Words Matter: When far-right groups hide behind masks, it's more important than ever for progressives to be clear what we mean

The rise of neo-Nazi white nationalism in the United States behind its mask, the self-ascribed label 'Alt-Right', exposes a problem that needs to be addressed. When the words we use to describe and define things in politics are obscured or blurred it leaves us vulnerable.

Words matter. They are the medium for communication and even our own thoughts and ideas. When we lose clarity in the definitions of words, we lose the medium for expressing these ideas in the ways that can bring us together in shared understanding, or defining for ourselves what something is and how it might be championed, improved or opposed.

The words people use in politics, to name their parties or their belief systems, can inform or deceive. And it is the norm in politics that these words are heard mostly in an adversarial context, as opponents seek to label and discredit one another. But the words of politics describe discrete positions and it is important that people know what each of them represents.

There-in lies the danger of the rise of the self-proclaimed 'Alt-Right'. When white nationalism tries to hide behind the term 'Alt', it is both a deception and an attack upon the language of progress and reform. It allows them to obscure their true nature while attempting to co-opt the language, and therefore identity and perhaps support, of well-meaning reformers and anti-establishment movements.

This game is not newly invented by them. It has been the primary avenue of conservatism for centuries. As political movements reform themselves, the adherents who stick to the old unreformed tenets find themselves caught in the gravity of conservatism.

For instance, the term liberalism has undergone a long series of changes. As its adherents' understanding of how best to achieve individual liberty has evolved, so to has liberalism undergone changes. But the old ideas don't go away.

And conservatism never misses an opportunity. It consumes these ideas and assimilates them, finding ways to fit parts of these ideologies into its own thinking to convey its own purposes - to protect its system of tradition, hierarchy and moral order.

From the elitist constitutional order of the old bourgeois liberalism, to the free markets of classical liberalism, conservatism has found a home in the liberal parties that didn't reform themselves or conservative parties have taken up the ideas as they have been abandoned by the liberals who did reform.

While the determined consumption and repackaging of liberalism has been much commented on, the same process, happening to democratic movements, has been given much less attention. But it is just as real and just as disconcerting.

Amongst the revolutionaries of 1848, there were democrats as well as liberals. In that broad opposition movement, the failure of the liberal part of was clearly pointed out by Marx and Engels. The bourgeois order was the liberal folly that allowed their movement to be absorbed by the conservative establishment.

The democrats were not immune from folly. Their own folly was nationalism. Their leaders, like Giuseppe Mazzini, looked to nationalism as a medium to unite the people around their common heritage and arose them to protect their interests.

But efforts to achieve popular liberation and sovereignty ended up taking a back seat to petty rivalries over 'national' claims to lands and borders - driving rifts between the Germans and Czechs and Polish; saw the Hungarians, who were fighting to end domination by the Austrians, themselves fought by Romanians and Croatians.

The sectarian ideologies reared their menacing heads. Militarism embedded within the conservative establishment, particularly in Germany, wielded nationalism in the forging of nation-states with grand armies as the martial power in a great game - a competition between nations for self-interested domination.

For conservatism, the bourgeois order provided the administrative tools and nationalism provided the means to shape the popular identity. The follies of liberals and democrats, in quests for power and order, had in the end simply fed the conservative establishment with palatable ideas for assimilation.

This pattern on the part of conservatism has not ceased. Their offshoots in national populism and liberal conservatism, and those movements containing both - like the co-opted Republican Party in the United States - continue to play these language games with an eye for opportunity.

Progressives of all stripes, liberal or democrat, need to be wary of this. They need to take great care over their words and ideas, and never be willing to simply give up our words - and everything that comes with them - to conservatism.

American conservatism has co-opted the centrist concept of the republic. European conservatism has co-opted the liberal concept of individual liberty. The far-right everywhere co-opted the democratic-socialist concept of social justice. Now, white nationalist sectarianism wants to present itself as 'the alternative'.

But, as with parties like UKIP and Front National, these parties of the far-right pitching themselves as 'liberators' are really the ultra-establishment forces, disguising themselves in the garments of the anti-establishment movements of the turn of the millennium. They claim words like 'Alt' and pitch themselves as the conservative rebel to the liberal-socialist tyrant because it suits them in this moment.

Progressives cannot keep giving ground. They cannot lightly allow words to be taken as new disguises or fresh ammunition for conservative movements - movements that promise liberation but will deliver only the conservative triumph: tradition over reason, moral order over sound ethics, hierarchy over equality.

US Presidential Election 2016: Alexander Hamilton said it had fallen to America to prove citizens capable of unselfish government that served the public good

Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father of the United States and the chief champion of its constitution. Image: Alexander Hamilton from Marion Doss (License) (Cropped)

In The Federalist No.1, arguing for the ratification of America's then brand new constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote that:

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

Hamilton drew up an image of a grave responsibility having fallen upon America, as the symbol and example of citizen government, to prove that government by consent, by reason and by dispassionate and sound judgement was something of which ordinary people - once removed from the compulsions of force or fear or hierarchical and servial duties - were capable.

But Hamilton also warned of the prejudicial interests which the new Constitution must overcome to pursue that ideal. Not least the "perverted ambition" of those who seek to "flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation" or "aggrandise themselves by the confusions of their country".

Sound like anyone?

Donald Trump has, at every turn, taken the path of division and self-aggrandisement. At every turn he has taken the low road, driving wedges into the heart of the country to exploit fear, disenfranchisement and confusion.

As much as the citizens of the United States likes to see their country as something that stands apart, it has nonetheless remained on trend. The rise of the language of far right politics - sectarian, intolerant - is not unique to America. It is feeding on desperation and hopelessness wherever it can find it.

Around the world, opportunistic individuals are stoking confusion to aggrandise themselves and pursue perverted ambitions at the expense of the public good. Trump is part of that: someone who will use the people while they're useful, only to drop them and persecute them the moment they're not.

At the Presidential Election, and at the many Senate and Congressional and other elections happening this week, America faces a stark choice - almost nowhere else in the Western world has two-party politics so deeply embedded itself.

On the one hand, the Republican Party has been consumed by its own folly. Trump is just the vile symptom of a deeper sickness - the boil than alerts us to the plague hidden within. Intolerance and sectarianism were seized upon as electoral tools in the Sixties and the price is now come due: to be overthrown and subsumed beneath an egotistical populist.

For progressives, the failures of the Democrats are different. They are the product of compromise, of playing within the system, of trying to achieve gradual reform from the inside - that has left them tainted by association with those they have had to work with to build consensus.

