The Alternative Debunk: Populism, democracy and where it ends

In refusing to rule out further votes on her Brexit Deal - should it be defeated in the Commons - Prime Minister Theresa May has doubled down on a stubborn stance. Adamant that she has a Brexit mandate, May won't countenance a challenge to it.

Whether she likes it or not, that puts the Prime Minister in the same camp has the hardcore Brexiters, who argue that the first referendum was the final say - however flatly untrue that stance may be when it comes to UK constitutional conventions.

In a time when interest and participation in democracy has been slipping, when democracy has been increasingly under assault from fake news and far right populism, it is unhelpful when the Prime Minister coopts their arguments.

Populism and democracy

Populism is a word that gets thrown around in the media, being used to refer to popular movements of left as well as right. But it's not accurate to equate the two.

On the left, popular movements are increasingly horizontal, cooperative and reflective of a belief not in a single struggle, but in the commonality between different struggles to shake off inequalities that affect people based on their identities - ethnicity, sexuality, gender - and stand together in solidarity.

On the right, popular movements are emotional, exclusionary and 'competitive' - highlighting difference between groups of people and pitting them against each other, even against good sense. These are the so-called 'populist' movements. It is a populist idea that one vote is enough to settle something in a democracy.

Like he idea that the referendum ended the conversation, that the will of the people was crystalised in one popular vote - which is clearly undermined by the fact that any political party could stand at a future election on a manifesto to stop Brexit, and upon winning a majority have the right to implement it.

The populist sentiment is a trap that Theresa May fell into the moment she tried to claim the referendum mandate for her own government. It was aggravated by the fact that she hasn't been able to covert the referendum result into a Parliamentary majority - functionally necessary to delivering any change.

With the referendum vote in her pocket, Theresa May triggered a snap election and stood on a party manifesto that promised to deliver Brexit. But she failed to win a majority. And in that failure was exposed the problem with the referendum in the first place: there wasn't, and still isn't, a party of Brexit with a Parliamentry mandate to deliver it.

Lincoln and the Union

In a democracy, the ideal is that even those who lose out most in the result of a poll will be able to appreciate the importance of respecting the will of the majority - it's a key aspect of democracy. Populists have been quick to label their Remainer opponents as undemocratic sore losers.

However, with the Brexit referendum, the populist Brexiter side has exploited their temporary majority and failed to respect the fact that majoritarianism is two sided: yes, the will of the majority needs to be respected. But democracy also means that the will of the majority can change. There is no final say.

The trouble with that fact is that it doesn't quite have the emotional reasonance of 'one vote and done' - it doesn't feel as good. It doesn't feel as cathartic. Yet it's at the core of why a minority should respect the will of the majority. Some day, you may change their minds. You may be the majority.

In an old biography of Abraham Lincoln, there is a discussion of his view of the importance of the political union and disavowal of secession. He had questioned the right to secession, asking, "Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain itself?"

Following Lincoln's stance against secession as undermining a democratic political union, his biographer asks:

"...if by democratic government is meant the rule of the majority, may there not be occasions when the majority is tyrannical or where the division of opinion between majority and minority is so acute, that the minority is entitled to leave?"

Lincoln had argued that adhering to majority rule, properly held in restraint by constitutional checks and balances, was not only a good, but a safeguard against the severed consequences of undermining majority rule - chaos, disorder, the threat of war.

As Lincoln said, "that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets." To Lincoln, elections and majority rule held out always the possibility that the majority might be persuaded and would change it's mind at a subsequent election.

That while a minority must adapt and integrate to the majority conditions - and could, perhaps should, be helped along to do so - it would still be able to seek to peacefully win over the majority. Laid plain, that democracy, that majority rule, was never to be seen as final.

May and the Union

Theresa May has her own Unionism. For her part, it has driven her to pursue a particularly single-minded path. One that does not really account for, especially, the divergent path upon which Scotland is travelling compared to the rest of the UK.

Theresa May has caught herself in a difficult position, of jealously holding one union while dissolving another - in opposing one secession while enacting another, a confusing circumstance of competing sovereignties.

Arguing against dissolving the British Union, while also arguing for the permanence of the referendum vote, May finds herself caught in an inconsistent position - that the Union cannot be dissolved, but it also will not allow for the changing of minds.

That position undermines the point of democratic majority rule. As Lincoln argued, the preservation of the Union is in large part achieved by acknowledging that there is no end point to a debate - that there is no definitive, inalienable vote.

Theresa May has pulled out all stops to protect her position, the mandate she claims and the policies she pursues, especially Brexit. The result has been that she has turned to the arguments populist right for justification of her actions - the Brexit was a final vote, there can be no change of position.

Legitimising the positions of the populist right is a very dangerous game to play, but as Conservative leader Theresa May inherited a legacy of taking advantage of the over loud and amplified grumbling and scapegoating of the far right.

The Conservatives have spent a long time courting the rise of the far right, feeding off the populist energy to attack Labour and the Liberals. But it's a source of energy that comes with a high cost, giving light and air to emotive scapegoating.

From the beginning, the Conservative plan for a referendum - spawned of a need to satisfy the right-wing energy it was exploiting - didn't really factor in the possibility that the Leave campaign would win the public vote.

Conservative leader David Cameron resigned, having backed Remain as the Prime Minister in a deeply pro-Remain Parliament. With no Parliamentary majority for Brexit, the country was thrown into political turmoil - which May has tried to navigate.

Her failing was to try and do so without a proper constitutional mandate, gained in the form of a Parliamentary majority from an election with an explicit Brexit manifesto commitmnt. She waited too long to pursue that, trusting instead to exluding Parliament in favour of using executive power to forge ahead.

Democracy never ends

When the question is settled, the post-Brexit Union will be defined by this period in time. Disrespect for democratic process, political division, ignoring or exploiting well-established constitutional conventions - all of these things will feed into the new shape of the British Union, whether it remains European for the long haul or ultimately pulls away.

Theresa May has allowed the far-right populist view of democracy - as a competition not a compromise, pitting ideas against each other for mastery - to infect the mainstream and take route in the public consciousness. These represent lasting damages inflicted in pursuit of short term political goals. May will have to reflect on that.

