.

If George Osborne has an ace up his sleeve, he has yet to let slip what it will be. The implementation of the National Living Wage (a higher minimum wage for over 25s), very limited savings assistance and the regular increase in the Personal Income Tax Allowance (introduced by the Liberal Democrats), do not amount to much of an offset to the expected large departmental cuts.

Will the Chancellor play some hidden card, or will the full weight of his targets finally begin to fall? He doesn't have much room for manoeuvre. His fiscal deadline is approaching, neither deficit nor debt are under control and his own outlook sees global economic struggles. And yet, after so many other sleights of hand, it would be foolish to rule out the possibility of one more gamble.

Autumn Statement: Osborne's spending review takes risks & makes U-turns to dodge political storms - but only in the short term

George Osborne wants to be seen as a builder and as a friend to workers. Lower borrowing costs allow him to cut less this time around and tax rises offer more apprenticeships, yet it all rests on a series of gambles. Photograph: The Chancellor with guests at Port of Tilbury on 1 April 2014 by HM Treasury (License) (Cropped)

This was expected to be an announcement of ever deeper cuts than ever before, with £20bn needed to keep on course with Conservative fiscal targets (Kuenssberg et al, 2015). With George Osborne as Chancellor, however, it was never quite possible to be too sure.

The big unexpected move this time around was the Chancellor's decision to drop the proposed cuts to tax credits (Robinson, 2015). Announcing a better than expected fiscal situation, and saying he had listened to concerns, Osborne said it was easier simply to avoid the changes altogether (Politics Home, 2015).

That was accompanied by the announcement of no cuts to police budgets and the frontloading of NHS funding at £6bn next year (ITV, 2015; Dominiczak, 2015). In sum, these announcements gave the impression of a much less stringent budget, on the back of an Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) assessment that more money would be available, with lower borrowing costs, and so less would need to be cut (Reuben, 2015).

These announcements followed the Osborne's habit from previous budgetary statements and announcements, of pulling out a surprise. And yet, for everything that Osborne hasn't cut, he is still gambling on the market bailing him out later by delivering the OBR's predicted strong economic conditions, rewarding him with higher tax receipts, if he is going to meet his own targets.

If expectations and receipts fall short then cuts will still have to be found later. In fact, the observation has been made that the backdown on tax credit cuts is only a temporary stay, as the cuts will still come with its phasing out to be replaced with the universal credit by 2020 (Kuenssberg, 2015; Eaton, 2015).

Burdens are once again being shifted by the Chancellor. Along with the private debts taken on over the last five years by students, joined now by student nurses (BBC, 2015), there will be caps on housing benefits (Peston, 2015). There was also no relief from the Tampon Tax, with the odd decision to maintain the tax but to use it to fund women's charities (Richards, 2015).

The burdens are also being stacked onto local government and the private sector - with new taxes on business to pay for apprenticeships and local government expected to raise local rates to cover certain services (ITV, 2015{2}; Wintour, 2015).

Full analysis of the line-item details will follow from all corners of the media and political world.

Yet the initial impression is that the Chancellor is once again taking a risk. Osborne is gambling on markets and the broader economy to perform well enough to buy him time and space until the political storms blows over - which allows him to wriggle around on the nose cuts, in favour of less dramatic phased changes.

Cameron & Osborne's long term plan for austerity is now deep into territory even Conservatives are finding hard to accept

David Cameron's long term austerity plan is starting to worry Conservatives, but he and ministers seem to be blissfully unaware of the human impact of cuts upon even working families. Photograph: Prime Minister David Cameron - official photograph by Number 10 (License) (Cropped)

With their defeat in the Lords on Tax Credit cuts, the Conservatives seem to be in a bit of a crisis (Morris & Grice, 2015). While Chancellor George Osborne has assured anyone who will listen that he has found his next round of cuts (BBC, 2015), a massive 30% from departmental budgets to be announced at the spending review, he has faced opposition from his own party.

Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major called for a rethink of the government's approach in light of rising inequality and the impact of policies upon the poorest (Quinn, 2015). There has even been opposition from the Conservative controlled work and pensions select committee.

The members of the select committee argued that cuts are at their limit and urged the Chancellor to take a pause and rethink his priorities (Wintour, 2015). Combined with the Conservative MPs who spoke out against Tax Credit cuts and those that would not back a slackening of Sunday trading laws (Dathan, 2015; Lansdale, 2015) - which led to that proposal being withdrawn (BBC, 2015{2}) - the government is under growing pressure to back down and change direction.