Hillary Rodham Clinton symbolises those compromises to many on the Left, and beyond, perhaps more than any other Democrat. A life long career of those compromises have also made her perhaps the most qualified Presidential candidate in history.

That is the upside and down of trying to get things done from the inside: there is a cost to claims of being a reformer when you have been part of the establishment for so long. If a person spends long enough in the political arena, it becomes hard to see for what they actually.

But that is where the people come in: the activists, the radicals, the social reformers, ordinary citizens in thousands of constituencies. As Laurie Penny argues, those who want radical change always see those in power as an enemy and Hillary Clinton is the enemy she has wanted all her life.

Clinton is a centrist, a moderate, a woman, a political insider with a lifetime of experience: a graduate of Yale; a consistent campaigner for healthcare reform, achieving successes for children and reservists; as First Lady, she spoke in China to tell the world that Women's Rights were Human Rights; she built an international consensus to pull Iran in from the cold; and her name is cited as a leading campaigner for numerous reforming policies - like equal pay and care for 9/11 first responders.

For progressives, with narrow but stark options, voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election is a vote for the public good. In his own time, Alexander Hamilton stood opposed to the political fortunes of Aaron Burr, because he believed him to serve no interest but his own. Between the pragmatic public servant and the self-serving egotist, there is no debate as to who the arch-Federalist Hamilton would have supported between Clinton and Trump. As Hamilton argued:

"Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good."

But it doesn't stop there. One person alone does not make the future. No President, no leader, of no country, not even America, wields that kind of power. That is the work of movements. Progressives must find theirs and with it their voice. Remember: politics doesn't end with an election.

Vote Hillary, but don't do so expecting that you can just leave everything in her lap. Hillary Rodham Clinton is not a perfect candidate. No candidate is. She is human and flawed. So progressives voters must be prepared to hold her to account, to provide scrutiny and be critical, prepared to demand excellence at every turn.

Around the World: The Trump Insurgency

Donald Trump chose the Republican Elephant as the mount for his insurgent populist campaign that has ridden the divisive politics of the far-right deep into the American political system.

With the two main parties having settled - which might be an almost too painfully apt expression - on their respective candidates, it is now established who will stand, and for what they will stand, in the 2016 US Presidential Election.

Hillary Clinton will face Donald Trump - but only on the surface will it be a contest between Democrat and Republican. Beneath the party façade the Presidential race reflects a struggle that is a clear pattern emerging across the Western world, seen clearly in most of the recent elections in Europe, between the mistrusted mainstream and a Far Right insurgency.

Whether it was the Brexit referendum or the French regional elections, in this time of crisis progressives have found themselves having to wrestle with a difficult proposition: whether to oppose an imperfect mainstream at the risk of inviting in the Far Right, or to stand with the hated establishment, itself struggling for legitimacy against authoritarianism and sectarianism.

In the US, Bernie Sanders and his supporters tried to capture control of the mainstream Democrats so that the Left might lead from the front. Having failed, they're now left struggling with what to do in the face of Trump's mirrored insurgency succeeding in its capture of the rival Republicans. Despite Sanders' endorsement of Hillary, many of his supporters remain unconvinced.

Trump's insurgency has increased the sense of urgency, if not yet panic, across the Centre and Left. With no hint of irony, despite the hyperbole, even moderate commentators are expressing genuine fears for the future of American democracy (Finchelstein, 2016; Noah, 2016; Collier, 2016) - perhaps a part of which is an attempt to motivate the Left to fall in behind Hillary by stressing the seriousness of the fight ahead.

Political sensibility suggests that moderacy will ultimately win out - that Trump will eventually, whatever his rhetoric, have to bow to political realism. But that sensibility is cold comfort.

The most dangerous thing Trump has done is to force the coalescence of a constituency, previously scattered and with no common identity, that is persuaded by and supportive of authoritarian values (Taub, 2016). Trump himself, whatever his reactionary verbiage, is less of a concern than what this organised political movement, given common identity, might yet be used to accomplish.

The Republicans, the Grand Old Party (GOP), had already been through the long slow process, from Lincoln's time onwards, of coming under conservative control. But since the 1960s, conservatives have decisively consolidated their control over the party - including inviting the influx of Southern Democrats spurned by the embrace of the civil rights movement by the Democrats.

The consolidation definitively moved the GOP away from the Republicanism of Lincoln toward something more resembling the Republicanism of Jefferson - a parochial populist anti-establishment, or rather anti-elite, politics, with a strict and restrictive adherence to the constitution. Recent decades saw that combined with a sectarian Nativism and a politicised Evangelism.

What Trump has now rallied about the Republican Party is support for a popular authoritarianism able to cut across the distinctions, separating members of the coalition headed 'Republican', with a methodology: signified by a language that is brash, abrasive and often violent.

It is not surprising in the face of Trump's rhetoric that people have drawn connections between him and fascism. The theme of violence against others, against opponents, violence and conflict as decisive social positives, was a crucial tenet of fascism and has been inherited by its more 'democratic' successor populism (Finchelstein, 2016).

The Left and Centre getting behind the mainstream to oppose the rise of these violent ideologies is only the first step. Defeating it at one election is not the end of the matter. It does not address the reasons why people would seek out an abrasive, anti-establishment, anti-elite, strongman leader in the first place. The concerns of those voters must be understood, contextualised and addressed with positive solutions.

The angry, authoritarian-supporting, voters who would back a man like Donald Trump are not the enemies of progressives. For the most part they're victims of economic conditions, looking with misguided hope to strength and might for deliverance. The job of progressives is to extend a hand, show a better way to build a society and to expose the Far-Right programme for the fraud it is.

Spain shows us that to break old status quo and make proportional representation work, we need to outgrow adversarial politics

The Palacio de las Cortes in Madrid, home to the currently implacably divided Congress of Deputies. Photograph: Congress from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

In twenty three days, Spain will go to the polls for its second election in just six months. Its first saw the seats in congress divided between Left and Right in such a way as to make forming a government unlikely (Tremlett, 2016).

Therein lies the challenge of proportional representation. While each political party may be able to make its ideas and its membership more homogeneous, there ultimately remains the need to be able to work amicably with those holding other such 'purified' stances.

Over the last five to ten years, Spain's has seen it political mainstream collapse. New parties of Citizen movements have sprung up, and through the proportional electoral system have found themselves to be collectively a third force, along with the regionalist parties, that must enthrone a new government.

Yet they have found an old social democratic Left, that might make the more tolerable ally, weakened and shrunken and the old conservatives the intolerable but only realistic option. The numbers did not add up and a new election awaits.

