Tsipras' repeat use of popular votes raises questions about radical democracy and his approach of 'pragmatic radicalism'

Alexis Tsipras' radical united social front faces a challenge as breakaways found Popular Unity party ahead of September election. Photograph: Ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ-ΕΚΜ για την παραγωγική ανασυγκρότηση της Θράκης by Joanna (License) (Cropped)

Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece, has resigned. Having succeeded in steering a new bailout agreement through the Eurozone and then through the Greek Parliament, Tsipras has taken the decision to resign and submit his work to the electorate for their judgement (Henley, 2015).

The decision has been seen as either a canny political gamble (Smith, 2015), albeit one with good odds of paying off, or as the latest in a line of dangerous political games that exploit the system (Patrikarakos, 2015). There is, however, an alternative explanation.

From very early on, Alexis Tsipras has been clear as to what he thought was meant by being 'radical' (from Horvat, 2013).

"I believe that today 'radical' is to try to be able to take responsibility for the people, to not be afraid of that, and at the same time to maintain in the democratic road, in the democratic way. To take the power for the people and to give it back to the people."

By that barometer, what Tsipras has done is entirely consistent. His radical democratic vision is a difference of method. Compete at elections and win power, of course. But to then reform and change that power, or through the party give access to that power, to the wider public - rather than allowing them to be alienated from it by their own representatives (Gourgouris, 2013).

Radical democracy of this kind requires action. It requires a radical to engage with political games and try to win. To that end, Tsipras and Syriza did something quite remarkable: they brought together in a single party - at first a coalition, an electoral alliance - for however short a time, a broad progressive group that included communists, socialists, radicals, social democrats and even centrists.

While for many, radicalism has been epitomised best by Yanis Varoufakis' symbolic opposition to austerity and the European austerian establishment order, Tsipras' radicalism is not about the particular policies that come out of the process. The Syriza leader's version is a radicalism of methods not necessarily of ends - an assessment that has led to the unsurprising detachment of Syriza's Left-wing in advance of the autumn elections (Henley et al, 2015).

This has been particularly obvious in how Tsipras and Syriza has often had to be pragmatic about the kind of changes they can actually make (White, 2015) and begrudging, even defiant, in their compliance when forced to accept the implementation of policies with which they do not agree (Gourgouris, 2015).

The idea of radical leaders who take moderate positions and try to reform from within the system, accepting to an extent its challenges and constraints, is not a unique situation (Frankel, 2015) - Lula in Brazil, Mitterand in France, and others, have all made such attempts. But Tsipras' version brings the people along as an active participant.

In that light, Tsipras' surprise use of a referendum during bailout negotiations (Traynor, 2015), maybe should not have been so surprising. Its seemingly confusing message might then be seen as asking the people for a judgement on him and for their endorsement of his approach: a show of dissent in the act of compliance. With this coming election, Tsipras again turns to the people according to his method of keeping them engaged with the business of government.

Tsipras' version of radical democracy could in fact be called 'pragmatic radicalism'. It aims to end the alienation of the people from the business of government, not just to achieve this or that policy. Doing so requires pragmatic leaders, willing to wade into public affairs on behalf of the people, who can be realistic and accept the practical limitations of what can be achieved in that sphere - relying instead on what might be achieved in the future by having the people as an active and vigilant partner.

This alternative viewpoint comes, however, with a few words of caution.

A leader falling prey to their own popularity, or of seeing the opportunity to exploit it, is always a risk. Yanis Varoufakis, Tsipras' former right-hand, has already suggested that Tsipras is turning into a figure like France's former President Mitterand (Anthony, 2015), who led Parti Socialiste to power on a Left-wing Keynesian platform, only to, ultimately, conform to the pressures of the European economic order (Birch, 2015). There is also a fine line in democratic politics between involving the people in the form of popular rule, and in using their support, ostensibly for a personality, to strong arm the political system.

Understanding the difference will have become a crucial issue by the time Yanis Varoufakis and Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos, meet for a conversation hosted by The Guardian in October. By then, Tsipras will have presumably won a resounding endorsement for Syriza from the people of Greece, Jeremy Corbyn will have been elected to the Labour party leadership, and Iglesias will be on the verge of leading Podemos into December's Spanish general election.

A new Left-wing politics will be taking its first steps into the sun. When it does, it needs to be in possession of positive lessons derived from serious critique of popular radical democracy. That means understanding what keeps people engaged with the decision making that affects their lives, and, how radical parties can reform the system to empower these people in their day to day lives. But it also means being aware of the danger of potentially falling into simplistic, even personal, popularity contests.