The reality is that the referendum vote could never have been binding, but the view it expressed needed to be respected. That has never really happened. Theresa May and the Conservatives didn't go to the electorate for a Brexit mandate until a long time after the fact. By then, moods had begun to shift.

Brexit was always undermined by the absense of a mandate to deliver it - a party, or parties, explicitly elected on a manifesto commitment to deliver it, awarded the power by the electorate to do so in the form of a Parliamentary majority.

Now, with the deal an unsupportable mess, public opinion is polling as even less inclined. And Parliament remains ill-disposed towards Brexit. Saying that there is no justification for further votes undemocratically protects the power of a majority that may now have become the minority.

Is a second referendum, the People's Vote, the answer?

The first referendum resolved little, as it didn't produce the political conditions within the constitutional framework to deliver on the 'Brexit mandate'. Can another referendum do anything more than simply affirm one of the positions?

Another referendum will still need the explicit mandate from an election to deliver on the public will, if it is to have the legitimate power to implement the decision. In the end, the only way out of this mess is to return to democracy.

Populism sees an end to democracy in the satisfaction of it's own will - the realisation of it's own supremacy. But democracy, to be a valid basis for political union, has no end point. There is no definitive say. Only limited mandates that expire.

The Brexit mandate is close to expiration - largely thanks to the failures of the Conservative party, who brought forward the first referendum and failed to empower it. What comes next must be instructed and empowered by the people.

Britain and Europe: Even after Brexit, progressives can't stop fighting for broader horizons for cooperation and solidarity

At the weekend, thousands turned out in London to show their support for Britain remaining in the European Union and determination to keep calling for a Second Vote - a deciding say on the final deal

From the government's perspective, and perhaps for some Leavers, the matter is now closed with Theresa May finally appearing to have won the legislative tennis match with the Lords over her Brexit Bill.

Is it over? We expect for Remainers it won't be over until the fat lady sings. Seeing an economic disaster coming, ushered in by a weak government, it won't be settled until Britain is firmly not a member state.

That isn't a surprise. There are plenty of reasons to still question Brexit. Like when the Prime Minister promises a new increase in NHS funding to be part paid by a 'Brexit dividend' that experts say won't happen.

But it's important that 'Remainers', and all those who see broader horizons for people in Britain, don't lose sight of the bigger picture.

The European Union is far from perfect. The EU referendum excluded many, most of all those on Left and poorer working people, in presenting a choice between two establishment, market capitalist and business-centric options.

This was at the core of what we wrote at the time of the referendum. We encouraged those on the Left, for progressives of all stripes, to vote to Remain - in a limited sense, to choose the lesser of two evils.

Leaving the European Union will for sure open the way things becoming harder for the poorest and most vulnerable. And it probably won't even provide any kind of economic boost to offset their losses.

But Europe is an idea and an ideal. The Union itself maintains a minimum level. It has protected standards. But so much is in the hands of, and dependent upon the beneficence of, bureaucrats and national governments, that even the EU is no guarantor of progress.

And it isn't the only way to build the vision of a wider and more connected world. A world of many cultures, many places of residence and work, cooperating with each other in peace.

Fearless Cities is the root of one such fresh alternative. An attempt by those involved in the municipal movement to build links of cooperation, local government to local government, that creates solidarity for democratic control of towns and cities - and brings them together to improve their chances of achieving much larger goals in an interconnected world.

It can't be the only one. We must start building, and rebuilding, these - as the establishment bureaucrats would say - bilateral relationships. Broad networks of many links, in the spirit of cooperation and solidarity to protect our rights and increase our freedom.

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.

Labour's crisis could be the opportunity to create a Progressive Alliance to unite against the Conservatives

Unless Boris Johnson has his way, the next general election is likely to come much sooner than planned (Walker et al, 2016). Upon resigning, Prime Minister David Cameron called for a new Conservative leader to be elected in time for the party conference in October.

That would put a new election in November, at the earliest. Yet that timetable has been pushed up - maybe due to pressure from other EU members who want the British exit resolved soon. The new aim for electing a Conservative leader now seems to be September, which could put an election as soon as October.

With the Tories split, with the country split, and with some clear rallying points appearing - not least a sudden sparking of pro-European sentiment and campaigns pushing back at intolerance and ethnically-charged abuse - it would seem to be a golden opportunity for Labour and for progressive parties in general.

A progressive alliance - a pact focussing the electoral efforts of progressive parties from Labour to the Greens to the Liberal Democrats against the Conservatives and UKIP, rather than each other - is surely more likely now than it ever has been. The situation is critical and need for solidarity is great.

Yet at precisely this point, Labour's Right-wing decided it had tolerated Jeremy Corbyn's leadership quite long enough (MacAskill et al, 2016). In a matter of hours, Labour had fallen into so deep and disreputable a mess that party supporters of even the most deep convictions where sleepless with anxiety that the party's complete ruin was imminent (Jones, 2016).

So divided is Labour, it seems now that the two sides are reduced to squabbling over who gets to keep the name and history - even as the party itself appears to be little more than a hollow and decaying husk.

If the MPs successfully topple the leadership, with Angela Eagle appearing to be the challenger (BBC, 2016), it would alienate the membership and almost certainly trigger an exodus. The Left of the party waited too long to put its candidate forward and is unlikely to want to wait around through another Blairite New Labour experiment (Hinsliff, 2016).

However, despite the doom and gloom, it could be that a Labour split could be exactly the catalyst that is needed for the Left. For a long, long time the Labour Party has dominated the progressive wing of politics, squeezing out any alternatives and campaigning forcefully for themselves as the only progressive alternative - a power obsessed position that make an pact with other parties unlikely.

Yet Labour has now learned some stark lessons. Its connection with its old heartlands has been shattered, possibly irreparably. It chance of winning a majority has been drastically cut by its loss of support in Scotland. And the trust between the party's wings seems to have been broken. In such realisations lie the fire and motivations to finally push on and make positive changes, if it can be seized.