In the UK, voices on the Left and Right have considered how the break up of the present political alignment, itself an incoherent and inconsistent series of alliances, might be redrawn with more coherency.

Tim Montgomerie has envisioned Westminster's political parties rearranged into parties for Solidarity (essentially Democrats), Liberals, Nationals (Conservative Christian Democrats) and a party of the Far Right (Montgomerie, 2016). And Owen Jones has argued that Labour's internal strife may not be curable, with a split into more coherent groups inevitable and ultimately desirable (Jones, 2016).

Spain reveals that this is only the first step. In their incomplete breakdown of two party politics, the adversarial division remain. The old grievances are clung to as a marker of identity. The next step has to be maturity.

If the future of British politics splits the establishment in four parties then at least two will have to work together to form a government - and it may not always be the ideal two. That will require the parties to compromise and cooperate, and to find a way to do so without feeling their identity is threatened.

The attitude of the Labour supporters or Trade Unionists who hissed BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg does not suggest a group of people ready to swap the UK's archaic adversarial politics for a system based on tolerances and compromise (Cowburn, 2016). Neither does the unbearable and vicious braying of the Tory parliamentarians every Wednesday at PMQs.

For the Left, finding a way beyond this confrontational, intolerant state is essential. Achieving progressive aims is only becoming less and less likely to be achievable through the medium of one, monolithic, party.

An alliance of progressives, of different strands, each on their own coherent - trade unionism, eco-socialism, democratic socialism, liberalism, social democracy and other various shades of centrism - requires those on the Left to find common aims, and to work amicably together with other progressives, while tolerating fundamental differences in ultimate priorities.

The introduction of proportional representation and seeing the old establishment parties split can only do so much to improve politics. Without the spirit of cooperation, without outgrowing adversarial divisions, we risk falling back into the same divisive patterns.

Road to Super Tuesday: The US Presidential Primaries have so far been a tale of outsiders rocking the establishment

Texas, with the most delegates, will be the key battleground come Super Tuesday. Photograph: Texas State Capitol in Austin from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Tuesday 1st of March marks a key moment in the long and winding US Presidential election. So-called Super Tuesday will see more than ten states, including key state Texas, declare their choices for Democratic and Republican candidates for the Presidency (Weiland, 2016).

Going into Super Tuesday, the primaries for both parties are much closer than previously predicted. The tight races are largely thanks to their being contested by the outsider candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, who are upsetting prior expectations and putting the old two-party system to the sword.

The 2016 US Presidential race was supposed to be a straight race between two clear favourites - one from each party. From amongst the Democrats there was Hillary Clinton, while from the Republicans there was Jeb Bush.

Hillary was a former First Lady, as wife of Bill, and in her own right Secretary of State and a long time Senator. Jeb is the son of one President and the Brother of another, with executive experience as Governor of Florida. The rest appeared to be a formality.

Contrary to first impressions, however, the supporters of neither party where in the mood for a coronation. There were, from the first, insurgent candidacies, but they were paid little heed and given long odds.

Commentary watching the Republican nomination race, in particular, found something between fascination and amusement in how long the list of candidates for the GOP nomination was becoming (Gabbatt, 2015). Where analysis fell on the respective lists in depth, some where given more credibility than others.

Early runner Scott Walker was one such candidate. The Governor of Wisconsin has a controversial record that has proven popular with fiscal conservatives in the GOP (Pilkington & Sullivan, 2015) - including spending cuts and confrontations with unions.

Walker's run for the Republican Party nomination certainly made a lot of sense. As one part of a Wisconsin trio, along with GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and GOP Party Chairman Reince Priebus, that are trying to set the agenda for the modern Republican Party (Balz, 2011; Healy & Martin; 2015).

The Democrat's version was Martin O'Malley - who was famously the inspiration for the Baltimore-based TV show The Wire. O'Malley entered as the third runner alongside, and 'moderate' alternative to, democratic socialist Sanders and the scandal mired Clinton, clearly hoping to be seen as someone more acceptable to a broader middle ground of voters (Tabor, 2015).

However, all bets were upset by Trump and Sanders.

There is little to be said about Donald Trump from a progressive view, other than to note the apparent popularity of his brand of being offensive to people from almost every demographic group.

Bernie Sanders started the Democratic race with isolated support in only a few Northeastern states and lay nearly 60 points behind Clinton (Daily Kos, 2015). Yet by the Nevada caucus the Vermont Senator was just 5 points adrift (Lewis et al, 2016).

Yet both outside runners still face barriers beyond the Democratic-Republican establishment itself.

Trump's divisive message has kept him stuck in the mid 30s in the percentage polls - although in Nevada on Saturday he did break the 40% barrier (The Guardian, 2016). Meanwhile the more 'mainstream' candidates have together pulled in over 50% over numerous polls.

Coming from almost the opposite direction, Sanders has struggled to get his message out beyond his core of young and working class voters. South Carolina showed this with abundant clarity as Hillary Clinton won 74% of the vote and overwhelmingly with voters who were not white (Walsh, 2016). Clinton, backed overwhelming by the party elite, has campaigned smartly and is so far holding back the rising popular tide.

Regardless of the barriers in their way, the outsiders have none-the-less shaken up the establishment.

This is demonstrated most clearly in the Republican race where mainstream favourite Jeb Bush's campaign ended in complete failure in South Carolina (BBC, 2016), when he dropped out with little to show for millions in fundraising. Marco Rubio, the next to be annointed by the GOP mainstream, inherits a deficit to Trump that it will take huge momentum to overhaul (Stokols & Palmer, 2016).

Super Tuesday will give the first major indications of whether the insurgent candidacies will have the momentum to topple their respective party establishments. Even if the party elite see off the challengers, there doesn't seem to be a positive outcome likely for them.

At best for the Democratic-Republican establishment, it will likely see off a strong opposition run only to be fatally undermined. As seen elsewhere, like in France, the mainstream will limp on hounded by outside forces that sense weakness and opportunity. At worst, the two-party system that has governed the US will not have been broken apart, but rather hacked and hijacked.

Iowa Caucus: How did the establishment Democratic-Republican system lose control of the 2016 US presidential election?

Abraham Lincoln was the first President from the Republican Party. A liberal and a centrist, whose party believed in civic responsibility, individualism and a liberal reading of the constitution. Photograph: Statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

The Iowa Caucus, tonight, will mark the true beginning of the 2016 US Presidential Race as the point at which there will finally be some real data. So far the Presidential campaign has been a strange and controversial affair, with much to be set straight by the nominations process in Iowa.

