Facts Illuminate: Trump can write his own story but it won't change the facts - he stood for exclusion, while his opponents march for a more egalitarian and inclusive America

Demonstrators in Washington DC. Photograph: DC Women's March by Liz Lemon (License)

Facts are what we can verifiably say about reality. We know that the sky is blue and the grass is green - or that the sky is grey and the pavement is also grey - because we can see them and can discuss it with others to reach a consensus.

We know, for instance, that in reality humans are very likely the cause of global warming, because a large body work exists on the subject. A lot of people have looked at it and discussed it with others to reach that consensus.

If you're not inclined to change your mind away from a preconceived position, having facts differ from your own views can be an inconvenience. But in politics this is usually treated as an inconvenience that can be negotiated - and 'perceived' reality is frequently rewritten.

The most recent part of reality that Donald Trump has found inconvenient is that not as many people as he wanted showed up for his inauguration - not even half as many as showed up to see Obama the first time around and maybe less even than the second. His ludicrous response was, with the collusion of his Press Secretary, to try and 'set right' reality - claiming the highest attendance anyway and denying photographic evidence to the contrary (BBC, 2017).

Those defending him spoke of 'alternative facts', a phrase that shows a profound misunderstanding of both the word 'alternative' and the word 'facts'. But facts in public life are not a hand at a poker table, inconvenient cards to be arranged, bluffed and played to your best advantage.

Romano Prodi, reminded us (Popham, 2006) - when he used the Scottish poet Andrew Lang's words to describe his opponent Silvio Berlusconi, another populist political opportunist - that the facts are there to guide us, not the other way around:

"He uses statistics like a drunk uses lamp-posts, more for support than illumination."

So in that spirit - instead of making the facts fit in a way that suits us - let's ask: what do the facts tell us?

Well, the turnout at the respective inaugurations of Obama and Trump indicate that perhaps the election of Barack Obama was the more significant milestone - one that perhaps even outstripped his own Presidency.

Yet Trump's election also says something. There is a lot of dissatisfaction in America. A lot of people bought Trump's salesmanship - he is, after all, more of a brand ambassador than a property tycoon. His pitch was above all was exclusionary, offering an exclusive society to people who felt they had been dispossessed - and his nationalistic rhetoric gave those people, predominantly white and male, scapegoats.

However, the day after his inauguration, millions turned out under the Women's March banner in direct opposition to the attitudes, particularly towards women, that he has espoused - even as many as one in a hundred in America alone. The people united under the Women's March banner were of all genders and ethnicities, many of them Trump's favoured scapegoats, and they turned out in what may be (real) record numbers in support of equality and inclusion on Saturday (Frostenson, 2017).

America is large and diverse. If Trump wants to pitch the idea of an exclusive America, the facts suggest he should get used to his opponents outnumbering his supporters - his opponents did win the popular vote in 2016, after all. Those opponents, the real alternative, are rallying to the idea of an a more egalitarian, inclusive America. They're being led by the facts (Scanlon, 2014; Wilkinson, 2011).

What to expect from President Trump? To see how an opportunist backed by the far right will fare in government, look no further than Italy's Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi, through controversies and legal battles, held the position of Prime Minister in Italy for nine years out of seventeen on the political frontline. Photograph: Silvio Berlusconi by paz.ca (License) (Cropped)

If progressives are going to start building a meaningful opposition to the global rise of far right populism, seen most recently in the Trump Presidential Campaign, they first need to understand what they will be standing against. What will the representatives of the far right pursue when actually in office?

When considering what to expect, its important to look to history. For Trump in particular, there are obvious comparisons to Ronald Reagan (Rich, 2016) - though, it seems, except for those who really buy into the Myth of Reagan but don't like Trump, and so want to distance the two as much as possible.

But perhaps a better guide for expectations, both for Trump and beyond, might be the rise of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy in the early 1990s, out of the wreckage of the Italian political system that imploded with the exposure of  huge corruption under the Mani Pulite investigation.

Amidst massive political disillusionment and a global downturn, a seeming outsider, with business credentials, and in alliance with parties of the far right, put themselves forward as the champion of the populist opposition to the corrupt old establishment - despite plenty of their own legal battles, to which their support seems immune.

Sound familiar? Trump's rise mirrors Berlusconi's own route to power. The media chief, and chairman of football club AC Milan, began his long relationship with political power in Italy at the head of his party Forza Italia - named for a popular football chant.

If that does not say enough, as a measure of the man consider that Berlusconi once claimed, with extravagant outrage, that one of his longest running political opponents, Romano Prodi, called him a drunk during a 2006 election debate - and offered him a "no, you are" in return (Popham, 2006). What Prodi had actually said was:

"He uses statistics like a drunk uses lamp-posts, more for support than illumination."