Elizabeth May is right - the real possibility of seeing their ideals represented can bring back disaffected voters

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, at the StopC51 'Day of Action' at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto. Photograph: Elizabeth May at #StopC51 'Day of Action' by Alex Guibord (License) (Cropped)

During Thursday night's Canada leaders debate, Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, stressed that her party did not need to take votes away from the three major parties (Wells, 2015). May said, as she has said before (May, 2015), that her party could instead focus on bringing disaffected voters back into the political fold.

With Jeremy Corbyn's leadership bid, there are few subjects more sensitive for the UK Labour Party than the matter of who they should be looking to for support. May's comments touch on a sore point for the Labour establishment, who seem to have set out, with determination, to put Corbyn down and discredit his supporters (Watt, 2015).

What the mainstream of the Labour Party demands, instead, is a focus on wooing just enough of the two-thirds of Britain who regularly turnout to vote. To gain their support, the party wants policy pitches to be based on opinion poll data of the most popular, currently held, views on a range of issues (Wintour, 2015) - from the economy to immigration.

Between May and Corbyn on one side, and the Labour establishment on the other, there are two very different mindsets at work.

At the leaders debate, Elizabeth May's statement was made in response to accusations that her party would split the, already fractured, anti-Harper vote. Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have led Canada since 2006, first as a minority and then as a majority, through one controversy after another, against an opposition split between the historically dominant Liberals and the New Democrats.

What the leader of Canada's Green Party makes clear is that people will turn out to vote if they believe that their ideals will be represented (May, 2015). Yet, where voters can be split into two distinct groups, progressives and conservatives, by a one-member one-constituency system, there remain obstacles to representation. Despite May's optimism, even if you can bring back the voters who have turned away, you would still risk dividing up the support of progressives between several parties in a manner that allows conservatives to triumph (Lucas, 2015).

In most countries with a one-member one-constituency system, a solution of some sort tends to develop that addresses vote splitting. The solutions vary, ranging from a two party system to the acknowledgement of formal electoral alliances.

For Caroline Lucas, the sole Green Party MP at Westminster, the solution is a one time electoral pact amongst the UK's Left parties, with the aim of reforming the electoral system into a more proportionally representative form (Lucas, 2015). With one more pragmatic vote, cast for an alliance of progressives, pragmatic votes could be a thing of the past.

However, Labour, the biggest party of the UK Left - at least historically - has remained determined to pursue its approach of forcing everyone on the Left to align within one big tent. For the Left, this is a huge disadvantage. The Left is vibrant and diverse. From Liberals to Socialists, to Environmentalists and Feminists, they all have their own priorities - which can be mangled or suppressed by a big tent party with its focus solely upon achieving victory by collecting the 51% of votes.

Labour, in pursuit of that goal, remains focussed on, and talks a lot about, 'the Centre': home to the broadest group of voters. For them, the Centre describes a particular consensus. It is an approach that has led the party steadily to the Right, as they try to suppress the fractiousness of the Left and, under the first past the post voting system, force voters to check their ideals at the polling station door - all in the name of anti-conservative unity.

Yet the Centre can also describe a place of compromise, where you seek to create a balance between the ideals and priorities of the different ideologies. If the aim of Centrism is to be broadly inclusive, then its cause would, surely, be better served, in finding both consensus and balance, by voters being able to choose representatives that actually fit with their priorities.

In Canada and the UK, the Green Party is making the case that people will turn out to vote if they can vote for their ideals - with some legitimate hope that their vote could actually turn a significant, and proportional, percentage of those nominated into representatives. In that task, one-member/one constituency, first-past-the-post type, voting systems are inadequate.

If people are to see their vote count, and have the chance of seeing their ideals turned into policy and put into action, proportional representation and coalition government present the best means. But first come the pragmatic choices.

The parties of the Left have to be willing to stand up for the ideals that make them distinct, while showing solidarity with other progressive parties in the general cause of opposing conservatism and reforming the establishment. If they can respect and nurture their supporters idealism and are willing to support reform that lets it flourish, the voters will return.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act removes the safeguards that protect individuals from the arbitrary power of the state

The very same week in which David Cameron has been confirmed to a second term as Prime Minister offering stability, with Parliament barely having had the chance to reassemble, the new Conservative government has already lit the fires of controversy. Cameron has promised a unified Britain, yet one of his first announcements is the intention to scrap the Human Rights Act 1998 (Watt, 2015), which is likely to be the first of several big and divisive threats to the Union during this Parliament.