On the Democratic side, there is now a two-way race where the nomination had looked like being little more than a formal hurdle for Hillary Clinton  (Jacobs, 2015). That was until Bernie Sanders, Senator for Vermont and a self-described democratic socialist, entered the race.

Quietly at first, starting some fifty or sixty percentage points behind Clinton, Sander's campaign has gathered momentum as thousands have turned out to hear him speak (Roberts, 2015; Roberts, 2015{2}). While support for Sanders - beyond a few high-polling constituencies - has been doubted, he has nonetheless been developing into the Democrat's anti-establishment candidate (Silver, 2015; Karp, 2016).

On the Republican side, they too are experiencing an anti-establishment insurgency. With an initial list of more than a dozen candidates, the process of holding debates was complicated enough (Gabbatt, 2015). Yet Donald Trump's candidacy quickly turned the nomination race into something not far short of a farce.

The potential candidates have struggled for air time, even split across two debates in the shape of an undercard and a main contest (Taylor, 2015). As the so-called moderates have struggled, Trump has stood out as the loudest and clearest candidate - even if he has been repulsive and offensive (Lewis, 2015).

Trump represents the toxic stew that the Republican Party has become, with the extreme Religious Right seeming less offensive by comparison with Trump. So deeply have the Republicans become embroiled in acquiescing to their own loudest and most deeply partisan supporters that, as put by one of the early establishment favourites Jeb Bush, it might almost be necessary for a Republican to lose in the primaries in order to win the general election (Mishak, 2015).

For both parties, insurgent figures are upsetting what was supposed to be a slick machine. Yet the fact that the United States' Democratic-Republican establishment is so deeply ingrained into the fabric of the political system, as to be virtually unshakeable, seems to have invited this situation.

Various movements, unable to muscle in alongside those two elder statesmen, seem intent on seizing control of those parties themselves first as an entry point. The big question is, what opened the establishment's back door in the first place?

The Party of Lincoln

Photograph: Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

From its founding, the Republican Party dominated American politics, right up until the New Deal coalitions of the 1930s. For most of that period Lincoln's party, in European terms, where Liberals. They stood for individualism, free markets, a constitutionalist stance consistent with the liberal belief in the rule of law, public education and were brought together as abolitionists, wishing to bring an end to slavery (Wheare, 1948). They also carried an interest in state action in the form of tariffs and public investment, inherited from their Federalists and Whig predecessors.

As a result, their members and supporters were a diverse group. From African-Americans, both free and liberated, to businessmen, small business owners and factory workers, to the white working class (Cornwell, 2016) - of a number of backgrounds including protestants and Germans who had come to the United States following the defeat of the radicals, republicans, suffragists and revolutionaries in Europe's Springtime of the Peoples uprising in 1848 (Rapport, 2008).

But the party of Abraham Lincoln were also centrists. Lincoln in particular believed deeply in civic virtues. His party leadership and Presidency were typical of those values, as he sought balance and compromise between progressive and conservative positions, between the popular will and individual rights, in order to hold together his party's divergent factions - ranging from radical abolitionists to constitutional conservatives.

Yet when Lincoln was murdered, only ten years after the founding of the party, the equilibrium was lost. The radicals sought to punish the South and pressed on with reconstruction, enforced by the military, while the conservatives sought a swift reconciliation. That internal divide came to an end with the diminishment of the radical faction due to corruption, splits, an economic depression and a disputed election that led to a tawdry compromise - ending reconstruction and abandoning the South, along with many freed former slaves.

The party then settled down to supporting business with high tariffs, encouragement for industrialisation and modernisation and investment in infrastructure like railroads. Yet the party was never far from the latest row between progressive and conservative factions - such as on prohibition, which drove less pietist Protestants out of the party, or Theodore Roosevelt leaving to found the Progressive Party, which proposed forward-thinking reforms like women's suffrage and comprehensive social security.

The New Deal Coalition

What must have seemed like a clear run to the Presidency, has become for Hillary Clinton a complicated game of placating popular discontent from her position within the establishment. Photograph: Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at UW-Milwaukee by WisPolitics (License) (Cropped)

The Great Depression brought the era of Republican dominance to an end. It also signalled the beginning of a dramatic shift for the Democrats. Over the next thirty years the party would go from being dominated by deeply conservative, nationalist and sectarian - to outright segregationist - forces in the South, to the new home for all progressives, from liberals and centrists to social democrats and trade unionists.

In order to provide a positive and interventionist response to the Great Depression, Franklin D Roosevelt assembled a grand coalition that combined the Democrats' core support - white, southern and conservative and including many extreme nationalists, with whom the New Deal did not rest easily (The Economist, 2013) - with many groups. At the heart of it all, though, where the working class (The Economist, 2011).

Roosevelt, by reaching across political boundaries, started a shift that opened up the possibility of the Democrats reaching new voters which broke the party out of their dependence upon their narrow conservative base (Jenkins, 2003). That in turn would make the Civil Rights Act feasible, as the Democrats could afford to alienate and effectively cast out the toxic political support of the white, racist, Southern Democrats.

Embracing the role of a progressive party is, however, not without its drawbacks. It comes with high expectations. And like elsewhere in the world, mainstream progressives, like the social democrats in Europe, have often faced criticism for being too tight with the establishment and too slow to bring about reform.

While part of that is surely the logjam that is the American political establishment, there is plenty of legitimate criticism of the Democrat's failure to argue for a better alternative for America (Jones, 2016). Those disappointments lead to disaffection, which can lead to anti-establishment movements.

As a big tent, with little alternative for those seeking change, all of those hopes and all of that energy is funnelled through the Democratic Party. So when a candidate like Bernie Sanders emerges to give those frustrations a candidate and a voice, the traditional party hierarchy has to start trembling - as happened with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour Party leadership, where the establishment backed candidates struggled to inspire with their calls for practical politics in the face of a hopeful and optimistic message from an insurgent candidate to enthused supporters.

Much as Corbyn's opposition were seen as the heirs of the New Labour establishment, Hillary Clinton, as the partner of a former President, a long time Senator and Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, is undoubtedly - despite being a woman - seen as a member of the establishment (The Guardian, 2016). Finding a way over that hurdle will likely come to dominate her Presidential campaign.

The Southern Strategy

The struggling campaign of the so-called moderate Jeb Bush is symptomatic of a Republican Party hijacked by narrow, hard right interests. Photograph: Former Governor Jeb Bush speaking with supporters at a town hall meeting at the FFA Enrichment Center in Ankeny, Iowa by Gage Skidmore (License) (Cropped)

The success of the Democrats in shaking off, with affirmative action, the chain around their necks that was a history of association with slavery, segregation and the suppression of rights, would become the roots of the problems for the Republicans today.