If the Left and Right-wings split, these lessons must surely lead to an electoral pact between them to avoid immediate competition that would only inflict further damage by splitting support in the constituencies (Jones, 2016{2}). Such a pact could form the ideal base for a broader progressive alliance.

With the Momentum movement, Corbyn and whatever MPs remain his allies, and the trade unions rallying around, for instance, Left Unity - a party almost ready made for such a Left Labour breakaway - and the Labour Right as something along the lines of  the Democratic Party in Italy or America, or New Democrats as in Canada, the argument for getting the main progressive parties cooperating would be impossible to ignore.

It would be much easier to imagine Left Unity and the Democrats being convinced to work alongside the Liberal Democrats and the Greens towards the common goal of defeating the Conservatives in England than would convincing Labour to put aside its majority ambitions - it might even be convinced to work with Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland.

The Liberal Democrats and the Greens both campaigned strongly for the Remain side in the referendum, with the Lib Dems in particular seeing a boost in support, identifying themselves closely with the post-referendum pro-Europe outpourings (Chandler, 2016) - with its Lib Dem Fightback now seeing membership rise to 70,000, higher even than in 2010 (BBC, 2016{2}).

Both parties have shown themselves willing and able to work with other parties on the Left. In Wales, the Lib Dems are currently in coalition with Labour and the Greens have been arguing since the 2015 election for the building of a progressive alliance to end the damaging splitting of the progressive vote that helps Conservatives win (Lucas, 2015).

In the aftermath of a disastrous 2015 election and a country-dividing referendum, progressives need a positive mindset more than ever. While the breaking of the Labour Party would be as painful for many as the referendum result, there is a need to look even at a split in such a historically consequential party in a positive light.

The division of one creaking edifice of a party could be the spark that ignites a much broader progressive unity. If it leads to better relations on the Left, to more cooperation and on better terms, to a pact and an alliance that brings progressives together to advance, and to defend, the most important of causes, then even a party as significant as Labour is just a party, a means to and end, not an end in itself, whose interests should not be put above those aims for which it was formed to achieve.

Progressives need to focus on the future: The first priority is guaranteeing basic rights

Night falls at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Photograph: European Court of Human Rights by Francois Schnell (License) (Cropped)

The referendum is over and Brexit has won. It might have been a flawed way to settle a dispute, with an awkward result that has split the country nearly completely in two, ensuring an outcome that will not be representative. But progressives have to push on.

The necessity now is to focus on future. Leaving the EU will leave holes in our rights protections, and the Left needs to give consideration as to how to plug the new gaps. That means getting behind a push for new rights protections above and beyond just legislation.

As the Labour Party's senior Brexiter Gisella Stuart was keen to remind us all during the referendum campaign, the UK certainly does have rights legislation of its own - gathered in a long history of campaigning and political reform (ITV News, 2016; ITV, 2016).

"It's been strong trade unions and strong Labour government which have produced that. If you look at any of the rights which we have, either started here or are better here. It is a nonsense to think that the EU protects us from ourselves."

The traditional approach of the Left, as Stuart alluded to, is to rally a movement, in this case the labour movement and unions, to build and maintain majority pressure for new rights and ensure the vigilance to watch over previous gains. That might be described as the 'democratic' approach.

What this approach is not, is a substitute for guaranteed rights - inviolable by the state, with the individual holding the legal power to challenge the state where it infringes upon their essential rights. Such protections are the 'liberal' approach.

In the referendum campaign, these two approaches - one democratic, one liberal - where presented to us as opposed to each other. The liberal guarantees where presented as unnecessarily safeguarding against ourselves, as an undesirable restraint on majority power.

Yet the point of both democratic and liberal protections is to check the abuse of power. Democracy holds individuals in positions of authority to account - as Tony Benn put it, "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?". Liberalism complements it by holding the majority to account, protecting the individual, or minorities, from the wrath of the many.

Combined together, the democratic approach with the liberal, provides an intricate web of protections ensuring progress made, opening up liberties and removing barriers, cannot be lightly undone - or casually put aside in a moment in which they are considered an obstructive inconvenience.

With Britain's exit, the protections for the individual provided by the EU's social chapter - negotiated and enforced across all of the EU's member states in cooperation, presented - will be withdrawn. That creates a large hole in the UK's rights protections.

That hole could be widened by an ending of the UK's commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) - put at risk in the UK by Brexit, thanks to leading Conservatives like Theresa May, seemingly likely candidate to run against Boris Johnson to be the successor to David Cameron as leader of the Conservatives, expressing a loathing for the ECHR and a wish to withdraw the UK from it (Asthana & Mason, 2015).

For progressives, this marks out clear territory. On the one hand there is a need to reinforce that which the EU's social chapter previously protected - particularly the rights of women and of workers - and on the other to ensure protections remain in place for essential human rights. These hands must work together.

The only current effort to provide some kind of domestic level of protections had been the Conservative promise to introduce a British Bill of Rights. Yet that effort has never fully materialises, and what information has come out of the process has been roundly criticised.

Bella Sankey, Director of Policy at Liberty UK, stressed that 'British' Bill of Rights proposals represented a fundamental diminishment of the protections of our basic rights and put the most vulnerable at risk (Sankey, 2016, Sankey, 2014)). The Conservatives bill risks creating tiered rights, that fail the universal test and hand powerful vested interests the right to decide whether an individual should be protected by human rights, in order to make a crudely naked nationalist pitch.

Sankey goes on to argue that the 1998 Human Rights Act, which set the stage for British judges in British courts to rule on human rights claims domestically, is still the far superior protection. That makes defending the UK's place upholding the ECHR essential.

As for workers' rights - in Europe covering everything from maternity leave to fair treatment for part time workers (Inman, 2016) - it has long been an aim of the Conservatives to 'repatriate' powers over employment legislation, what the Tories call the EU's bureaucratic red tape (Syal, 2013).

Apparently to help reduce costs for businesses, the Conservatives have said they want to cut back these restrictions. What they don't disclose is that most of these 'restrictions' were basic workers' rights, public health & safety standards, and legislation designed to ensure the common market could function as easily as possible by all businesses working according to the same harmonised expectations - basically helping to maximise marketability.