For those who want decency and reason in the political arena, this level of obfuscating outrage is infuriating. When a political candidate is willing to twist anything, to play whatever role happens to be convenient to the relevant situation, coherency be damned, it makes it impossible to get to grips with what that candidate actually believes - and so to have a meaningful political exchange.

But whether that was what he actually believes is besides the point. What that exchange presented was an opportunity. And the seizing of such opportunities defined Berlusconi's career - as it does Trump's as well.

Silvio Berlusconi rose to power on the back of a career as a media personality, a celebrity, just as much as he did on his career in business. His media company took on the establishment and broke through the state owned monopoly on broadcasting - though in part thanks to his connections in that very same government establishment.

And when that - again, very same - government establishment collapsed amidst one of the biggest political corruption scandals ever seen, Berlusconi took to the political field - despite his own connections and the spreading of investigations into his own businesses (The Economist, 2001).

Berlusconi promised to keep Italy pro-Western and pro-Market, create a million new jobs and protect the country from the communists - the Italian Communist Party successor, the Democrats of the Left, were virtually the last party standing in the Italian political system after the corruption scandal.

The coalition he put together to achieve those promises - with the separatist Lega Nord in the North and the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale in the South - backed by a massive publicity campaign on his own TV channels, received the most votes and seats in the 1994 Italian general election.

His first government collapsed after only nine months, torn apart by its own internal contradictions. Yet, though often with only a tenuous grip, Berlusconi returned to power time after time, with rebuilt coalitions that pushed the same mix of social conservatism and economic neoliberalism.

And he was never far from controversy. Berlusconi was accused of being sexism in Italy's most powerful apologist, as his personal life often spilling over into the political and even sparking protests (Marshall, 2016). His legal troubles also followed him constantly.

The same kinds of fate are now being predicted for Trump's Administration, as he tries to marry his misogynist and nativist support with the Republican mainstream - itself a contradictory collections of libertarians and nativist Christian nationalists.

Just as legal scandals chased Berlusconi throughout his career, they're likely also to follow Trump. With numerous cases still outstanding against him, some commentators are even predicting that Trump may ultimately end up being impeached by the Republican-controlled Congress (Oppenheim, 2016).

The election of Trump answered one question to which the answer was already known: that negative campaigning is used because it works - even, it seems, in its most extreme forms. It also drew parallels between Trump and Berlusconi, that suggest that far right populism is unlikely to hurt the Reagan-esque tax-cutting, laissez-faire, pro-business establishment.

But what about about in Europe, where far right parties have pushed their way into the mainstream with fewer compromises and mainstream alliances? As with Trump, promises of social conservatism, anti-immigration and harsh law and order policies have abounded. Yet on economic policy, the stances of far right movements have been inconsistent.

Trump's one elaborated economic policy was for a massive tax cut. That matches up with UKIP's policies, which have historically leaned toward less compromising version of Conservative manifestos, with tax cuts, especially for those at the top and large amounts of deregulation.

Yet while Trump has hinted at protectionism, it has been more strongly pushed in Europe. For instance, Front National have travelled over time from aggressively, anti-welfare, 'parasite' opposing, Reagan neoliberals, to ardent advocates of state control and protectionism (Shields, 2007).

Other far right parties in Europe, such as the Freedom Party of Austria and the Party for Freedom of the Netherlands, or elements of the Five Star Movement in Italy, have expressed a kind of national liberalism, to which the French Front National seems aligned.

The parties are standing, ostensibly, to 'protect' their 'national values', which have over time extended to include liberal tolerance, particularly of native homosexual and Jewish communities; and attempted to reconcile what amounts to 'national welfare', claiming to expel outsiders from the system, with the neoliberal capitalist system.

These positions express profound contradictions: between the rousing of intolerance and promises of social protection, and between deep connections to the low tax, low regulation and big business neoliberal order and promises of economic protection.

Berlusconi showed that these contradictions can be maintained, though not without difficulty and obvious fragility, over a long political career. So whichever way these parties break, caught between intolerant, nationalist and statist demands and their neoliberal connections, progressives need to have a strong argument that counters the flaws of both. And that argument needs to bring together radicals and moderates, democrats and liberals.

Justice, Liberty and Progress; equality, cooperation and sustainability; these values drive progressives. The far right stands opposed to them, picking and choosing between them as it suits their cause. Progressives need to unite around them - whether against neoliberalism or nationalism, as both are disastrous.

Petty squabbles are the opportunities that the Berlusconis and Trumps exploit. They disillusion the public and open the doors to opportunists and extremists. That pattern needs to end, in the name supporting those made most vulnerable by the rise of such forces: women, minorities, refugees, immigrants and the impoverished.

