The Alternative Election 2019: It's the morning after, again

The country didn't suddenly becomes heartless overnight. Sorry, I should rephrase that. I don't believe that Britain is (enitrely) a place of selfish, intolerant, poor-bashing Tories. And, really, the statistics agree with me on that.

More people voted for progressive ideas (Labour-Lib Dems-Greens) than voted for the conservative ideas (Tories-BXP), both in the UK as a whole and more narrowly in England. And I'm inclined to believe that the conservative vote was artificially inflated by Brexit, the divisive issue of the day.

For those who see "Getting Brexit Done" as the main issue, it is not a simple matter to write them off as secret Tories voting for privatisation. I'm sure many of them want to save the NHS. I'm sure many of them care about the least well off.

But are electoral system is flawed and our institutions painfully rigged up for hostility to radical progressive change. And last night, that resulted in Boris winning 50 more seats and a majority with an increase in support of just 1%.

More damaging for progressives was that Labour lost 8% of their vote compared to 2017, which spread out across the other parties. Conservative gains where less impactful than - or perhaps rather depended upon - Labour losing votes to other parties.

The stats present a picture of progressives playing the electoral game less well than the Conservatives.

Part of that, but only a part, was Brexit. The Conservatives identified themselves clearly with one polarised side of the debate and got their message through. Labour hedged bets.

But the reasons people voted for Brexit were more complicated than people perhaps like to admit - and Brexit supporters, even in the North, were more middle class than people like to admit.

Sure, former industrial towns in the North voted for Brexit, and then for the Tories yesterday. Yet, as Anoosh Chakelian of the New Statesman wrote, it's a long time now since these places were industrial. I'll be keeping an eye out for a demographic analysis of Tory voters in the North.

However, none of this will be terribly reassuring for those who wake up to the terror of a five year Tory majority.

Those people are on my mind this morning. I think those people were on George Monbiot's mind too when he put together a thread of what we can do next - stressing that community action becomes imperative now, to protect as many people as we can.

And that, I think, feeds how progressives fight back politically.

 Something has to change to make the outcome different next time. I think Monbiot is right, we need to start in our communities. And I think Chakelian is right, too: Labour's problems in the North didn't start with Corbyn and won't end there.

People are terrified by their declining living standards. Others are helpless, their living standards having hit rock bottom with food banks and mounting debts. We need to start organising help for those most in need and maybe find there, or build there, a sense of optimism with which to appeal to the 'squeezed middle', to bring them back into a progressive coalition.

For that, progressive politicians need to get their heads out of Westminster. Labour vs Lib Dem vs Green infighting serves no one but the Tories. They need open, amiable leaders committed, not just willing, to cooperating to offer something optimistic.

And I think maybe more needs to be done on top of that. This can't just be won in Westminster and on social media. There needs to be some tangible movement behind it.

A proper electoral alliance. A proper progressive front. And beneath it all, community action. Municipal movements, rallying individual, concerned citizens together with campaign groups on homelessness and rent, payday lending and benefits debt, on all these cause and more than leave me cold and afraid.

The government for the next five years is not going to represent the majority. Well, nothing new there. But there are plenty of people - the most vulnerable, mostly - who depend upon the state.

We need to do what we can to try and pick up the slack for those people and start building towards winning back the support they need and put that central to our thinking as we move forwards.

The collapse of Carillion has thrown open the door to Municipalism, but there is work to be done to make it a success

Photograph: Future site of the Library of Birmingham, from 2009, by Elliott Brown (License) (Cropped)

The collapse of government outsourcing giant Carillion has opened a door for critique of how the neoliberal approach to giving out services contracts to the private sector is handled - and mishandled.

With profits subsidised, companies mismanaged to threaten jobs and small businesses, and responsibility for pension funds all too frequently abdicated, that is to be expected.

But beneath and within that critique, is the opening of a much deeper line of thinking. It has opened an avenue for thinking up a new progressive direction - it has become a case study for assembling so far disparate thought and theories.

Voices from all across the progressive wing have been chipping in with pieces of a larger theme that's starting to take shape.

Jeremy Corbyn has followed Carillion - and the defeat of Clare Kober and her Public-Private development scheme - by launch a commitment to the renewal of municipal socialism. He has called for councils to bring services back in house and make regeneration about people first, not speculators.

on Newsnight, economist Mariana Mazzucato argued that Britain's outsourcing partnerships operate in a parasitic ecosystem, where profits are siphoned out of services, but the risk is left with the public. That we need to set out new terms, to define a what a good partnership looks like.

Meanwhile, writing a new column for Open Democracy, journalist Paul Mason began by talking about how neoliberalism had disassembled social mobility along with community. Mason acknowledged that nationalisation can't be done the way it used to be, but that neither can outsourcing. Central government needs to shape models and strategise, rather than dominate.

The example that people keep turning to, for a new model, is Preston. In the past few decades, Preston suffered through, ultimately failing, private-backed regeneration plans. After the failure, the council in Preston responded by doing something incredible.