The Human Rights Act is woven deeply into the British social fabric. The Welsh Labour government is resistant to changes, SNP-led Scotland already has one foot out of the door and even the Good Friday Agreement for peace in Northern Ireland would have to be tampered with (McDonald, 2015) - and all of the devolved institutions possess the power to deny consent to alter this matter within their jurisdictions (Brooks, 2015; Scott, 2015).

Tensions are already high between Westminster and Scotland over the UK's continued membership of the EU - with Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon demanding that a majority be secured in each of the UK's nations for secession from the EU to go ahead (Sturgeon, 2015), and Wales is divided on the issue (ITV, 2013). This attempt to undermine British commitment to Human Rights is only going to ensure that the fault lines are riven deep between the nations of the UK, almost entirely by the hands of the Westminster Conservatives.

Under the stewardship of Justice Minister Michael Gove, formerly in charge of much criticised education reform (Garner, 2013), the Conservative plan is to end the influence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the UK Supreme Court - although it would leave in place the right of British citizens to appeal to the ECHR themselves (Watt, 2015{2}).

But the Human Rights Act is so much more. It allows British citizens to contest abuses of their European human rights in British courts and requires public institutions to abide by those rights (Stone, 2015). Those rights, contained within the European Convention on Human Rights - in the drafting of which Britain played a large part - protect things like the right to life, privacy and a fair trial; the freedom from torture, servitude or slavery; and the freedoms of conscience, expression and association.

While the UK has largely kept pace with the rights contained within the Convention, its removal takes away certain fundamental guarantees. A particularly important guarantee that will be to remove executive action from accountability to citizen's human rights (Starmer, 2015).

The Convention, and the Human Rights Act, are also nothing to do with the EU. They were implemented rather by the regional international organisation the Council of Europe and is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights - to which 47 states are signed up as members, a much wider membership that the EU, which include Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Norway, Switzerland and others, all in addition to the 28 members states of the EU.

As much as it is guarantee of the human rights of British citizens, the Human Rights Act 1998 is also an international commitment to upholding the principle of human rights, which requires signatory states and their lawmakers to avoid infringing, or treating arbitrarily, the rights of its citizens contained within the ECHR.

When the convention was signed up to by Churchill, all of the rights were covered by the UK's laws already (Johnston, 2015). But over time they have been applied in ways, and legal challenges have been made through the European Court, that have led to new rulings that have proved a difficulty for the UK - legal representation of migrants, arbitrary removal of the voting rights of prisoners (Ziegler, 2012).

There have been claims this means Europe is making laws for Britain, but this is simply an evolving legal system, responding to a changing environment, in the same way as the British system has evolved. But it also stands as a safeguard, aimed at ensuring that people all across Europe have access to same basic rights, and have a place where they can appeal against arbitrary treatment at the hands of their government. With regards to the prisoner voting 'scandal', Aidan O'Neill QC (2011) said that:

'What is important... is the example one gives. One of the big issues facing the European Court of Human Rights is teaching newly democratic States about democracy. One of its biggest client cases is Russia. Another one in terms of democracy is Turkey. It is a problem with the Council of Europe mechanisms that some States simply do not fix their systems as they should do and it would be a great pity if a long-established State — the United Kingdom, which was there at the founding and there at the drafting — were to set an example to other States in the Council of Europe that they do not have to abide by the law. This is where politics and international relations come in. It is incredibly important that the rule of law be respected at an international level because if we have law/law then we do not have war/war.'

There are concerns, even amongst some potential Conservative rebels, such Kenneth Clarke and the former attorney general Dominic Grieve who disagree with the move (Watt, 2015{2}), that repealing and replacing the act constitutes a step towards rejecting government under the rule of law.

Concerns have risen again about the kinds of laws the UK government is seeking to pass to which European human rights challenges would have posed a strident difficulty. Amongst them, the Snooper's charter remains the one to provoke the most controversy (Carr, 2015). The so called 'communications data bill - for which previous attempts to pass such a bill had been blocked by the Liberal Democrats (Rawlinson, 2015) - forms part of the scramble by Conservatives to give security services more access to our personal data as a way to see attacks before they can happen (Johnston, 2015), to which Boris Johnson said that:

'I'm not particularly interested in all this civil liberties stuff when it comes to these people's emails and mobile phone conversations. If they're a threat to our society then I want them properly listened to.'