Return of Charles Kennedy's proposal of a penny on tax for education signals worries that more needs to be done on inequality

The late Charles Kennedy, whose practical policies have returned to the table for consideration in Scotland. Photograph: Charles Kennedy speaking at the Friday Rally at the Scottish Liberal Democrats Spring Conference, 2015 from James Gourley/Liberal Democrats (License) (Cropped)

One of the more worrying statistics of the moment is that generational inequality is rising, as the doors that allow social mobility are closing (Inman, 2016). One particularly telling factor is that home ownership has become a distant and fading dream for young people, as modest incomes are no longer enough to get started (Elliott & Osborne, 2016).

So far, George Osborne's efforts have been aimed at finding ways around tackling the key problems: making larger and cheaper loans available, turning rents into deposits and selling off social housing cheaply to tenants. All of these moves are attempts to stimulate the private sector and take care of the middle class - largely at the expense of those worse off. What they don't do is fix the core problems, like a lack of supply that drives rents and prices through the roof.

But Osborne's austere laissez faire isn't going to close the inequality gap. For schools, for example, the place where inequalities first begin to take their substantial toll - whose teachers and administrators are buried under mounting stress that is driving employees away (Harris, 2016) - a place to start would seem to be a simple, practical acceptance: more money is needed. Yet with austerity ascendant, that will be a difficult thing for this government to accept.

Under the present conditions, its really no surprise that the late Charles Kennedy's penny on tax policy has seen a resurgence. Kennedy proposed, as Ashdown did before him, to add one penny in the pound to income tax - an increase of 1% in search of £3bn in additional funds - to support extra spending on education (BBC, 2001; Marr, 2001; Taylor, 2016).

The same policy has now turned up in Scotland. Will Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, announced the return of this policy to the Lib Dem's platform at the end of January (Carrell, 2016) - only to be upstaged a week later by the Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale's adoption of the same policy (ITV, 2016).

Under Kennedy, this was seen as a bold, but practical measure at a time when the economy was improving dramatically. Under Kennedy's successor Nick Clegg, the emerging financial crisis led to these ideas being translated into 'fairness'. Clegg's, now much missed, red lines in government involved sharing the burden  (Parkinson, 2012) - refusing to have cuts impact on the poorest without the equivalent be expected of the richest.

Amongst the things Clegg fought for was increased spending for the early years at school (Ahmed, 2015), hoping to close gaps so that children might grow up with the skills necessary to seize opportunities on their own merits. During that time, Conservative supremacy and lust for cuts was barely restrained by the Coalition. Now it doesn't seem to be restrained at all.

All in it together, to protect the next generation from crippling public debt, seems to have become the means to disenfranchise the next generation - denying young people public services and affordable housing. Meanwhile, the wealthy are doing just fine (Inman, 2016).

And yet, austerity has laid bare and made finally visible in the UK the true extent of the financial crisis - from which the UK was largely sheltered by the government funded public sector. From homelessness at the extreme, to the now common shortages of affordable homes, the public may now finally - thanks to austerity - be realising the full weight of the burden falling on them.

In those conditions, the re-emergence of policy's like Kennedy's penny on tax is not surprising. A general outcry for more the government to do more cannot be far away. While that, of course, doesn't necessarily always have to mean constant high levels of public spending on fully nationalised services. But more has to be done.

Mariana Mazzucato, economist and one Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell's anti-austerity economic advisors, has argued that the private sector is a weak innovator that is loathe to take risks. Quoting Keynes, she argues that most innovation - the opening of new economic spaces - is done best by government (Mazzucato, 2013) - in the form of a smarter state.

Inequality has many facets that need to be tackled. Education needs more support. Housing needs to be more widely available and cheaper. Young people need to see more opportunities in more fields. None of these things can be achieved without some additional government funding at some stage. Public bodies have the ability, and the right, to act: to open up new economies, to create new opportunities where there are now none, and to invest in new futures.

 

Breakthroughs in all of these areas would lead to new economic growth and wider spread shares of the spoils. A penny on tax for education is a modest, practical start. A small, subtle, rejection of the austerity doctrine. But it is one small solution, for just one part of a huge and interlinked problem of inequality that the government cannot for much longer simply trim around the edges.

Efforts to extinguish the light of human progress sometimes cause the candlelight to flicker, but it always burns the brighter after

Peace for Paris. Photograph: From Subjectif Art, design by Jean Jullien (License)

The world is moving inexorably forwards. More freedoms, more rights, more equality. That progress has been tempered time and again by horrifying bouts of violence and war, psychotic acts of terror and ruthless acts of sectarian cleansing. Yet humanity has continued to stumble its way out of the darkness.