Outside of the EU's system of mutual guarantees, covered in legislation applying to all member states, workers fall back to trusting to the reliability of political parties and movements to be a bastion for their rights at work.

Under Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system, that has meant clinging to Labour even as the party has drifted to the right and accepted the neoliberal consensus. That simply trammels voters, restricting their freedom to choose - as splitting the vote between other parties, in pursuit of other objectives, would risk letting down the guard protecting workers, preventing voters holding parties like Labour to proper account.

The situation calls for a solution that gives people reassurance that their rights at work have protections even when absolute vigilance isn't possible. To that end, the next step for workers rights should be a charter that, either by international treaty like the ECHR or under the domestic protection of the Supreme Court, guarantees employment rights beyond simple majority influence.

Beyond the reach of the EU and European rights protections, the ability of citizens to hold governments to account is reduced to a desperate struggle - between Unions and employers, and for voters between their ideals and pragmatic necessity in their choice of political parties. The UK's time in Europe has shown a glimpse of how things might be done better, that the fear and tension that comes with the uncertainty of whether your rights will survive the next election or cabinet whim could be reduced.

The task ahead of progressives now is to think constructively about the future and build a consensus to set basic rights, in Britain, in adamant.

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: A progressive response to the Leave result

How soon the UK will withdraw its representation from a European Union it no longer supports has yet to be determined. Photograph: Espace Leopold in Brussels from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

With the painfully, aggressively, nationalist suggestion that 'without a bullet being fired' the United Kingdom had declared its 'independence', Nigel Farage claimed victory for the Leave campaign at 4am. Tactless as ever, the UKIP frontman put in his claim early to define the Leave campaign's victory. It is important now that progressives and moderates do not allow this outcome to be defined purely in his or his party's terms.

The Left has to avoid ceding control over events. For instance, immigration looks like having been the dominant factor, trumping the economy at the last. Social tensions, that saw tolerance failing amongst financial struggles and their attendant fears, are clearly present in communities that have been unable to diffuse them with integration.

Progressives can't be sucked into acquiescence to the popular narrative that wants to take the easy road and blame immigrants alone for these stresses and pressures. Progressive policy has to be to heal divisions and to keep making the argument for public investment - in services, in housing, in jobs - as the real solution to the UK's difficulties.

And yet exiting the EU looks likely to drive more wedges between the people of Britain before it heals them. Not least does it raise the spectre of another Scottish Independence Referendum. Nicola Sturgeon was emphatic that Scotland had voted comprehensively for a future in the European Union - in dramatic contrast with England. There has even been a call from Sinn Fein to respect Northern Ireland's pro-European position with a referendum on Irish Unification.

With the result split 52%-48% in the UK as a whole, with Scotland and Northern Ireland moving toward the EU, and England and Wales away, there is as much of a macro divide in the UK as there are regional and local divides. Those divides will not be helped if the British economy takes a further tumble thanks to the isolation of exit.

The European Union itself will also likely suffer for this result as well. The Far Right has already made gains, making strong showings in France, Austria, Poland and Hungary. That sense of Nationalism will only likely be inflamed by 'Brexit' in the elections in European countries over the next couple of years.

What this result cannot do is end the progressive commitment to an internationalist vision of the world. The future for progressives, and the solutions to many of the biggest problems - on the environment, on corporate tax dodging, on managing international debt - remain international.

But maintaining an international view now comes with the much more difficult job of getting to work on building a new pan-European democratic movement, to fill the hole left by the British exit. A key part of that will be going back to the start to make the arguments, from the ground up, that expose the real and dangerous flaws in insular, nationalist and intolerant thinking.

Only by working from the ground up now can progressives break through and begin to change minds. Only from the ground up can progressives unpick the hostility towards Europe, and the false beliefs underpinning it, that prevents us from seeing our commonality, our common values and challenges, and what we can accomplish together.

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 reasons Progressives should reject Nationalism and choose Remain

The final week of Britain's EU referendum campaign has begun under a dark cloud. The death of West Yorkshire MP Jo Cox, allegedly in an act of Anders Breivik-esque murderous Far Right terrorism, has led to outcry over the tone of the debate - with particular concern regarding the Right's rhetoric on immigration.

It has been easy to think these things don't happen in the UK. People are shot in the street in America, bombs go off amongst civilians in the middle east, violent clashes between the police and the public happen on the continent - extremism may be a way of life for others, but not in Britain.

But it isn't true. Britain and Europe have their own long histories of extremism, all too easily encouraged and inflamed. Our own particular flavour of extremism in Europe is Nationalism. Here are our 4 reasons to reject Nationalism in favour of the EU and Internationalism.

I: The EU was an effort to bring a continent together...

The European Union, formerly the European Community, was founded as an effort to get Europe to think beyond National limitations - not to abandon ethnic, provincial or municipal differences to gentrification, but to accept difference, embrace it and build for the future using diversity as an advantage. It was an effort to try and think bigger and broader, to develop a broad view of humanity and how we might live in peace.

The founding tool of that effort was economics. Free Trade and a Common Market were the starting point. Caught between American competition and Soviet collectivism, Europe took a different path, a more cooperative approach - cooperation between government and industry, industry and workers, upon which base was built for a collection of negotiated minimum standards.

National interests have used their influence in European politics to hijack that agenda over recent years, with conservative austerians using the EU as a vehicle for their policies. Yet the foundation for international cooperation and solidarity remains - it just has to be taken back.

II: ...after Nationalism had nearly destroyed us

Before the efforts to bring the continent together, life in Europe was dominated by Nationalism. Europe's century of nationalism began for real in 1848, the "springtime of the peoples". Europe's progressives rose against their conservative monarchist elites, largely in peaceful protests at first, to demand constitutions and broad rights. Yet the progressive movement split.

Liberals and democrats, in their first expressions, split over their aims. The bourgeois liberals were too concerned about their propertied interests, and the Democrats, who embraced Nationalism as its populist rallying call, drove themselves apart along national lines - sectarian divisions appearing as the general democratic cause was swallowed  and patriotisms with competing interests were pitted against one another. The establishment put down its now divided opposition by force.

