The Budget: Hammond's budget all about tweaks - spending headlines mostly in the millions rather than the billions

Philip Hammond delivered his first budget today. Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond looked relaxed, even made jokes, as he delivered his first - and apparently Britain's last - Spring Budget. The Chancellor's budget was one tweaks, all framed as adjustments to increase fairness. He began by summarising current economic trends, noting the highest number of women in employment ever. Growth projections are up slightly, but a projected drop in borrowing is only short term.

The long term economic plan of his predecessor George Osborne, to eliminate the deficit and produce a surplus to whittle away the national debt, was much delayed. Its aims where pushed back again by Hammond today. The promised fiscal surplus now not likely be seen until a long way into the 2020s - at least.

As for spending, the numbers he was pitching were all notably in the millions rather than the billions. £200 million for school repairs. £100 million for A&Es. A few hundred million for devolved administrations. £700m for councils to tackle urban congestion. The one exception appeared to £2 billion for Social Care - yet that was immediately qualified as being spread over three years.

Those spending commitments were companied by big companies seeing Corporation Tax fall again, as planned, to 17%. Perhaps as a counter to the criticism Conservatives have faced for their tax cuts for those at the top end, Hammond did however announce a halving of Director-shareholders' tax-free dividend allowance - noting it as a very generous tax break for investors.

For income taxes and wages that affect the overwhelming majority of people, the Personal Income Tax Allowance and the National Living Wage will both increase, to £11,500 and £7.50 respectively. The Universal Credit taper rate will also be reduced from 65% to 63% for earnings over allowances. Yet the overall positive impact of these is likely to be slim.

It is not surprising then that Jeremy Corbyn attacked the Chancellor's budget as one of "utter complacency". Corbyn painted a picture of people in precarious work - unsure of where they'll find work or what money they may make tomorrow, queueing at food banks and one of a million working households getting housing benefit because working pay doesn't cover the rent - for whom there were few measures.

The Labour leader expressed anger that public servants have still seen no pay rise in seven years, due to the Government's freeze on pay, and that no funding security has been given to the NHS despite there being an obvious crisis, despite the fact that corporations are still going to get their year on year tax cut.

The Chancellor's budget has offered only a range of small spending increases, in a very concise series of measures, and it is hard to see them as sufficient. Analysts, such as Kamal Ahmed at the BBC, have characterised the budget as representing 'pain delayed' - taking advantage of the short term boost that Government finances are experiencing this year.

This is not the start of a public investment led drive to build a path out of austerity. With the debt and deficit still hanging heavily over Britain, these feel like stop-gap measures to assuage certain political pressures in the present, and to ease the way to the further austerity that waits ahead.

Leak of the Panama Papers is our regular reminder of the huge credibility problem politics in the UK still faces

New revelations, about new scandals, do little to reassure a public jaded with the political process when they aren't followed up with definitive, fair and progressive action. Photograph: Protesters outside the 2015 Conservative Party Conference in Manchester .

Politics in the UK has a credibility problem. It has existed for some time. Back in 2010, before the Liberal Democrats ran into their own credibility problems, their election campaign sparked interest by drawing critical attention to a political era of empty rhetoric, deceptive spin and broken promises (Clegg, 2010).

Long locked out of power by Labour and the Conservatives, the Lib Dems were well placed to capitalise on public discontent with a political system that had also locked out the public. The 2008 crash was recent history and the deception of the Iraq War was still fresh in people's minds.

The announcement of yet another leak filled with scandal, showing billions being hidden systematically in offshore accounts (Harding, 2016) - made possible through endless technicalities and loopholes - should cause outrage. Yet the story feels like it is falling somewhat flat (Sherriff, 2016).

After standing down as Liberal Democrat leader in 2006, the late Charles Kennedy wrote that:

"The danger in all of this is that if sufficient people conclude that there is nothing in the conventional political process for them then they may opt for more simplistic and extreme options on offer. I remain an optimist. But across the mainstream political spectrum there is a candid recognition of the danger."

The era of austerity has not repaired public trust. Scandals keep being unveiled - like the HSBC scandal or the Google Tax Deal - and they never seem to be resolved. Like the banks after the crash, there is some awkward shuffling before business as usual quietly resumes.