Acts of violence, counter-revolutionary reaction and suppression by those would keep the world trapped in the darkness, rear up with each step forward. They attempt use fear to control and dissuade, to put out the light. Yet each act of violence has changed humanity. It forges an ever growing, ever spreading, solidarity against violence, ignorance and selfishness. It simply makes the case, and support, for peace, liberty and tolerance stronger.

Vaclav Havel was a writer and playwright who became a political dissident against totalitarian communist rule and went on to became the first President of the Czech Republic. At the height of the constant, suppressive, threat of arrest and imprisonment, Havel wrote The Power of the Powerless. In it, Havel described how under the rule of even the most desperate and tyrannical of police states, the light of dissent and liberty can flicker into life through simple acts of disobedience and the refusal to comply with the wielders of power and fear. That in these simple acts, an individual:

"...rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth."

For many, the events in Paris, or in Beirut, have extinguished their ability to see that light - or so dimmed their sensitivity to it beneath a howling storm of pain and loss that they may never see it again. For those people, there is perhaps little comfort in knowing that despite, and maybe in spite of, atrocities, the statistics say that there are only positive trends when it comes to human health and prosperity.

To those people, it may well be cold comfort that the light continues to flicker, let alone that it will grow stronger. Even so, we cannot give up on, or ignore, that flame. By its light, people have changed the world for the better with even the smallest acts of freedom.

Whether it's the struggle for human rights, civil rights and liberties, and democracy around the world, or their particular manifestations in the rising visibility of struggles for Women's rights, LGBT rights or for recognition that Black Lives Matter, the movement towards equality and respect is irresistible.

Manchester Pride is a symbol of the campaign for individual liberty that is only sustainable with greater economic equality

Manchester Pride has grown to be a bright and gleeful reminder of the advances made in the struggle for the freedom of identity. The Pride parade has become a city-wide carnival celebration of the acceptance of difference (BBC, 2015).

Yet the liberty that the parade lauds is a fragile thing. It can only survive so long as the society around it is willing to support the capacity of its citizens to exercise that freedom. In the long run, that means support for more than free association. It means supporting the economic equalities and opportunities that makes the so-called 'luxury' of choice a realistic possibility.

The present political era has been described as a 'liberal age' (Payne, 2015). With the general paucity of success for liberal political parties, that might seem to be a bit of a grand statement. Yet it reflects the astounding success of social liberalism in society.

The liberties of the individual have been widely accepted - as Manchester Pride shows. When Ireland embraced equal marriage, in an emphatic plebiscite that was signed into law on Saturday (The Irish Times, 2015), it left only Italy as a hold out for the old ways in Western Europe (Kirchgaessner, 2015).

Yet, as touched upon in Nick Clegg's resignation speech, the advance of these freedoms is fragile in the face of 'fear and grievance' (Lindsay, 2015). These strong emotions follow an historical pattern, with tough times, caused by an economic crisis, leading to fraught social disputes and hearts turning inwards towards tribalism - just when a broader social solidarity is called for.

In the age of austerity, these problems are exacerbated by the inequalities that the austerian system promotes. Concentrations of wealth (Piketty, 2013; Naidu, 2014), the strains of globalised competition and the slashing of social security only reinforce these fears and tribalism (Rivera, 2014; Washington, 2013).

Few organisations epitomise this modern struggle and contradiction so fully as the European Union. It champions social liberalism, supporting the liberation of the individual from the ideological chains of the state, even as it is itself used by nationally conservative parties as a vehicle for the fiscally conservative policies of austerity.

On the one hand, in Italy there is pressure from European institutions for the country to meet the basic rights of its citizens over issues of identity and gender - against pretty stern resistance in places like Venice (The Guardian, 2015). Yet on the other hand, Greece has been struggling under heavy fiscal pressure applied by the European 'Troika' (Fazi, 2015) - largely against the democratic voice of Greek citizens (Monbiot, 2015).

The trouble for this liberal age is that it's happening side-by-side with an age of conservative economics - and all of the success won by social liberalism is under threat from it. Without strong social security safety nets, with people burdened by servitude as a way of life, they have little time to find, let alone make the most of, opportunities - and that takes away their capacity to make choices for themselves.

The Manchester Pride parade, with its lights, music and colour cheered on by the citizenry, is the symbol of a modern, progressive society - and a social solidarity stretching beyond simple tribalism. The spirit of solidarity symbolised by the Pride festival - even with it's imperfections (Amelia, 2015) - is needed now in the struggle against a conservative economic supremacy that, by taking away the social security, threatens the freedoms of all citizens.