Seeking short term political advantage, the Republicans sought to appeal to those voters and interests who felt they had been abandoned by the Democrats over the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Nichols, 2014). The Republicans isolated, alienated and drove out most of their remaining liberals to open themselves up to be the party of reaction.

That move has, after a century of the conservative faction attempting to assert its control, instead left the Republican Party as little more than a hollowed out shell. When the Republicans sought to pander to extreme, southern Christian Nationalists, welcoming them into the party in leadership positions, they killed off what little was left of the legacy of the Party of Lincoln.

Conservatives, in their short sighted pursuit of electoral gains, allowed the Religious Right, Christian Nationalists, to hijack the party in the long term, using the party's credibility and colours to promote their extreme causes. That extremism has begotten extremism, stoking up anger and division - only for candidates to then have to satisfy it later for the right to stay in office - driving the party ever further to the Right (Frum, 2011).

The result has been moderates, who are not really that moderate, struggling to even get a hearing at debates. Jeb Bush, for example. His immigration policy has shades of his moderate father's call to bring people out of the shadows, to stop making it illegal for decent people to work hard within the law or to have their children educated (Bush & Bolick, 2013; Lee, 2015).

But so-called moderates like Bush, or Marco Rubio, are outflanked and forced into a race to the bottom by candidates like Ted Cruz, a member of the Religious Right who has called for a bombardment of the Middle East (The Economist, 2016), or Carly Fiorina, who with no political experience and a questioned business acumen has compared herself to Margaret Thatcher (Lewis, 2015). All this does is force Republican candidates to put the narrow interests of party before the broader ones of the country.

That approach didn't work for Mitt Romney. As Barack Obama's challenger in the re-election year of 2012, Romney won soundly amongst the conservative and Evangelical Christian base of the modern Republican Party (Rove, 2015). Yet his narrow focus on helping the wealthy over the rest, his focus upon the party base over the country, dropped him short of the line (Scheiber, 2012).

The 2016 Election

Bernie Sanders is the heir of the Democrat's shift to embrace progressive politics through the 1930s and 1960s, and of modern progressive discontent with the establishment. Photograph: Bernie Sanders speaking at Hec Edmundson Pavillion in Seattle by Tiffany Von Arnim (License) (Cropped)

The Republican Party have turned a long way from the civic republicanism of their origins and it has helped fan political extremism - which looks likely to leave the established order in American politics weak and threatened. Not least from Donald Trump who looks likely to leave the Republican Party in the dirt just soon as he's done with them, having levered the party apart in the process.

In the Democrat camp, Clinton is hard pressed by the popular support for Bernie Sanders. Sanders is the only candidate in the race standing for a truly progressive alternative, earnestly wanting to create a more just, more equal America, in a country which is not open to such ideas. That is worthy of tremendous admiration. Yet it will also no doubt frighten the hard right.

For Clinton to top the polls in Iowa would be business as usual, crisis averted for the establishment. Likewise if a moderate candidate is able to step up for the Republicans. For a progressive alternative to break through the establishment, and get past hard right partisanship, would be a tough ask. As elsewhere around the world, the Presidential race looks like ultimately being a struggle between the establishment and an insurgent far right.

The Alternative Year: Five stories that defined UK & European politics in 2015

To round out a very eventful year in European politics, here's a review of the big stories - as covered here on The Alternative. We'll be back in January 2016 with more articles that look behind the political curtain to put policies in their proper contexts, to lay bare the ideologies and the theories, and to try and find the progressive alternatives.

The Radical Left Breakthrough

Alexis Tsipras and Syriza's offer of a united social front saw the first major breakthrough for the Radical Left. Photograph: Ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ-ΕΚΜ για την παραγωγική ανασυγκρότηση της Θράκης by Joanna (License) (Cropped)

In January, candidates of the anti-austerity, Radical Left party Syriza were elected to 149 of 300 seats in the Parliament of Greece in a huge upset. Having made clear their opposition to the economic establishment, party leader and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, along with Finance Minister and Economist Yanis Varoufakis, provided a further shock by proceeding to sit down and negotiate bailout deals with the much despised troika - the IMF, the European Bank and the European Commission. Their choice raised big questions about the value of working within the European system in order to reform it.

It wouldn't be the Syriza leader's only decision to raise a few eyebrows. In the Summer, as the crisis in Greece grew worse and negotiations came to a head, Tsipras announced a referendum on whether to accept the austerity-imposing bailout terms that Greece had been offered. In a comprehensive turnout, the people of Greece voted No. Tsipras then agreed to the terms of the deal anyway. That decision has been interpreted a number of ways - some not particularly kindly - but the most positive interpretations might be that it was intended as a powerful show of dissent in the act of accepting coerced conformity.

Yet Tsipras wasn't finished. Accepting the deal and passing it through Parliament led to a rebellion, and breakaway, by Syriza's Left faction, leaving the party's position perilous. So the Greek PM stunned the world again by resigning and calling an election, looking for a mandate to implement the deal he had negotiated. Despite opposition, he swept back into office with 149 of 300 seats once more, but this time with a more compact party, shorn of its rebellious elements. However, the Syriza leader's pragmatic approach has drawn criticism - particularly for his repeated use of popular votes on major issues.

With two elections and a referendum, in all of which he was victorious, its hard to believe that all of this has only been Alexis Tsipras first year as Prime Minister. It wouldn't be a surprise if he, and the citizens of Greece, would like his second to at least begin a little less eventful.

'Syriza's negotiation with European Leaders is a reminder that we need to take Europe back, not abandon it'; in The Alternative; 16 February 2015.

'The referendum in Greece is asking a deeper question about dissent: do we have to conform in order to belong?'; in The Alternative; 5 July 2015.

'Tsipras' repeat use of popular votes raises questions about radical democracy and his approach of 'pragmatic radicalism''; in The Alternative; 24 August 2015.

'Tsipras has his governing mandate, but weariness and disaffection dominate the mood and demand a positive response'; in The Alternative; 21 September 2015.

The Bad Night for Progressives

Ed Miliband gives his first keynote speech to Labour Party conference as leader, in September 2010. He would contest just one election as leader. Photograph: At Labour Party Conference in Manchester (License) (Cropped)

Spring brought the UK general election campaign, which was heralded as the build up to the closest election in modern UK history. Labour and the Conservatives were tough to separate on most issues, although that didn't stop the Liberal Democrats from taking the inexplicable decision to pitch themselves as the party of equidistance between them. Early polling and debates suggested it might be a strong showing for the Left in terms of the popular vote. Yet concerns remained about how the first-past-the-post system might distort the result.