But that was not the end of the story of Nationalism. In Italy it found life: Mazzini used it as a rallying call to achieve the unity needed for liberation from foreign rule, then Cavour used it as the means to achieve the unity needed for consolidation under an Italian monarch. In Germany, Bismarck used it as the means to achieve the unity needed for the domination of Germany, central Europe and the continent.

The competing national interests of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to escalation and fear - and then war. Millions died in the Great War, but Europe hadn't learned its lessons and fell back into its divisions. The internationalism of Keynes and his dire warnings of the consequences of letting national interests dominate, with their vindictive agendas, were ignored.

Then Nationalism found its untrammelled voice in fascism, appealing with foreign scapegoats and unifying symbols to a beaten down public, that was impoverished, starved and looking for someone to blame. In desperation and anger, empathy was the first casualty. The result was one of the worst catastrophes in human history.

III: Sectarianism has found a way to creep back in...

At no time has it been more important for progressives to start working to bring back international cooperation. Marine Le Pen, leader of France's Far Right Front National, has announced that she sees, with no irony whatsoever, a new "springtime of the people" emerging along with a renewal of patriotism.

Jonathan Freedland wrote for The Guardian of the extremist poison that has been poured into the public veins, but the reality is that Nationalism is something we have been recreationally dosing ourselves with for decades. Britain has, since the war, managed not to - mostly - do more than just casually dabble in Nationalism, mostly getting out the flags and national pride only for big sporting events or big occasions.

But slowly, this has allowed Nationalism to become not a political position but rather a given - something that people simply are and are expected to participate in. Even after it, finally, very nearly destroyed us all in the 1940s, it seems we still couldn't put the intoxicating brew down, even when we knew it was lethal. Nationalism is Europe's addiction, its sickness, and it is getting close to falling off the wagon again. The spread of the Far Right through France, Austria, Hungary, Poland, even in Germany and Italy, seemingly egged on by Putin in Russia, is alarming to see for any progressive.

IV: ...but the real solutions remain international

The European Union has been an attempt to get Europe thinking differently. Britain came late to the EU, but was a prime mover in things like the European Convention on Human Rights, from the very start, and along with Italy demanded the Regional Development Fund be set up when it entered the EU - investing in the poorest parts of Europe, by region rather than nation, to improve and equalise the standard of life.

For Britain to be the first tumbling rock that begins the Nationalist landslide would a sad state of affairs, with its long history - though blotted with the meanness and selfishness of colonialism - of reaching out to the world internationally. It would also mean the country had turned a blind eye to its real problems.

The situation in Britain is fairly clear: chronic underinvestment, in key areas, by more than twenty years of Westminster government - an effect exacerbated under austerity - have led to a perceived pressure in the form of competition for work and competition for housing. Migrants are scapegoated, but the real solution is proper government investment, in training to end skills mismatches, in supporting newer and smaller businesses, in building homes - a pattern that is replicated right across Europe.

At the European level too can we see the need for an international perspective. The damage to the environment, that knows no borders, nor major corporations dodging tax while pitting workers against each other in a race to the bottom on wages and rights, again unbound by borders, will be tackled at the national level. Yet 'foreigners' and the European Union, itself an organisation that invests, are being made the scapegoats to hide Westminster's failings.

What do progressives want from politics?

The progressive solutions to Britain's problems are shared with the progressive solutions to Europe's problems - we have more in common than divides us. Establishments disconnected from reality and democracy, wealth hoarding corporations and a need to start reimagining how we think about work, wages and economics.

Justice and Liberty - Equality - Democracy - Progress on all of these fronts - these are the things that progressives ask for. All of these things take time, effort and a consensus to construct. A long struggle to build and reform. In just years, or even just days, these efforts can be torn down. But they take decades and even centuries to construct.

Progressives may have been left out of this referendum, as the sides pitched a presently Centre-Right status quo versus the Far Right's Nationalist dream. But the progressive stance is clear: don't walk away from everything we've worked together to build - stay and fight for it, and keep building.

This is Part 4 of  a  four part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 things you should know about Britain's influence, peace and security in the EU

In 2012, the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize. The EU was cited for its work in uniting a continent that, until 1945, had been consumed by interminable war and for it's work advancing the cause of "peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe".

The role of the EU in that peace has been questioned in this referendum campaign by those who believe that this particular pedestal belongs rather to NATO. So it is important to consider the difference between the EU and NATO, their roles and the difference between building a peace and mounting a defence.

Here is our four things you should know about Britain's influence, peace and security beyond its borders, whether in or out of the European Union.

I: NATO is a military alliance, assembled for security not peace

NATO has roots in the Allies of the two world wars. But it was founded as the military alliance of the West - a treaty bound agreement for collective defence against an aggressor - that was sought out as a counter-balancing power to Stalin's Soviet Union, which was casting a large shadow over Western Europe at the end of the 1940s.

NATO, from its inception under American leadership, has undoubtedly been at the forefront of many of Europe's major conflicts and disputes. In the South and East of Europe, beyond its borders, NATO where heavily involved in the former Yugoslavia, intervening and providing peacekeepers after and today in Syria.

Despite far reaching influence, NATO remains a military alliance. By contrast, as the Cold War went on a third group emerged between the Communist East and the Capitalist West, whose structure was instead an economic alliance.

II: The EU began by using economics to bring lasting peace to Europe

The European Union is the result of civil, rather than military, efforts to bring the people of Europe together. From the start, its methods have been classically liberal - a pillar of free trade economics to prevent war, by materially binding countries by mutual dependence, and a pillar of human rights, that guarantees respect for all of Europe's immensely diverse people, whether as groups or as individuals.

In its time the EU has seen the reconciliation of France and Germany, making war between them unthinkable, and the introduction of democracy to Greece, Spain and Portugal - expanding the EU, and European values and standards as they have become members.

The successes of Europe speak to a different approach to security. By building a peace than brings together a group of people, resolved on a set of principles that stretches beyond nations and borders - beyond tribes and their territories - and encouraging people to recognise their commonality, accept their differences, and choose cooperation, there can be the security that rises from peace and friendship.