All the while, our political and economic systems are toppling out of balance (Garside, 2016). With rising inequality, even homelessness, everyday life has begun to feel precarious for those outside of the highest echelons, as the Conservative government strips back basic social security.

And yet, even though the Conservative Party overseeing all of this seems to be riven with insurmountable contradictions that should pull it apart (D'Ancona, 2016), there doesn't seem to be a definitive alternative ready to step up. Labour, the most obvious opponent, finds itself in much the same situation.

Revelations of hidden billions and loopholes, by journalists, really aught to make the viewing public hopeful. In its own way, it shows civic institutions holding the powerful to account. The trouble is that with each subsequent scandal, and each subsequent failure to follow through and reform on the part of the accused institutions, the public instead becomes more jaded - not least when the scandals are of the media's own making or they are implicated.

Transparency isn't about invasions of privacy. It is about a system with clear rules, without loopholes, based on fair principles. Officials with clear and accountable powers. Public and private bodies with clear and accountable responsibilities. Without these things, without transparency, the credibility of any system will quickly be lost.

Without credibility, people are driven away disaffected - believing that fairness will not be observed or that change is not possible. It calls into question why one individual should fulfil their responsibilities when others do not and remain unaccountable. Social participation, at that point, is reduced to little more than the result of fear and coercion - people coerced into participating in an unfair system to which there is no alternative, for fear of losing what little security they have.

Rebuilding trust, and credibility, begins with transparency. But revelations alone are not enough. They're just a moment in time. These moments must be turned into momentum. Progress is turning these moments into a permanent ongoing process. A process structured around vigilance, fairness and reform.

As the Conservative Welfare Bill goes to an activist House of Lords, progressives need to speak out for the alternatives

The House of Lords has become an ironically activist body in opposition to the Conservative majority in the Commons that is trying to substantially restructure social security in Britain.

On Tuesday the Conservative government's Welfare Reform and Work Bill returns to the Lords for its third reading. The bill is a key part of the Conservative pursuit of their roundly inspecific manifesto promise of billions in 'welfare savings' - including attempts to scrap child poverty measures, to introduce a total Household Benefits Cap, to freeze benefits and to restrict Child Tax Credits (Treloar, 2015).

In Autumn, the Chancellor dodged public criticism by dropping plans to make cuts to Tax Credits, aided by a gamble on positive economic forecasts (ITV, 2015). Yet, as was recorded at the time, this was only a matter of delaying the inevitable (Kuenssberg, 2015; Eaton, 2015). The intention was still, in time, to phase out Tax Credits and fold them into the Universal Credit.

Now its again the turn of the Universal Credit to face cuts (BBC, 2016). The Institute for Fiscal Studies has stressed that changes will leave many of the poorest people thousands of pounds worse off. Once more the burden of paying down the deficit and debt has been shifted around, disguised, and then left upon the poorest, on those who are struggling the most.

If other opposition has been quiet - with the Labour Party in its pre-Corbyn interim under Harriet Harman abstained in the bill's early phases (Guttenplan, 2015) - it may only be because the political system renders them powerless.

Its true that the government has already been defeated in an ironically activist House of Lords over its welfare plans on both Tax Credits (Morris & Grice, 2015) and the attempt to scrap Child Poverty measures (Mason, 2016; Mortimer, 2016) - with Liberal Democrats who in particular seem determined, weak though their mandate has now become, to use their, problematic but still considerable, presence in the House of Lords to oppose the cuts in Parliament. Yet with a Conservative Commons majority, any opposition could eventually be overcome.

One the biggest criticisms of the Conservative majority is that it has sought to balance the books without sufficient concern for the human cost in the present (Sikka, 2015; Boffey, 2014). The focus of the Conservative government on 'making work pay' has mostly been an exercise in relativism - making work seem relatively more profitable by punishing, hassling and impoverishing those in need of welfare.

For progressives there is a responsibility to look to other ways that do not accept the casualties of the present as an inevitable tragedy and to speak out, especially at a time when the most vulnerable are losing their voice by falling off electoral registration lists and so being under-represented (Mason, 2016{2}). At present, the most exciting alternative is the Basic Income.