The reality on the day was a nightmare for progressives. The polls had been way off. The Labour Party failed to make up any ground, losing dozens of seats to the SNP in Scotland. The Liberal Democrats collapsed to just eight seats, losing stalwart MPs like Charles Kennedy, Vince Cable and Simon Hughes and important former Ministers like Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson. Nor did the Greens didn't manage to make their big breakthrough. And, above all, the Conservatives picked up the advantage in every key constituency in England.

Especially after the polls had suggested a close contest, the emergence of a Conservative majority was traumatising. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrat leaders resigned. The resulting Labour leadership was to produce one of the more surprising stories of the year - from which the party has still not resettled.

'Election 2015: A Shorthand Guide to the 2015 UK General Election'; in The Alternative; 6 April 2015.

'Election 2015: Seven-way debate sees the Left outnumber the Right to talk about ideals, fairness and being open to the world'; in The Alternative; 2 April 2015.

'Election 2015: The BBC's opposition leaders debate sees Farage cornered by the Left and lash out at the audience'; in The Alternative; 16 April 2015.

'Election 2015: A bad night for progressives. What now for the Left?'; in The Alternative; 8 May 2015.

The Conservative Assault on Human Rights

Lady Justice standing atop the Old Bailey courthouse in central London.

No sooner had David Cameron moved back into 10 Downing Street, than the Conservative Government had begun to come under fire - even from members of their own party. Campaign groups and MPs alike were incensed by proposals from the Conservative government to reintroduce illiberal policies, previously blocked by Liberal Democrats under the Coalition.

With, plans to do away with the Human Rights Act where soon joined by plans to reintroduce the Snooper's Charter there were people already announcing how much they missed the influence of the Lib Dems. But the Conservatives where far from done. In the midst of the refugee crisis, where local communities where pulling together with an internationalist and humanitarian spirit to support those driven from their homes, the Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised for using dangerous and dehumanising language to refer to refugees.

The lack of respect for human rights, combined with domestic policies that pursued further austerity and slashed into fundamental parts of the welfare state, designed to provide the most basic humanitarian support, earned Cameron's ministry the ire of the opposition. However, Britain's unrepresentative voting system had awarded his party a majority and the opposition to his government was weak, divided and scattered. The question became: how would popular discontent express itself?

'Scrapping the Human Rights Act removes the safeguards that protect individuals from the arbitrary power of the state'; in The Alternative; 14 May 2015.

'Conservative Queen's Speech offers some relief to Human Rights campaigners, but also holds new threats to civil liberties'; in The Alternative; 27 May 2015.

'Local and provincial communities are showing the chief internationalist value of empathy in the face of the refugee crisis'; in The Alternative; 13 July 2015.

'Humanitarian government is under attack and progressive opposition can no longer afford to be weak, scattered and resigned'; in The Alternative; 27 August 2015.

The Corbyn Momentum

The new Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn addresses a thousand people in Manchester Cathedral, while several thousand more assemble outside. The speech capped a weekend of protest outside the Tory Party Conference.

Jeremy Corbyn entered the Labour leadership race as the complete outsider, pushed forward to at least give a token place in the debate to the party's Left-wing faction. What the Labour Party establishment did not count on was a huge groundswell of popular support for the 66 year old Islington MP. Membership of the party increased drastically as Corbyn's campaign gained traction, with Left-wingers old and new returned to the Labour Party after years in the wilderness. Even so, it was still thought that the Right-leaning establishment would still have the final word. But Corbyn's momentum couldn't be halted.

The final result was a landslide victory for Jeremy Corbyn, in every voter category. However, it appeared that winning the leadership would be the easy bit. Corbyn came under attack from the beginning, on everything from whether he bows sufficiently to whether he sings the national anthem. Even his own party has been restless, with the MPs in Labour's Parliamentary Party feeling rebellious under what they believed to be a disastrous Left-wing leader they felt had been forced upon them by the membership, the trade unions and constituency organisations.

At a long weekend in Manchester, in parallel with the Tory Party Conference, the energy that Corbyn's election had injected into the Left was tangible. A rally in the sunshine at Castlefields Arena, at the end of a weekend of concerts, talks and marches - drawing figures from across the anti-austerity movement - was the peak. But the weekend has one more moment to offer. At Manchester Cathedral, trade union leaders and progressive voices spoke to a packed house. But they where only the warm up act.

Ten thousand people, a thousand of them crammed inside with the rest gathered about an impromptu stage outside, had gathered to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak. Regardless where your progressive sympathies lie, it is hard not to be enthused about so large a spontaneous audience gathering to listen to a mild mannered figure call for a politics with a renewed social conscience.

'Corbyn has brought idealism to the campaign, but needs to show how public ownership can further the pursuit of a just, inclusive and power-devolving society'; in The Alternative; 6 August 2015.

'Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership election in a revolution of party members overthrowing the party establishment'; in The Alternative; 12 September 2015.

'Anti-austerity 'Take Back Manchester' event tries to prove that the Left is back in fashion'; in The Alternative; 5 October 2015.

'"We don't pass by" - Jeremy Corbyn lays foundations for compassionate narrative based on renewing belief in public service'; in The Alternative; 6 October 2015.

The Autumn Election Season

Justin Trudeau led the Liberals back from their worst ever result to a upset landslide majority. Photograph: Toronto Centre Campaign Office Opening with Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau by Joseph Morris (License) (Cropped)

Elections on either side of the Atlantic in the Autumn served to highlight some differences in the political mood. In Canada, Justin Trudeau's Liberals won out in a multi-party contest between three moderate parties. Meanwhile in Argentina, a broad centrist coalition led by neoliberal Mauricio Macri replaced outgoing President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's Peronist, popular nationalist, Justicialist Party.

By contrast, populist and Far-Right parties had sprung up once more in Europe. In Poland, the Left was swept away and even progressive liberalism was struggling under a Right-wing, conservative tide. Further elections in France and Spain confirmed that, in Europe, the political mainstream was suffering a substantial decline. In France, the establishment managed hold off Front National through tactical voting, while in Spain the more proportional voting system allowed for a plural, indecisive, multi-party result - bringing Spain's two-party system to an end and which may prove difficult terrain from which to create a government.

What, at least, did seem to be confirmed on both sides of the Atlantic was the weakness of two-party systems and their distorting effect upon pluralistic societies. In Canada, Trudeau's party won a majority in a shift that only seemed to take place in the final week, as either/or decisions forced voters to choose between worst case scenarios.