III: Europe is threatened by a battle of values, not by force of arms

A military alliance can only offer so much influence on these matters. It cannot address matters of domestic politics without wading in very dark waters. Those who would choose the military alliance over the economic would be literally choosing security over peace, rather than trying to develop both.
A military alliance such as NATO may offer some surety against, for example, the rising militarist authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin's Russia. But what about those countries, in Europe, admiring of his example, who have begun to emulate him at home and come under Putin's sway internationally?

From France, with its Front National, Hungary, with Jobbik, and Poland, with the Law and Justice Party, these countries are members of both the European Union and NATO. Would these parties face expulsion from NATO if they embrace the very authoritarianism that it was set up to oppose? What can NATO do, with all its military power, to influence this struggle for the soul of Europe?

Like the threat of Islamic extremism, this isn't a battle being fought by great powers - gigantic monoliths possessing overwhelming kill power. Influence in such a contest is won, not by arms on a battlefield, but through thousands of civic debates, through effective public services, through the positive opportunity for integration and in millions of small acts of tolerance, decency and welcome.

With integration over nationalism, open borders over closed, in dozens of policy areas, the EU has tried to promote a set of values that stands markedly apart from those of Putin's national authoritarianism or the fanatic totalitarian religious extremism for Islamic fundamentalism.

IV: In the EU, influence is not restricted to states

The European Union exists to bring Europe peacefully together and comes packaged with a commitment therein to human rights, and to democracy. Europe's incomplete integration ensures that how the politics of these values plays out is advertised usually in the crude terms of British, or French, or German interests, or those of two dozen other nation-state members.

Yet, as the movements offering the greatest source of hope for progressives right now show, influence can be exercised in Europe beyond that controlled by the state governments themselves.

The citizens movements of Spain, governing cities and provinces on the principles of municipalism, pushing the municipal cause have a taken a larger view, one more outward looking than might be expected from local politics. They look to help their communities by building alliances between municipalities, between cities, across the entire continent, to bring democracy closer to the people and to bring those citizens together in solidarity.

To that end, the municipal movement governments of cities in Spain have begun meeting directly with the administrations of other cities in Europe. Therein can be found the beginnings of the next great progressive movement - and it has been made possible in the present by the work of decades within the EU.

What do progressives want to influence?

For progressives, the future, the path to their aims - for justice, liberty, equality, progress - still runs the international road. In Europe, that still means looking outward, looking at politics on a continental scale. To that end, the European Union remains the infrastructure that we have.

The EU certainly isn't perfect, but exiting one continental system without another supporting progressive values to join, when so much for the Left depends on international cooperation, is reckless and wasteful. Between voting to remain and voting to exit, voting to remain is the only option that chimes the broad vision.

But for progressives, matters don't rest there. The EU is incomplete. It is under the control of a austere conservative political consensus and under threat from a set of nationalist authoritarian parties who want to regress politics by a century.

Pulling away will do nothing for the peace and security of those who cherish values like openness and tolerance, who believe in standing for solidarity, standing for common values and standing for the common good, need to stay and engage even as other hearts turn colder.

This is Part 3 of  a multi-part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 things you should know about TTIP, free trade and the European Union

One of the most controversial elements of the UK's membership of the European Union, at present, is the TTIP - Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - trade deal. Between the United States and the European Union, it is intended to break down trade barriers limiting free trade.

The prospective deal has been controversial from the start - being assembled in negotiations deemed secret, under a cloud of fear that business is being given legal rights to seek recompense from governments for profit-hurting policy, reduce Europe's regulatory standards and open protected domestic institutions to aggressive corporate competition.

I: The EU is only what you make of it

The misconception here is that the EU is a distinct, abstract institution, pursuing its own agenda - thus imagining the deal to be the work of the EU alone, with exit a simple blocking measure. But the EU doesn't work like that. It is driven by a council of the governments of the member states, including the UK.

Right now, Britain's representative are David Cameron's government and the Prime Minister has argued forcefully in favour of TTIP. Leaving the EU is not going to stop the UK's Conservative government seeking the pass TTIP-type trade agreement.

The basic reality is that the opposition to TTIP is to be found in Europe, not out of it. In Germany, 250,000 people have marched against the treaty. In France, the government is opposing the treaty for the way it threatens its protection policy covering certain of its own domestic interests. The movements are right in step with the major concerns over the treaty in Britain.

II: Remember ACTA?

As ever, the problem persists of national governments hiding behind the EU - using it as an excuse or a way to pass policies where the public aren't watching, when it is simply a system whose strings they are pulling.

Consider the controversial ACTA treaty. ACTA, which was intended to ensure an international 'harmonisation' of copyright enforcement, was criticised as potentially allowing private companies to violate basic personal liberties like privacy and even threatening generic medicines to protect the financial interests big pharmaceutical companies.

While many national governments around the world and across Europe signed, including the UK, the treaty was ultimately blocked in a vote by the directly and proportionally elected EU Parliament, following massive public protests across the EU.

III: What is the point of free trade?

On TTIP, Prime Minister Cameron has tried to make out that there are stark lines over the deal. From his perspective, on his side - supporting TTIP - are all those who want free trade and the benefits it brings, and on the other are people who are 'against free trade and wanting to see an expansion of trade and investment and jobs' (Mason, 2016).

It is not unfair to suggest free trade is a worthy principle, but why can't we have it on ethical terms?

In its more idealistic form, the EU is all about constructing an ethical free trade area. In its origins, it was conceived of as a way to end war in Europe by stopping national governments getting into strife with each other over control of the natural resources with which to construct to materiel of war.

Going further back, into the 19th century, the campaign for free trade was about breaking open cartels. Under the system of trade formed by the competing systems of national protection, the basic necessities were made prohibitively expensive by the stranglehold over them of powerful and unaccountable landlords and bosses whose interests where served by national government protection.

The Anti-Corn Law League, the early radical liberal campaign in the UK for free trade, sought to break up these cartels to reduce the cost of basic food and goods, so that the poorest could afford a decent and healthy life. The campaign for free trade was in service to the public against the protected interests of the rich landowners.