Yet it seems unlikely that, in the long run, David Cameron's Ministry will deviate from its general course. The broadest evidence for that is the Prime Minister's own bafflingly ill-informed letter to Ian Hudspeth, the leader of his native Oxfordshire county council, criticising cuts to services (Monbiot, 2015; Oliver, 2015).

Cameron's apparent ignorance of the depth of impact from his own economic policy is yet another example of the Conservative failure, or refusal, to address the human cost of their policies (Morse, 2015; Stewart & Elliott, 2015). According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the burden of cuts has been falling almost squarely upon those least able to bear it (Hastings et al, 2015).

Essential services like social care are being stretched thin and, as Cameron himself notes, staples of British civil society like libraries and museums have already had their funding cut (The Independent, 2015). And yet, the most well off have been sheltered.

Opposing and mitigating the deeply negative impact of the cuts on citizens requires two things. First, the progressives on the opposition benches have to unite behind broad, common positions. And so, second, moderate Conservatives willing to rebel against government policy can move decisively to check negative plans. It has been seen before over the seven months of this government: only a broad Parliamentary effort can successfully defeat the government's, albeit thin, majority.

As John Major admitted, inequality isn't about skivers or scroungers. It's about those with opportunities and those without them - and that second category is at risk of being flooded with the 'working families' Conservatives have tried to make a staple of their support.

The key for progressives is to make sure concerned Conservatives see how much hurt austerity can and will bring down upon the very people they depend upon for votes in their constituencies - to show them just how toxic it can be to have a lack of compassion and consideration.

Anti-austerity 'Take Back Manchester' event tries to prove that the Left is back in fashion

Billy Bragg plays to the crowd of protesters gathered at the start of the the march, which saw 60,000 people walk the streets of Manchester around the Conservative Party Conference.

The tone was set for several days of People's Assembly 'Take Back Manchester' protests at a day long gig on Saturday, organised by Sam Duckworth at the People's History Museum in Manchester. The event was headlined and closed out by Billy Bragg, who saved a rendition of The Red Flag for his encore - an anthem that Jeremy Corbyn's election seems to have brought back into style (Dearden, 2015).

The 'Take Back Manchester' protests, aimed at bringing the anti-austerity campaign right onto the Conservative doorstep at their autumn conference in Manchester (Pidd, 2015), follow an upsurge in activity after the shock Conservative election win. That surge has been given new energy by the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party (Young, 2015; Kuenssberg, 2015).

Billy Bragg told his audience on Saturday night that he'd been a member of the movement so long, it had become fashionable again. And that's a message that the People's Assembly is keen to impress upon the Conservatives - that the days of austerity are numbered in the face of a resurgent popular democratic Left.

Natalie Bennett addresses the crowds assembled at Castlefields arena at the end of the march.

That message was at the heart of what the speakers had to say to the crowds gathered in the sun at the Castlefields outdoor arena. Natalie Bennett told the crowd that the sun was shining on their movement - in this case figuratively as well as literally, on a beautiful Sunday evening.

Stood on the stage in the sunshine, Charlotte Church told the crowd:

"They can hurl abuse at us and we will fight back. They can scare people into thinking one way, but we can educate people into thinking another. They can claim that protest doesn't work, but we can prove protest has worked, does work and will work for us now."

Owen Jones followed by saying that a broad movement was needed to achieve these things, organised from the bottom up. Mark Serwotka went much further, arguing that the trade unions needed to stand together, as the real opposition to the government, and close to outright called for general strikes.

The emphasis everywhere was on the power of the popular movement and not without good reason. Without the support of a broad social movement, the new campaign for an alternative cannot succeed. The new leader of the Labour Party cannot succeed.

On Saturday, Billy Bragg told the audience that he believed that the last election proved that the times are still in flux. That there is a world to win. But Bragg followed up with a word of caution. He said that the real enemy was cynicism - which needed to be replaced with hope and the belief that victory was possible.

If the People's Assembly and the trade unions are to build a bottom up movement and have a sustained impact, then Jeremy Corbyn - who addresses the Communications Workers' Union this evening in Manchester - will have an important role to play. Whatever lack of loyalty the parliamentary party has offered him as the new leader of the Labour, the wider social and trade union movements have adopted him as their figurehead.

But Corbyn needs to be wary. Alexis Tsipras has shown perils and difficulties of serving the people's idealism within the depressingly pragmatic political mainstream (Cohen, 2015). If Corbyn can be a lightening rod, the focal point and agent of the wider movements, he could be both the coordinator and the public spokesperson for the movements aims.