Above all, however, these elections all made clear just how much work is necessary to build a progressive politics and just how easily popular conservatism can tear it all down. In France particularly - where the established parties looked weak and discredited - the danger of failing to engage, educate and inspire people with progressive ideals, to build a progressive civic space with a bridge to humanitarian institutions, was brought into sharp focus. 'Winning' on a technical level alone isn't enough.

'Shift in Canadian federal election from three party race to two party polemic shows importance of electoral reform in ensuring a truly representative politics'; in The Alternative; 19 October 2015.

'What can progressives learn from elections around the world?'; in The Alternative; 26 October 2015.

'When the Centre is discredited only the Right benefits - the Left has no shortcuts, it has to build and engage to move forward'; in The Alternative; 13 December 2015.

'The 'new politics' is being put to the test in Spain, where Podemos hopes to show that Syriza was not an anomaly'; in The Alternative; 20 December 2015.

The Lessons for 2016

For progressives, despite a lot of setbacks, there were at least some positives to take from 2015. The unexpected landslide majority for Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party in Canada. The surprising popular successes of radical democrats like Jeremy Corbyn, Alexis Tsipras and Syriza, Pablo Iglesias and Podemos. The little, flickering, light of hope amongst all of the conservatism is that, liberals and democrats alike, have begun to find ways to reach out to the public, to connect with them and to get them engaged with the idea that there are progressive alternatives and that people do have the power to make them happen.

Can Guy Verhofstadt's four steps to reforming the state help bring together progressives of all stripes?

In July, Guy Verhofstadt outlined to Alexis Tsipras the steps he believed where necessary to reform the state. Photograph: Press Conference from ALDE Communication (License) (Cropped)

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Liberal caucus in the European Parliament, was amongst those to congratulate Justin Trudeau on his party's victory in the Canadian general election. The former Prime Minister of Belgium praised the inspiring example set by the Liberal Party of Canada's positive campaign (Verhofstadt, 2015).

Trudeau's team sought to rise above their opponents' negative campaigning and pledged investment in much needed infrastructure - with the promised benefit of stimulating the economy - and to pursue progressive policies like a positive climate change policy, taking the pro-choice side of the abortion debate, and seeking to heal the wounds from internal conflict over indigenous rights (Hays, 2015; Phipps, 2015).

It is unsurprising that Europe's liberals would be looking for the lessons they can learn from the success of their counterparts in North America. In the European Union, liberals govern in only 7 countries, their European Parliament group holds only 9% of seats, and in countries like Germany and the UK the long established liberal parties have faced electoral wipeouts over the last five years.

Yet the elections in Canada - as well as elections in Argentina, Poland and elsewhere over the past week - confirm one thing very clearly. Overcoming the Conservative establishment and fending off the efforts of Right-wing populists to assume control, isn't something that one progressive faction alone can accomplish.

Relying on the distorting effect of electoral systems that force voters into unrepresentative concentrations, or hitching the party wagon to a popular carthorse, cannot be considered lasting strategies. In what is clearly a pluralistic and divided political arena, the alternative has to be the building of alliances - and that means finding common cause between liberals and democrats, socialists and radicals, that can hash out what it means to be progressive in opposition to conservatism.

Back in July, Guy Verhofstadt used a visit by Prime Minister of Greece Alexis Tsipras to the European Parliament to challenge the Syriza leader on the need for political reform in Greece (ALDE Group, 2015) - a confrontation that was at least softened with support for finding a solution to the government of Greece's need for serious debt relief.

In his speech, Verhofstadt laid out a series of reforms Tsipras would be required to take if Greece was going to get the support it needs. Condensed into four steps, they were:

• Bring an end to clientelism & establishment privileges,
• Downsize the public sector,
• Privatise public banks, and
• Open up employment to give young people access.

If these four steps can be taken to represent a condensed version of the reforming aims of modern liberalism, how do they match up with the aims of other progressives?

In Greece, Tsipras and the Radical Left Syriza party have been struggling under stringent fiscal and economic conditions to press on with reforms (Hope, 2015). Tsipras choice to accept Eurozone terms for a further 'memorandum' bailout, to get access to the funds to continue reforms, even caused a split in his party that saw first Yanis Varoufakis and then later the Left faction of his party leave (Farrer, Rankin & Traynor, 2015; Henley & Traynor, 2015).

In his efforts to find a solution to the recurring crises, Alexis Tsipras' pragmatic radicalism has seen the Prime Minister of Greece drifting into the same political territory as that occupied by Prime Minister of Italy, and Partito Democratico leader, Matteo Renzi.

In Italy, Renzi has faced many of the same problems as Tsipras: unemployment, particularly amongst young people; clientelism and corruption; and a public and private sector heavily intertwined (Kramer, 2015). His approach has been to try to work within neoliberal models and play by its rules - a big centrist democrat legacy of Tony Blair (Day, 2014). That has required the pursuit of "competitiveness", including making labour more "flexible" - meaning making the cost of business cheaper, by making the cost and permanency of labour cheaper and weaker (EurActiv, 2014).

In the run-up to the UK general election in May, BBC Economics Editor Robert Peston described Ed Miliband as in the mould of Margaret Thatcher in his attempt to react to the times, and the debts held by the state, to tried to find solutions that did not involve the state being in control or ownership (Peston, 2015). In seeking decentralised solutions, Miliband was crossing into traditional liberal territory, but he struggled to sell them or inspire support with them

With Jeremy Corbyn taking over the helm of the Labour Party there have been fears of a sharp shift towards state ownership. Yet the ideas of the his economic advisory council are fundamentally mainstream and his 'renationalisation' plans have been more about co-operative public ownership than state control (Cortes, 2015).

In Greece, Italy and the UK, economic conditions are forcing parties of the Left to look for solutions that would certainly fall within two of Verhofstadt's recommendations: to downsize the public sector and privatise public banks. The question then becomes whether progressive parties can find an economic approach broadly acceptable to all sides.

As for political reforms, the situation looks trickier. In the UK, support for electoral reform towards something more proportional and bringing an end to an unelected Lords is growing, but is far from certain. In Italy, proposed political and constitutional reforms remain controversial in their attempts to strengthen the executive over the legislative (Politi, 2015), while Italy, and Greece, remain in an ongoing struggle to tackle corruption.

With regards to youth unemployment, in both Italy and Greece, tackling that specific problem seems a long way away as both countries grapple with the broader crisis (Totaro & Vasarri, 2015; Howden & Baboulias, 2015). In the UK, the Conservative government is pursuing apprenticeships as its go to measure, a pledge matched by the Labour Party during the election campaign (Wintour, 2015).