These attempts have been criticised for attempting to take away important liberties for very little gain in terms of safety. One particular observation being that regular investigative methods have proven far more effective, based on specific, targeted and legally accountable procedures (Carr, 2015).

The SNP is already looking to rally Conservative backbench rebels against the party's aim to scrap the Human Rights Act (Brooks, 2015). With the devolution legislation, that brought into being both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, there comes the demand of compliance with the Convention and the 1998 Act by the decision-makers of those jurisdictions.

It is possible and likely that Holyrood will refuse to give consent to Westminster, and the Welsh Labour government has derided the attempted repeal as making Britain 'look like a Banana republic' (BBC, 2015). Even the Good Friday Agreement, essentially an International Treaty - that made it possible, in partnership with the Irish Republic, to establish a peaceful Northern Ireland - guarantees that the European Convention on Human Rights is completely incorporated into the law of Northern Ireland (McDonald, 2015).

Recently, these rights have become a political football, bound up with sovereigntist, anti-foreign narratives that have gained traction in the UK. But underneath that is a struggle between competing visions of conservative and liberal societies.

Human rights are, by their nature, fundamentally liberal. They are the defences of the individual against the many, or against the abuses of the state. They represent a guarantee, whatever the circumstances, that people are always afforded an essential respect. In that sense, they undermine many of the institutions and social orders inherent to old conservatism, from churches to the state, where a premium is placed upon hierarchy and adherence. Over the years, the more modern versions of conservatism has taken on elements of these liberal values - but only so long as those liberal values remained 'safely' contained within conservative frameworks and limits (Willetts, 2013).

By standing outside of the British state - outside of any state - the rule of human rights law instead forces conservatism to work within a liberal framework. That is what keeps the rights of individuals safe from arbitrary treatment at the hands of ideologically motivated political decisions, and ensures that we can get justice when those rights are infringed. Trying to undo that framework would represent a step backwards, favouring the power of the state over the individual.

The Future of the Left begins today: If the Centre-Left parties get the foundations right, then the momentum is all in their favour

No sooner had David Cameron returned to Downing Street as a second term Prime Minister, than London was already playing host to anti-austerity, anti-Tory marches and protests (Tapper, 2015). In London, and in Cardiff as well, with chants declaring that 75% of the people did not vote for this Conservative government, there was a sneak preview of things to come - mass activism from the Left.

In the face of these protesting oppositions, the Conservatives are striving to show themselves to be the representatives of continuity and consistency (Watt, 2015). The Left, by comparison, has no real political continuity to speak of. However, that might not be a bad thing.

For both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the two biggest UK-wide parties of the Centre-Left, the spectacularly bad night they endured over 7th and 8th May was a pretty definitive rejection. But in that rejection, wherein both parties where very clearly broken by the result, there lies an opportunity. This is the threshold of a brand new day.

The key at this moment are the right foundations.

One of the big criticisms aimed at their parliamentary leadership by the Liberal Democrats' membership was that the approach to coalition was wrong from the beginning. Too eager and too easy. The damage done, by being seen as the party of coalition and complicit in Neo-Thatcherite austerity, the party could not recover.

However, the scale of the Lib Dems' defeat has, at least, served them by drawing a line under the last five years. They veered off from the expected script and they have been punished severely. That defeat presents the Lib Dems with the opportunity to rediscover their radicalism - their passionate campaigning, for political reform, for civil liberties and civil rights (Boyle, 2015).

David Steel, former leader of the old Liberal Party, placed the blame for the Lib Dems' poor result upon that apparent eagerness for a centre-right coalition. He argued that going into such s coalition meant abandoning 'radical progressivism' in favour of the pragmatic centre (Cowburn & Boffey, 2015).

Recovering the party's radicalism will require the election a convincingly left-liberal leader from amongst their rump. The current favourite is Tim Farron, as other possible candidates like Norman Lamb may have been too close to Clegg to be seen as representing enough of a shift to a towards distinctly liberal, rather than a Coalition, position (BBC, 2015).

If the party can find the right leader - and they can apply and embed the lessons of the last five years - there is optimism that the Lib Dems could recover (Wintour, 2015). There is even talk of the party reclaiming their position as the alternative opposition to Labour, able to work with them and others on the left.

Following the lead of the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas (Cowburn & Boffey, 2015), there is talk of co-operation between the parties of the progressive Left: first in the form of a pro-EU alliance and then maybe as some sort of electoral pact, along the lines of the old Lib-Lab pacts, by 2020 (Black, 2015).