Yet, ultimately, it will require the sustained attention, energy and engagement of those taking part to overcome the austerity narrative, because a political party alone in the political sphere is not enough (Rogers, 2015). Only a sustained campaign - debating, educating and informing - can change public perceptions and give people a reason to believe in an alternative.

Labour's woes continue as the party splits over welfare cuts - where is their unifying idea?

The Labour Party is in the midst of an identity crisis. Two election defeats seem to have completely sapped the party of self-belief and bold ideas and now the party is divided over the merits of the Tory Chancellor's cuts (Perraudin, 2015).

Labour are struggling to come up with a convincing alternative narrative to the one George Osborne is using to bulldoze his way through the public sector. That struggle is pulling the party apart into distinct factions.

Yet a big internal squabble might actually be, in the end, rejuvenating.

The factions in that fight a pretty familiar. There is the New Labour mainstream - a majority of which seem to be more Brownite than Blairite, following the school of Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband. These are the moderates and modernisers, represented by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper in the leadership race.

To the Right of the mainstream modernisers there is a faction that has gone under several names, Blue Labour and One Nation Labour in particular. This is the wing of the party, represented by Liz Kendall in the leadership race, that wants Labour to embrace working class conservatism, along with the Far-Right themes of anti-immigration and clampdowns on welfare.

It is also clear that there is a small but significant number of Labour MPs, at the moment with Jeremy Corbyn as their ringleader, who are significantly to the Left of the Labour mainstream. They have stood here against welfare cuts here and Corbyn's leadership campaign has firmly embraced the broader anti-austerity movement.

How this division is healed will depend upon a lot of factors, internal and external to the party. But it is a state of affairs that must ultimately be settled. Labour's determination to be a big tent has largely suppressed or alienated voters on the Left, driving many of them away - particularly in Scotland.

If the moderate or Right-wing faction wins out, how much longer will its Left-wing remain bottled? If the Left-wing wins out, will the mainstream fall in line?

In the face of these issues, there are predictions that Labour faces an extended stay in the wilderness (Moss, 2015). One of the few ways back would encompass a major change of direction: embracing the proposed progressive pact in England and embracing electoral reform that can ensure representative government, showing that Labour is finally working to work co-operatively with others on the Left.

Yet for many progressives, who would have been taking hope from Caroline Lucas' progressive alliance proposal (Lucas, 2015), there will have been an ironically collective sigh of despair when Labour's tendency to give in to populism struck again - this time in the form of Harriet Harman (Wintour, 2015):

"We cannot simply say to the public: you were wrong..."

Why not? What exactly is the point of an opposition party, many on the Left will be asking, is if it isn't going to oppose?

If the party are just going to argue for the same policies as the Tories, differing only on who is better equipped to administer them, then are Labour and the Conservatives anything more than two squabbling factions of essentially the same party?

And if the party is just going to be a reflection of popular opinion, then does it even stand for anything? Where is the belief, the ideology, the theory?

That only produces an image of a Labour Party more interested in power than standing for something. It wants to build trust through sycophancy, not through ideas, theory, facts and reason.

While in the US, Bernie Sanders is proposing a push of support for trade unions, worker-owned co-operatives and the living wage (O'Hara, 2015), Labour are getting themselves in a political twist over whether or not to support Conservative cuts to welfare set to have a disastrous effect on the poorest (White, 2015).

Labour's next leader has to find a way to navigate these splits, these contradictions and the party's overall idealistic emptiness (Hawkins, 2015). There are internal rifts to heal and the Centre-Left of the political spectrum filled with alternatives to navigate. The leadership race itself, with its warts and all exposure of the party's factions is a helpful start in the process of reconciliation.

For the external matters, co-operation is surely Labour and the Left's best hope of opposing the Conservatives on big progressive issues like human rights and electoral reform. For the party's internal struggle, the answer can only be found by digging deep. By looking for the roots of what unites Labour supporters of all stripes and all those allied to the socialist and democratic movement.

To, humbly, get the ball rolling, here one word that offers a place to start: Justice.

Liberals have liberty. Greens have sustainability. With these words, and the ideas they represent, they can construct coherent tests for any policy. Labour seem to lost their connection to a simple and fundamental idea that would underwrite social democratic and democratic socialist analysis, and so their ability to construct a meaningful and consistent narrative.

The new leader of the Labour Party, to be announced in September, has to reclaim a unifying idea - like Justice - if they are to lead the party back out of the fractious wilderness.