On trial in the Netherlands and Finland (Perry, 2015; Unkuri, 2015), the Basic Income is a form of universal welfare, provided to all citizens unconditionally. It acts as a level of subsistence support that is always available, aiming to alleviate all citizens from the fear of falling into, and the desperation of being in, poverty.

On a practical level, it would replace most in-work benefits. From the personal income tax allowance - which might be seen to fulfil a similar role through a tax discount, only provided on the condition that you work for a wage, at a cost of an estimated £86bn - to tax credits and the jobseekers allowance - costing £30bn and £3bn, respectively.

The ongoing economic struggle continues to disproportionately hurt the most vulnerable. Austerity has little to offer them, depending more upon negative liberty, the removal of limitations, than positive liberty, providing a leg up to opportunities.

Laissez faire is not enough. Visibly rising homelessness and the need for food banks is not good enough. A civilised society should be able and prepared to take care of the most vulnerable. Progressives have to be prepared to look for and propose solutions, with more compassion, that act to end poverty.

Labour and the Lib Dems talk of reclaiming the 'Centre' - but what do they mean?

The UK general election made it abundantly clear that the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats did not have the confidence of voters. In the face of that defeat, the respective parties have begun their own internal debates over their future. One of the questions that both parties will be asking is whether either of them need to claim the political centre ground to recover their electoral fortunes.

Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper has already made it clear that she won't back a 'lurch' to the Left or Right (Gayle, 2015), and the Lib Dems are also being cautioned against straying from the 'liberal centre' in search of the more radical liberalism for which they built their pre-Clegg reputation in opposition (Tall, 2015).

What isn't necessarily clear for many observers is what exactly is meant by the 'centre'.

There are, in essence, two of them. The first is the position of compromise between the grand historic ideological positions of liberalism, democracy and conservatism. The other represents a shifting point which acts as the 'centre' of a space shaped by the dominant voices of the day on the main issues - usually the media outlets with the broadest audience and the main political parties.

The Historic Centre

The historic centre represents a kind of Roman ideal, holding the space where the interests and sections of society are brought together - where the Romans were seen to have built a polity that incorporates elements from all of them. It is the place of mixed government, mixed economy and compromise between the grand polemic ideological positions - which represent ideals like individualism and communitarianism, progressivism and conservatism, libertarianism and authoritarianism.

While the shifting centre depends upon parties each appealing to a perceived majority opinion, the historic centre is the both the result of the development of distinct ideological positions and a place of compromise between the sections of society these ideologies have been seen to represent.

In Nineteenth Century Europe, the stranglehold of monarchist conservatism found itself challenged by radical new ideas. The enlightenment ideas of reason and progress - that had played a significant role in the American and French revolutions - had led to the formation of political groups and associations of radicals, republicans and reformers.

That new republican Left-wing of politics was broadly composed of two separate ideological groups: the liberals and the democrats. During the revolutionary struggles of 1848 the dividing lines between the two became apparent. While the liberals had been content to reform the old system slowly - accepting limited concessions in the form of a constitution, small extensions of suffrage and more freedom for merchants and burgeoning industry to open up a free trading free market - the democrats had wanted more.

The democrats wanted control placed in the hands of the people. During the strife of 1848, the democrats decisively split from the liberals and from amongst them came the early developments of socialism - including the works of Karl Marx. That division between the liberals and democrats, on the road to their own versions of progress, allowed the conservative establishment to survive. A counter-revolution followed, but what that reaction could not suppress was the emergence of these three broad positions, two upon the Left and one upon the Right, which were seen as each representing broad progressive sections of society.

Between these positions - each with their own distinct, historical priorities: the democrats for equality, community and the workers; the liberals for opportunity, the individual and the professional and merchant classes; and the conservatives for tradition, security and the traditional hierarchy - there lies a centre ground balanced in a compromise between these positions and sections.

The use of that place has been ascribed to the Roman system of mixed government, referred to and interpreted by renaissance thinkers as civic humanism. The primary concern at this centre was to avoid tyranny of all kinds, of any ideological or sectional type, by creating a society that balanced the various parts of society within the establishment's institutions. In Roman terms that meant singular monarchical figures in the form of term-limited Consuls, the aristocratic wealthy interests in the form of the Senate, and democratic participation in the form of direct democracy and civic assemblies.