Achieving those kinds of agreements will, however, require Labour to greatly reduce their aggressively jealous and belligerent attitude towards the other parties on the Left, that leads them to fight vindictive battles rather than fight the Conservatives.

At this election, that attitude led the party into a fight on three fronts: trying to stop the flood of voters leaving them in Scotland for the SNP - seen to be more conventionally Left-wing; trying to take back voters from the Lib Dems who were being punished for not being Left-leaning enough; and trying to fight the Conservatives head-on-head, on Tory-defined issues with Tory-style policies.

The Labour response was to put out a mix of messages and policies that left quite a puzzle as to what the party's values actually were - all over the place across Left, Centre and Right. It certainly wouldn't have helped that Labour tried to mimic so closely the Conservatives' own rhetoric, raising the question for voters: if you say Tories are right about all the main issues, why should anyone vote for you instead of them?

The debate has begun again - a particular long term internal struggle for the party - as to whether the party was too Left-wing or too Right-wing to be electable in 2015. According to an analysis of the election result, Labour did well in seats that were 'young, ethnically diverse, highly educated, socially liberal' and had a 'large public sector' (Ford, 2015) - probably helped by the lack of competition from the weakened Lib Dems. The trouble is that they bled voters in every other direction.

They lost white working class voters to UKIP, which the Blue Labour movement had warned would happen if the party did not cater to working class conservatism. They lost voters in Scotland on socialist issues, like the 'NHS, public services and redistribution'. They cannot even count on squeezing social liberal voters from the Lib Dems at every election. However they also lost out, particularly notably, amongst the wealthy, ambitious middle Englanders.

Former leader Tony Blair has staked out the New Labour case, claiming that the Centre-ground is the place for the Labour Party (Helm, 2015). Blair argued that if the party wants to achieve equality, its needs to do so without being seen to punish the ambitious - it needs to present a comprehensive vision of a society inclusive of those at the top as well as those at the bottom. Chuka Umunna, a potential Labour leadership candidate, is amongst the most Blairite of the new crop of hopefuls. Umunna's vision matches Blair's - a big tent Labour Party, able to house the poorest and the richest, which can take voters away from the Conservatives directly in those middle England constituencies (Umunna, 2015).

While there is always going to be some thinkers looking back to Blair for evidence that Labour can be broadly electable when positioned at the Centre, a task made all the more easy by the probable slight shift of the Lib Dems towards emphasising their Centre-Left credentials, that isn't the only thing the party needs.

One thing missing, or at the very least lacking in clarity, is the Labour Party's purpose. The search for a new leader can only do so much (Williams, 2015). What the party needs as much as anything else may well be the heart that the Lib Dems said they'd bring to the Tories. They need some sort of coherent vision that connects the party's soul (its values) with its head (the practical way in which those values are turned into policies suited to the times).

The decision ahead for Labour, between being part of the Left or the main party of the Centre, will have ramifications for voters and parties elsewhere. The performance of the Greens and the SNP show that Left-wing politics remains popular - taking 9% of the vote and seats between them, which is a strong showing even when you consider that many Left-wing voters will still have clung to Labour. Yet trying to reclaim their Left-wing voters will mean some stiff competition - and in the process giving up the Centre-ground contest.

If Labour sticks to the centre, they will have the potential to appeal to voters without stepping on the toes of either the Greens or the Lib Dems. But doing so means accepting the continued decline of its own Left-wing which will ultimately begin to believe that their are other options out there. The key for a Labour Party at the centre is to understand that you can be there with your values intact - you can accommodate a place for everyone within your vision of society without sacrificing ideals and principles.

For both Labour and the Lib Dems, the policy priority now seems to be returning to devolution and decentralisation, of both government and the economy, and comprehensive political, electoral and constitutional reform. The pursuit of that task will be helped by a positive thought: the immediate electoral future of both Labour and the Lib Dems looks bright... if they can resolve their issues and develop their visions.

As Cameron - digging up his One Nation Toryism (Nelson, 2015) and appearing magnanimous in victory, with praise for his opponents and appeals to the whole of the UK as one nation (White, 2015) - stood in front of Number 10, the old establishment found itself unexpectedly propped up, if only for a little while. But Cameron's grace in victory covers the fundamental weakness of his and the Conservatives' position. Cameron, the Conservatives and the Westminster establishment have on their side continuity and momentary stability. But that is all constructed around toxic attitudes towards welfare and the poor for which they no longer have the Liberal Democrats to hide behind.