IV: What does EU trade look like?

What the EU has attempted, but not completed, is to ensure that the free trade it promotes takes place on a fair and ethical playing field. Basic standards, enforced by regulation (the mythical beast the Right love to talk of slaying), protect workers' rights, prevent animal testing and in a host of other important areas ensure a basic minimum expected of business practice in Europe.

Internally, this comes hand-in-hand with policies like the Regional Development Fund. The fund is intended to invest in the poorest, sub-national, regions of the EU to raise the standard of living up, so no country can look to undercut another on basic standards or be cut out left unfairly behind.

Externally the protections, of standards and rights, require trading partners to meet certain conditions for access to Europe's common market - like those of Norway and Switzerland that have been much publicised as alternatives in for the UK during this EU referendum campaign.

All of these ideals depend, however, on who is in charge of policy and negotiation at the EU. Right now, it is the conservatives of many EU member states who are in the ascendency and control policy and decision making at the European level. As a result, the EU's actions have been tinged with conservatism.

Within that system, it has been the Right, and the far right, who have been the ones pushing most aggressively for the UK to do away with the EU's standards - though it has faced resistance. The solution for the Right has become doing away with the EU, but keeping the market intact, as they still want to trade with Europe, but want to be undercut everyone else and help big business pad its profits by doing away with concern for the environment or workers' rights.

What do progressives want from trade?

Exiting the EU will require new trade deals to be negotiated. The conservative Right is unlikely to make those standards and regulations any kind of priority in its negotiations. Maybe, of course, those who want a 'left exit', unrestricted by the European system, will get a government of the Left before too long, to set about forming a new progressive trade policy.

But what are progressives in Britain going to negotiate for, if not an ethical trade area? An ethical trade area underscored by democratic accountability and cooperation?

Even a progressive exit would mean the dismantling of systems of cooperation, decades in the making, that have supported advances in rights, in a move that could only make the Far Right happy - only to have to then try to rebuild it all over again.

Right now for progressives, fighting corporate power and ensuring trade is conducted ethically and with appropriate standards and rights protections, remaining in the EU - not idly, but campaigning for progressive, democratic reforms - is still the best option.

This is Part 2 of  a multi-part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 basic things you should know about the background to Britain's EU referendum

Photograph: European Parliament at Espace Leopold from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

With the question of Britain's membership of the European Union being put to a referendum, it is important that people know what it is that they're voting for. Whether instinctually in or out, the core of progressive thinking is basing decisions on the facts. So, from a progressive view, here are four of the basics necessary to making an informed decision.

I: This isn't the first referendum

Back in the 1970s, Britain's Conservative government of the day, under Prime Minister Ted Heath, joined the then named European Community. It was not until later, under his successor, Labour's Harold Wilson, that the decision was put to the people in the form of a referendum.

As in 2016, 1975 saw Britain already committed to the EU and the question was whether to end that partnership. As now, the referendum followed a period of renegotiation of the terms of membership and the question divided the government.

The main difference is that in 1975 membership was a new step, at the beginning of a new phase for the project and today Britain has long been a member and has to consider the impact of its membership over a significant period of time.

In 1975, in answer to the question "Do you think the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community?", Britain voted by 67% to remain.

II: How the EU has changed since 1975

The European Union has come a long way from where it began as the steel and coal trading agreement between the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, through the European Community of the 1970s referendum into today's political maze.

Today's European Union is the successor to a set of international organisations, including the European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1952, and the European Economic Community (EEC), founded in 1958. These bodies worked for cooperation between nations in Europe following the war - founding thinker Robert Schuman said to "make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible" between, particularly, France and Germany, through economic integration.

The organisations created a common market in Europe that would reduce direct competition between countries for control of natural resources, and secure for businesses in any member country access to the resources they needed, without endless red tape, treaties and national policies requiring domineering control over resources that in the past gave unequal preferential treatment for one domestic economy.

The Maastricht Treaty of 1993 formed these various bodies into the European Union was perhaps the biggest change there has been between 1975 and 2016. It was certainly controversial - leading to the founding of what would become UKIP.

Yet these efforts to promote integration are fully within the spirit of the European project - pursuing a step by step, democratic integration of Europe - as laid out in the Schuman declaration:

"Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity."

The most controversial change, however, has been less a change than an ongoing process: the continued expansion of the European Union, with the entry of new member states. As the borders of Europe have grown larger, the balance of economic strength between member states has also shifted. The economic weakness of some of these countries, and the relative, comparative, lack of wealth of their citizens, has stoked fears about mass migration into richer member states.

III: What the EU looks like today

The four main components of the European Union today are the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.

The first two are the Council and the Parliament. The Council gathers the representatives of the elected governments of each member state, with equal representation - like to the United States Senate or the German Federal Bundesrat. The Parliament meanwhile houses MEPs, elected by proportional representation from regional constituencies all across the European Union.

Because the Council sets the policy direction, and the Council and Parliament must vote to pass legislation, fluctuations in which parties are enjoying popular support across Europe affects directly and indirectly the priorities and approach of the Union. With an particularly inward looking conservatives currently dominant in domestic politics in most European countries, conservatism controls politics at the European level as well.

The Commission is the Presidential executive branch that, based on the policy priorities set by the council, proposes legislation and takes responsibility for seeing it implemented across the EU. The Commission is headed by a President who is nominated by the European Parliament and the Council jointly and heads up a body of 27 Commissioners, one from each member country covering different policy areas, and an estimated 50,000 civil servants (compared to around 19,000 working fro Manchester City Council).

The Court of Justice (ECJ) is the highest court of European Law, responsible for interpreting the laws. It is to this organisation that member state courts refer questions of application of European Law.

Between these separate bodies have been created various agencies, carrying out various responsibilities including the European Regional Development fund - whose creation was pushed for originally by Britain and Italy. It invests EU common funds in poorer and less developed parts of Europe, on a regional rather than national basis, to encourage modernisation, create sustainable jobs and stimulating growth - including investing in transport links and telecommunications like broadband.