The Shifting Centre

Though it may not feel like it, what with all of their similarities, Britain does still have three main parties representing these three grand historic ideologies - Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. Their connection to these distinct historic positions has however been weakened by their competition over the Centre ground - in the name of chasing the power to govern.

The Centre the parties compete over today is not, however, a true compromise between each ideological viewpoint and sectional interest of society. The contemporary Centre has been shaped by the times. Tony Blair's Third Way social democracy, David Cameron's attempt at a warm and fuzzy conservatism, and David Laws' Orange Book liberalism all represent responses to a Centre that shifted to the Right, deep into Conservative territory, due to the drastic changes to the balance of power between sections of society that took place in the 1980s and 1990s.

All three accepted the possibilities created by the flimsily founded wealth generated by the aggressive speculative capitalism of the 1990s and 2000s. All three accepted deregulation and light touch management, only interfering as much as was needed to ensure a small amount of wealth redistribution to serve those social purposes prioritised by the party ideology - broadly speaking equality, opportunity and security, for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories, respectively. All three accepted that the balance of power had shifted significantly into the hands of wealthy vested interests and so adjusted their approach accordingly.

That has, however, proved a dangerous game. The question that many will have asked over the last twenty years is: what is the point of having power if you have lost what makes your use of it distinct?

Disillusionment with the tripartite status quo, where the big three parties appear to have become indistinguishable, has fragmented the old system. Even though the Conservative Party managed to just about squeeze out a majority, it is a narrow lead on a poor mandate - less than 25% of eligible voters - which, by prizing a majority to the Conservatives, has done little to re-establish the legitimacy of the old system. If anything, it may simply accelerate its collapse.

A Decision to Make

The trouble for Labour and the Lib Dems is that to 'win' an election, under the present system, means receiving votes from the broadest groups of voters, not simply representing a section of society. That has led both parties to make compromises with the dominant social attitudes of the day in order to appeal, not to the historic centre, but to the shifting centre - first in the 1990s and 2000s with the wealth created by an economic boom, however shaky its foundation, and then in the 2010s with the growing cynicism towards welfare, free movement and immigration.

The big decision now ahead of both parties is whether to return to a purer form of the party ideology, with the risk of becoming little more than a sectional voice for a particular interest, or to embrace the chase for the votes at the shifting centre, with the risk of alienating more idealistic supporters in order to gain the support of those whose views have been formed from the dominant attitudes of the times. That decision comes with a lot of questions to answer.

Should the parties give up their distinct arguments to appeal to as large an audience as possible, in order to gain the power to implement their vision? What would then make any party distinct from another? Would there be something dishonest in that approach?

Or, should the parties be up on a platform, making their distinct arguments heard and trying to convince people of the merits of their ideals, each representing a small portion of voters? And where society remains divided in the aftermath of an election, place trust in coalition government?.

There are no simple answers. It is, however, worth considering a few things: whether we believe or not that people are fixed entities, with definite and fully formed views, bound to the narrow interests of their section of society; whether we believe or not that ideologies can offer a broader civic vision, in which people from all parts of society can find merit, without a party having to give up its distinct ideals; whether we believe that it is the justly democratic act to attend to the dominant social attitudes of the day, regardless of the evidence, or if we can or should challenge that popular consensus with idealism and evidence.

The popular consensus of today has pulled the shifting centre far into conservative territory. The voices advocating for business, for low taxes and for nationalist priorities like restricting immigration are writing the contemporary political narrative. To deviate too much means risking being seen as an idealistic extremist. To play for votes from the midst of that consensus means progressive parties straying a long way from their idealistic alternatives.

What stands before those who have to make the decision is a choice between a pragmatic path to the power to govern and a, potentially, politically impractical pursuit of idealism. The path each party has chosen won't be known until their newly elected leader begins to shape new policy ideas. But it is to be hoped that a decision to tread a practical path can still find space for presenting visions of alternative societies outside of the present limitations and boundaries. That there might be included the aim of changing minds and reconstructing social norms, values and structures so that in the future we might see our ideals represented rather than sacrificed on the road to political office.