The Left is not able to claim any sort of continuity. But what it has instead is time to construct, with care from the ground up, the ideas around which to build a new consensus. Combined with the spirit of political co-operation, best represented by the Green Party's Caroline Lucas, the Left now has all of the momentum. That momentum is leading to the completion of that which the advent of coalition government began - the comprehensive progressive reform of the British politics.

Election 2015: Your vote is your chance to speak out, even if you only do so tactically

With the UK's voting system being less than great when it comes to representation, it isn't surprising that there are many people out there who are seriously considering a tactical vote.

With a 'largest minority takes all' system, greatly in need of reform into something more representative, too many people are casting ballots without a hope of seeing themselves represented in their constituency. This is not a new issue - John Cleese had plenty to say about it thirty years ago. But its what we have for now.

As a result, many have cast, and many are again considering casting, their vote for the best of the worst - or at least, the most likely of the rest to stop the candidate they most despise from being the one who represents them. There are arguments for and against tactical voting which have validity - mostly divided between the idealism of voting for what you believe in, and the practicality of stopping what runs counter to your beliefs.

Various sources have published guides to where and how a tactical vote can count the most. Liberal blogger Stephen Tall gives a run down of where to vote tactically if you want to oppose UKIP. The Guardian and The Independent have both published guides to tactical voting in favour of any party, and voteswap.org is offering a  pledge system that allow you to vote tactically for Labour or the Greens in co-ordination with others around the UK.

It is to be hoped that this might be the last time a tactical vote is needed. The case for reform is growing irresistible. Sadly not everyone thinks the best move would be towards a more European style, more proportional system. Some would rather move towards another form of two-party system in the American style.

Regardless of how you intend to vote, even if you only spoil your ballot paper with a silly picture or a meaningful slogan, please do vote. Don't let the establishment think that your disgust, displeasure or disillusionment is to do with you being apathetic or uninterested. Make your voice heard, even if only to reject all of the options and demand better.

The Liberal Democrat Spring Conference - their last chance to define themselves

The Liberal Democrat Spring Conference represents probably the last chance the party will have to present its own vision, on it own terms, before they face an election campaign that could result in massive disappointment (Perraudin, 2015). It is not, however, a problem with which the Liberal Democrats are unfamiliar. They are long used to being marginalised and struggling for visibility.

Since the party was established - in a 1988 merger of the old Liberal Party with the Labour Party breakaways the Social Democratic Party, after a decade long electoral alliance - it has struggled to make itself heard in the political arena. 2010 had promised a major breakthrough, but, yet again, promising surges at the polls and 23% of the popular vote did not ultimately translate into seats.

The decision that followed, to go into coalition with the Conservatives, and for the leaders of the party - though not the majority of its MPs or the party membership itself - to drop direct opposition to tuition fees, turned public opinion definitively against them.

The great surprise is the difficulty which has faced the Liberal Democrats in getting across to people what it is that liberalism represents, this despite - with the exception of the pretty significant blip over tuition fees - the fact that the party has otherwise shown remarkable consistency over time. The conference speech of Party leader Nick Clegg could as easily have been promoting the 1997 manifesto as it is the 2015 manifesto.

If there is anything that could save Liberal Democrat seats at a general election, that consistency is one of them - if they can finally make a breakthrough in getting across what being liberal really means. And getting to the bottom of that, means understanding what the party has stood for over time.

The modern party's origins are in the old Liberal Party, the classical liberal, free trade, small government party that believed in laissez-faire administration, where the government does not interfere. Yet by the beginning of the 20th Century they had evolved - through struggles with old Tory landowners, and in response to the revelations of the poor reports - into the party in government under Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith and Lloyd George (governments that included Winston Churchill) that pursued the liberal welfare reforms. Those efforts established a national insurance to cover sick pay and unemployment, introduced pensions, and expanded access to schools.

That work was later further expanded after the Second World War, when the ideas of Liberal Party thinkers like William Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes had a decisive influence on the work of the post-war Labour governments. While the Liberal Party itself was at the time riven by splits as a result of different views regarding the two wars and various coalitions, the ideas and work of individual Liberals still had huge impact. The work of Beveridge and Keynes were key in the expansion of government action to intercede against the instability of the market economy, and to create cradle-to-the-grave social security in the form of welfare, pensions and the NHS.