Yet these funds remain a source of tension, with exit campaigners complaining that too much leaves one national entity, particularly a rich one like the UK, to be spent in another. The reality is that the spending is redistributive, not from one country to another but from richer regions to poorer, with the aim of building up the poorer so that it can stand with less redistribution needed in the future.

IV: Progressive Europe after #ThisIsACoup

The referendum on whether Britain should continue to be a part of these institutions has pricked a sore progressive nerve. After the way senior and influential European figures were seen to have treated Greece, and its Radical Democrat governing party Syriza, during bailout negotiations, and the way the will expressed in Greece's elections and referendums was ignored - decried as an attempted coup against the government of Greece - influential figures on the left have begun to really consider an uncoupling, for fear of being unable to implement progressive change within the European system.

The trouble for progressives lies in the fact that, though stark lines have been drawn by the referendum question, they do not have a clear side to take. Conservatives are supporting the European status quo, that they currently dominate, and the far right are supporting exit - with no third position available.

While there is cynicism with regards to the EU's policy achievements, its process of compromise and alliance-building has seen policy developed and implemented on a much wider scale than might have otherwise been possible - ensuring that issues common to all the people's of Europe can be sorted out by them, mutually, on that same scale.

The value of that approach is seen in the efforts of others on the Left to build an alternative to the two options presented in Britain's upcoming referendum. At the least, it shows how it remains preferable to the possibility of a 'Brexit'.

Over the last few years, Yanis Varoufakis, an economics professor and former finance minister of Greece under Syriza, has consistently argued that there is danger for the Left in letting the mainstream establishment collapse. Rather than cheering the neoliberal implosion, he has sombrely called for progressives to help prevent it so as to avoid the catastrophic affect upon those most vulnerable and to buy time to build an alternative.

From Varoufakis viewpoint, only the Far Right has ever benefited from social and political breakdown, or economic crisis, while the Left has succeeded most from pushing for reform of the system - requiring most often to build up structures and ideas over time to acts as foundations and infrastructure on which to stand its achievements.

It makes sense then that Varoufakis has led the formation of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), as a cross party platform, to push the progressive case. That organisation has others like Another Europe alongside it, pursuing a different and more progressive form of European government. What unites them is the belief in the need to form pan-European parties and movements to push for a broad democratisation of those Europe institutions that remain aloof or too little accountable.

What do progressives want today?

Fearful of conservative domination of Europe, it isn't surprising that the Left wants out of what could easily look like a rigged game. Yet there are Varoufakis' warnings to consider, which contain a wider implication within, for those on the Left whose instincts lean towards exit.

Out of Europe there awaits only nationalism, seen in the continued rise of the Far Right which so nearly won the Presidencies of France and Austria, given yet more license to drive more wedges between more people - arresting social progress to a narrowly sectarian view of the world.

Exit also stands it contrast to citizens movements, governing cities and provinces on the principles of municipalism, that offers the most hope for progressives right now. It would be easy to take the lessons of the municipal movement as license for the Left to withdraw and focus on the local.

Yet those pursuing the municipal cause have a more outward view, looking to build alliances between municipalities, between cities, across the entire continent to bring democracy closer to the people and to bring those citizens together in solidarity.

For progressives, the future, the path to their aims - for justice, liberty, equality, progress - still runs the international road. In Europe, that still means looking outward, looking at politics on a continental scale. To that end, the European Union remains the infrastructure that we have.

Exiting one continental system without another to join, when so much for the Left depends on international cooperation, is reckless and wasteful. Between voting to remain and voting to exit, voting to remain is the only option that chimes the broad vision. But it shouldn't be a vote cast lightly.

Remaining is not an "end all" solution, but a first step. The next step for progressives should be to get involved with the movements to reform Europe, to democratise Europe, to beat back austere conservatism and discredited neoliberalism, all in favour of a more compassionate alternative.

This is Part 1 of  a multi-part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum

Over the next month, The Alternative is going to delve into the key aspects of the EU referendum and take a look at what it holds in store for progressives. To that end, this article will serve as the hub, gathering each of the parts together for easy access.

Pt.1   4 basic things you should know about Britain's EU referendum

Pt.2   4 things you should know about TTIP, free trade and the European Union
Pt.3   4 things you should know about influence, peace and security in the EU
Pt.4   4 reasons Progressives should reject Nationalism and choose Remain

Introduction: The Referendum for Progressives

In short, this isn't one. What stands out most of all about the referendum is that there is no truly progressive option. The ballot will offer people a choice between a bureaucratic mainstream status quo and a Right-wing nationalist reaction that proposes returning to the past (or a heavily revised version of it, at least).

The question posed to progressives is how to respond to these imperfect choices. When deciding between them, there are some basic values that they need to consider: Internationalism - Cooperation - Equality - Justice - Liberty.

Internationalism is a broader vision of people, one that does not distinguish between the value and importance of people in one country from another and believes in the possibility of cooperation between them.

That spirit of cooperation is key to enabling those people to then work together for mutual benefit and, in so doing, pursue equality. As for justice and liberty, they are the structures and principles, the terms, on which those people organise.

The roots of progressive thinking are trying to bring together all of these ideas in one society, that embodies them all: the equality of the left over the hierarchy of the right, the justice of democrats and the liberty of liberals, bound together with a broad humanism and mutual endeavour.

Achieving this things means thinking about, and working towards, the future. It means making and encouraging progress, and encouraging others to think about the future as well - and that is a difficult task, because the future is undeniably terrifying.

The future is where we find change, uncertainty and a lack of guarantees - a spark for anxiety is there ever was one. All the while, the past is favoured as a place of guarantees, of certainty, of familiar structures and reassuring traditions.

"The past is comparatively safe, next to the present, because we know how at least one of them turns out."

The European Union represents an attempt to build towards the future and that makes it terrifying. But it has also been ensnared by the times, to become, in many ways, an organisation of the status quo. As a result that project is unfinished. There is progress still to be made.

The question that progressives must answer is which of two imperfect choice presents the best next step in the path to achieving its goals. This series will aim to offer the facts needed to decide between the options and take that next step towards the future.