The need to find broad agreement across the Centre and Left is hastened by the dangerous rise of populism in the hands of deeply sectarian factions and moved along by popular nationalism and popular traditionalism (Roubini, 2015). Critics of conservative populism call for a Keynesian response that boosts aggregate demand with job creation and economic growth, that reduces income inequality and increases opportunities for the young.

To achieve these goals, a way has to be found to overcome the problem of social democratic/liberal positions having become toxic and to embrace the fact that people want something more. There is a general progressive hope, expressed through protests and activism, for a grander vision that focusses less on ambition and wealth, and more on cooperation and on what kind of life, and what kind of opportunities, there can be.

Elements of Guy Verhofstadt's proposed reforms being found in the work of other government's of the Left across Europe, even under huge fiscal burdens, certainly shows that some sort of bridge can be built between the positions of moderate and radical progressives, whether democrats or liberals, to offer a positive progressive alternative to conservatism, nationalism and populism.

But these are only the broad strokes and far more progressive things can be achieved. The next step has to be to embrace movements like Yanis Varoufakis' "very simple, but radical, idea" to build a cross-party EU democracy movement (Varoufakis & Sakalis, 2015). In such movements there is a chance to find common ground in pursuit of reform for the common good.

Corbyn has brought idealism to the campaign, but needs to show how public ownership can further the pursuit of a just, inclusive and power-devolving society

Jeremy Corbyn MP speaks at anti-drones rally in 2013. Photograph: By stopwar.org.uk (license)(cropped)

Jeremy Corbyn's entry has electrified the Labour leadership contest (Eno, 2015). With people beginning to ask 'what happens if Jeremy Corbyn wins?', it might be a good time to look at what it is for which Corbyn is actually campaigning (Bush, 2015).

Jeremy Corbyn was originally ushered into the Labour leadership campaign as the alternative candidate (BBC, 2015). His job was to open up the debate Leftwards, to ensure that all voices were heard and that the 'electable' candidates had to work hard for the position.

Yet the campaign has been turned on its head by his entry. Endorsements from the trade unions and a popular anti-austerity following have put Corbyn in a strong position. It is now a very ready possibility that he could, in fact, win the leadership election.

That possibility has turned the race for the leadership into a showdown between Old Labour and New Labour, each with their own rival visions of the Left. Old Labour on the one side offering idealistic solutions, so acting as the national destination for those disenchanted with New Labour, on the other side, offering their pragmatic, 'modernising', solutions. (Jones, 2015)

The trouble is that neither side is being particularly radical. Corbyn's stances belong largely to the old Left, though hardly the hard Left (Krugman, 2015), and focus on a more structured and permanent society than the one that is unfolding at present (Harris, 2015) - that is: trade unions, nationalisation and a centralised state engaged in public spending and public ownership.

On the other side, fairly or unfairly, New Labour has been seen as a surrender to Centre-Right political thought. They are seen as a negative force that is too quick to shut down idealism (Watt, 2015; Watt, 2015{2}). They are, perhaps, too cosy with big business and too afraid of public opinion (Martin, 2015), to say anything distinct, other than to maintain a determination to make everything pass through a heavily centralised state.

But society is fragmenting. Democratic politics can seemingly no longer rely on mass support, marching under one big tent banner, that supports a singular centralised state, where power is wielded by the lofty party elite.

Historically, liberals and democrats stood, as progressives, opposed to the forces of conservatism that defended the traditional, elitist, order. Liberals stood in the name of the individual, democrats in the name of the people, or of the community.

As conservatism has, ironically perhaps, evolved in order to survive, it has taken on the cast offs from democrats and liberals as they have moved leftwards. From liberals it has embraced classical liberal laissez-faire economics. From democrats it has taken advantage of populism and nationalism.

All of these elements were once used as a means to rally people against the old elite. Themes that would as unifying rallying points, that could be used to transcend the particular concerns of particular individuals or communities.

But society has moved on once more. Rather than one community united by a singular narrative of economic class, there are dozens, hundreds, of communities with their own narratives - feminist, environmental, civil rights, trade unionist - who do not believe that their cause should be secondary.

Likewise individualism has moved forward. Individuals now support many causes, shifting between them or associated freely with several at once. There is a demand, not just for choice, but also for autonomy and the devolution and decentralisation of power.

These new, fragmented forms of democratic and liberal politics require new forms of solidarity - new ideas that the old approach of the mass party using the power of state to fend of the power of corporations and aristocrats is not set up to provide.

The big question facing Labour is how it can give a community response to a country that has seen community, in all of the traditional senses, collapse? Democracy and socialism speaks of people as fundamentally based on and in communities, based on the importance of ideas like your home town, your social class and your trade. But all of these are breaking down. Permanence is disappearing and with it the conventional anchors for these traditional communities.

How does a Labour party respond to social change that has so undone its means of rallying, organising and leading?

The starting point has be in addressing the fact that Labour's view, of the people as workers, with the state as their protector, redistributor and benefactor, seems to have broken down. That system needs to rebuilt on new themes.

That themes need to encompass Labour commitment to a democratic identity, a community focus and the pursuit of justice on these terms. But it also needs build in both the pursuit of progress and the allowance for alliances and fragmentation. Labour can be a coordinator, not just a director.

The radical new horizons on the Left for democratic socialists mean an inclusive attitudes towards the new and emerging political movements which have begun to get their days in the sun, at least in glimpses. From trade unions, to environmentalists, feminists and the civil rights advocates movement, there are numerous sectional interest groups, all pursuing their own agendas.

Yet unlike conservative sectionalism, it can't be about one group asserting its dominance over the others. Labour has to learn that progress will be, ultimately, about individuals and communities cooperating - breaking down the old powers and supporting the dispersal of it widely across society.

Jeremy Corbyn's campaign is already generating success (Milne, 2015), with Andy Burnham now openly advocating a gradual renationalisation of the railways (Perraudin, 2015). But it won't be enough to call upon the old centralising powers of party and state if they continue to alienate, suppress or exclude diverse movements.

More nuanced answers are needed to the complex issues of a contemporary society that is fragmented, becoming ever more temporary and fleeting. Calling upon the state, public ownership and trade unions to have a renewed role is not a bad thing. But people do need to know how those institutions can face the challenge of an ever more fragmented and decentralised society.

It is imperative that Corbyn's campaign addresses the matter of how he intends to turn these old Left mechanisms from yesterday into the inclusive, power-devolving, radical Left solutions of tomorrow.