In the face of the emergence of a virtual two-party system, split between the Conservatives and Labour while the Liberals were divided, it took decades for the party to recover. When the Liberals recovered, they did so in an electoral coalition as the SDP-Liberal Alliance - alongside the Social Democrats (SDP). The SDP had broken away from the Labour Party, uncomfortable with the far left-wing and right-wing factions that were struggling with each other for control of the party. Senior Labour figures Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams - both former ministers, and in Jenkins a former President of the European Commission - were amongst those who defected to create the SDP, and who were later to become Liberal Democrats when the SDP-Liberal Alliance merged.

The Alliance enjoyed some success in the polls - polling as high as 50% in the early 1980s- but they continued to fail to win seats. Despite, in 1983, securing as much as 25.4% of the popular vote, they only received 23 seats in parliament. Having again struggled to establish themselves and make a breakthrough with voters heavily invested in the two-party dynamic, the Alliance elected to merge and form the Liberal Democrats.

Under their first leader, Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrats made their first big breakthrough in decades, by gradually increasing their seats in parliament up to 46 by 1997. During that time the party pursued a close relationship with Labour, with talk of coalitions leading up to 1997, and over the possibility of introducing proportional representation for elections (BBC, 1999).

Looking at the party's commitments in 1997 (Liberal Democrats, 1997), it shows a remarkably consistency in message over time. In the 1990s, under Ashdown, there were commitments to raise tax by 1p in the pound to increase education funding, with the priority put on early years. A commitment to increase NHS funding, and increase choice for care. Balance borrowing against public investment, and cut wasteful spending. Championing civil rights, supporting small businesses, investing in research, devolving power through reforms of the economy and the constitution, supporting Britain's place in Europe, and encouraging a fairer society - all of these policies could have represented liberal ideas anywhere from the 1910s through to the 2010s.

The next leader, Charles Kennedy, continued to push these priorities as the party finally became widely known. However, its rise in prominence seemed to come almost exclusively from its noted socially liberal stances. The party was celebrated for campaigning for civil rights and opposing the War in Iraq (BBC, 2004). While they continued to increase their representation in the House of Commons, up to 62 by 2005, they still failed to make a major electoral breakthrough - even with an aggressive strategy aimed at defeating the Conservatives head-on (Carlin & Sapsted, 2005). When Kennedy's leadership ended in acrimony in 2006, he was replaced in the short term by Menzies Campbell.

By the end of 2007 there was a fresh leadership election, at which Nick Clegg was elected leader. Nick Clegg defined the party as the exclusive representative of the radical centre (Stratton & Wintour, 2011):

"Lloyd George's 'people's budget' to make the wealthy pay their fair share and give a pension to all those who had worked hard. Keynes's plans to make our economy work for everyone and provide jobs for all. Beveridge's radical blueprint for a welfare state to give security and dignity to every citizen... We are the heirs to Mill, Lloyd George, Keynes, Beveridge, Grimond. We are the true radicals of British politics."

Although Clegg's leadership would be seen as a shift to the Right, the party continued to be perceived as a centre-left, 'radical alternative' to Labour. Students, in particular, aligned with the Liberal Democrats - with a little help from a pledge to abolish university tuition fees. Under Clegg, the party seemed to be on the verge of a major breakthrough. However, the strong polling numbers didn't turn into seats. When the election came around for real, a lot of voters seem to have retreated to their safe havens.

The disappointment of winning only a few seats turned first into consolation at entering government, for the first time in a century, and having the opportunity to implement policies. The second turn was to astonishment and despondency as the party was assailed over the decision of Lib Dem leaders to go against their own party's official position on tuition fees, and vote for them with the government (BBC, 2010). Public anger turned into media campaigns assailing the Lib Dem leader, and now Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg (BBC, 2012). That situation has persisted and the party is now struggling desperately in the national polls. Yet, even without being vilified for a broken promise, the Lib Dems might still be struggling.

Across Europe there has been a very definite struggle faced by liberal and centrist parties. The FDP in Germany, the long time Liberal alternative to the conservative CDU and the centre-left SPD, collapsed at the last election to less than 5% of the vote - and so didn't even qualify for a seat in the German Parliament. In Italy Scelta Civica - Civic Choice - was founded to support the technocratic Prime Minister Mario Monti. In 2013 it received 8% of the vote and 37 seats. However, at the European Parliament elections in 2014 the party received only 0.7% of the vote.

For all their liberal social policies, liberals and centrists are still largely struggling to find persistent support. Part of the problem is that they are still seen as being nowhere in terms of economic policy. They are perceived to be right-wing capitalists by those to the Left who believe in a policy of taxing, borrowing and spending, and too left-wing by conservatives on Right who preach the economics of austerity.

Despite a lot of consistency between liberal and centrist parties across Europe, and consistency of policies and priorities over time, they struggled to get their message out. When they do, it is often distorted to fit into the narratives of the dominant, mainstream political-economic spectrum.

At their Spring Conference over this weekend it was precisely this message that the Liberal Democrats made with their last chance before the 2015 UK general election to put out a controlled message out to the public, announcing who they are and what they stand for. In his speech to the conference, Clegg made one last pitch to the public, in a speech that was praised (Walter, 2015), identifying Liberals with a moderate, decent, and fair centre-ground that had been abandoned by the other parties:

"And here at home and across Europe, reactionary populism and divisive nationalism are on the rise, slowly moving from the margins to the mainstream... If we want to remain an open, confident, outward-looking society, it will only happen if political parties who believe in compassion and tolerance step up to the plate.

Instead, the opposite is happening. Labour and the Conservatives are deserting the centre ground. Compromise is treated like a dirty word. Everywhere you look there is blame and division.

It’s in the angry nationalism of UKIP, setting citizen against citizen as they pander to fear. It’s in Theresa May’s Go Home vans. In the glint in George Osborne’s eye as he announces that the working age poor will bear the brunt of the cuts. It’s in the red-faced bluster of the Tory right wingers who are determined to scrap the Human Rights Act and drag us out of Europe. It’s in the ‘us versus them’ scaremongering of the Labour Party, as they condemn every decision to balance the books as a betrayal and then make wild predictions about mass unemployment or the death of the NHS that they know are not true.

As the Conservatives and Labour veer off to the left and right, who will speak up for decent, moderate, tolerant Britain?

...We have shown that we are prepared to put the national interest first, even if it means taking a hit to our short-term popularity. And we will continue to put the national interest first."

The Liberal Democrats remain sanguine (BBC, 2015). They are placing their focus and their hopes on the positive response they are apparently receiving in those places where the Lib Dems have spent decades building up a local base of support (Wintour, 2015). It would be sad to see the parliamentary influence of liberalism diminish in Britain as elsewhere, as the influence of liberalism has been a force for good.

But whether or not the Liberal Democrats manage to get themselves across to voters, liberalism will continue play an important role. From Beveridge and Keynes and their ideas backing and underwriting social security, to the Liberal Democrats who opposed the War in Iraq, to those in government campaigning for civil rights - like the end of child detention or the moves to expose and end gender inequality in pay - liberals have shown that their ideas carry weight, and play an important role, regardless of the number of seats a particular liberal party holds, and whether or not they were doing their best work inside or outside of parliament.

Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek's lasting legacy of hope

The sad passing of Leonard Nimoy (Lambie, 2015), gives cause to consider the actor's legacy. Of the performances and contributions left behind, the by far most well-remembered will be his role in Star Trek.

Star Trek, before it received a flashy reboot, had long since become a lazy shorthand. When a scriptwriter wanted to let the audience know a character was "geek" or a "nerd" in the most rudimentary stereotypical way possible, they were always a Star Trek fan. However, underneath that simplistic surface impression, there was a show with a virtually unmatched optimism. Through the medium of science-fiction, it celebrated science, peace and reason.

The show was set in an aspirational far future where humanity had finally gotten beyond its penchant for violence and destruction. At the centre of it all was Leonard Nimoy's Spock, a near-human alien from a people who abhorred violence and cherished logic. Regardless the danger, the threat or the crisis, he always remained an island of calm and reason.

Nimoy's character, and the crew of the USS Enterprise around him, were frequently cast as heroes. Yet, in contrast to so many others shows, the mission of the protagonists was one of exploration and diplomacy. The stories still stand apart today for the positivity of its outlook (with the possible exception of Parks and Recreation).

The crew of the USS Enterprise were often faced with impossible choices, and their heroism was in their willingness to stand for up for peaceful resolutions. They were great for their skills, for their knowledge, for their humanity, and for their diplomacy.

In a pop cultural field that, at times, seems only to revel in darker and grittier stories, and in cynicism lightened only by beautiful aesthetics, those geeky, nerdy, stories championed a peaceful humanity exploring space, and trying to uphold noble ideals. A TV show that finds room for hope can be like a beacon in the dark, and Leonard Nimoy will remain a part of that legacy.

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+ Ryan Lambie's 'In memoriam: Leonard Nimoy'; on Den of Geek; 27 February 2015.