Preston council tried to use it's own resources, and the funding tools at it's disposal, to stimulate it's own local economy - rather than trusting to more inward private investment and the precarious jobs it brings.

In part courtesy of the efforts of Michael Brown, the council used it's procurement budget to invest in local businesses, it supported local co-ops, and it fought off pop-up high street pay day lenders by backing a credit union.

In the era of government outsourcing giants going under - Carillion, and now Capita the latest to be fighting to not go the same way - rethinking how government budgets are spent, and who they subsidise, is a question that people are finally asking.

So what are these and other thrusts driving at?

Municipalism. A return to communities having an empowered stake in their own local government and local services. Co-operatives, small community-based businesses, community-owned water, energy, homes and rail. Restoring a sense of local purpose that might restore some sense of local hope.

The really interesting thing, though, is what comes next. If efforts to relocalise, to reestablish community, are successful, then influence, money and subsidy are going to be in the power of local municipal politicians. This is so much closer to putting power in people's hands.

But it isn't the end of the battle. Without oversight, without transparency and democratic accountability, local government can be - and at times, is - even harder to keep an eye on and hold to account. If we are going to realise the potential of local government, we need the democracy and oversight to match.

In simple terms, addressing that has two elements: the political and the journalistic.

For the political, reengagement is the first big task. Local election turnout is abysmal. There isn't really any other way to put it. Without people engaging and voting on local matters, there is no more empowerment locally than nationally.

Alongside the collapse in local community life, globalisation has also ushered in the near elimination of local journalism. Local newspapers - like the Coventry Telegraph, that once employed six hundred people - are long gone. The starting point for building oversight will be in finding a way to revitalising the local press.

These are just two starters on a list of issues to tackle. Of which, economically, 'hollowing out' may be among the largest. After decades of sending outside experience, it is no great surprise to find no expertise left inside - or the infrastructure needed to support it.

There is hope in municipalism. A real empowerment to be had. A chance for communities to rebuild, to recover their self-confidence. That has to be worth supporting. To achieve those ends, progressives of all stripes need to throw themselves into preparing the ground.

World on Fire: This week just shows how important empowered local government and international cooperation really are

Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona, and Barcelona En Comu are the most recognisable face of the municipal movement. Photograph: #‎PrimaveraDemocratica‬ amb Pablo Iglesias i Ada Colau by Barcelona En Comú (License) (Cropped)

The last week brought another of those sad and scary moments we're becoming dangerously accustomed to. What 2016 taught us was that we can always find something bad happening somewhere if we have broad enough news coverage.

But in the past week the most powerful man in the world escalated tensions, with a much smaller country, to the brink of a nuclear war. He then failed to identify and condemn fascist terrorism occurring right under his nose, virtually in his own back yard.

These things cannot become a new normal.

We are living in a fragmented and further fragmenting world. The far right are not ascendant, but they are flourishing, and the most powerful man is acting like a lone wolf - in all of the worst possible meanings of that phrase.

These are exactly the reasons why we so need municipalism and internationalism. We need real and empowered local democracy, coupled with a sense of international cooperation, in order to change our perspective - and fight off the dying embers of the nationalist conflagration that so many times has nearly burned our world.

It can be understood why people feel so attached to nations and flags and the pride they inspire, but nationalism has taken us all to some very dark places. And in the present, that means far right terrorism - near indistinguishable, whether Islamist fundamentalism or white supremacist and Christian nationalist - and raised the spectre of a limited exchange nuclear war.

For more than a century and a half, nationalism has been a poison in our veins. Domestically, our lives and the wealth we create is directed away from our wellbeing and progression, into the service of destruction - even while some are left completely without.

Abroad, people - ordinary citizens - are reduced unfairly, unjustly and inaccurately to being colluders in the deadly games of tyrants and terrorists. And it is these people, usually the frontline of victims for these criminals, over whose head the Sword of Damocles dangles. They deserve compassion, but get the point of a spear.

The big challenges of our time - environmental, energy, economic, population - are the problems of the whole world. No zealous corner, putting itself first, can address these issues alone. Cooperation is the best strategy.

But cooperation between who? For more than a century, people have been rendered synonymous with their nations - for better and mostly worse. That has to stop. People need to be empowered in their communities and have a voice through them.

The last few years, the past few weeks in particular, make it hard to believe, but the great trend of history is that things get better. That is the lesson of the work of the late Hans Rosling. And even our empathy too is widening.

There was a slogan in the sixties: "Think globally, act locally". It's never been more relevant. We need to see that our problems don't respect artificial borders. We need to pitch in and make change happen on our own doorstep, in cooperation with our neighbours and neighbouring communities.

We can take back control, but it isn't achieved by falling back into nationalism. It doesn't involve drawing crude borders between territories, drawing crude distinctions between peoples - looking always for difference rather than commonality.

We need to give people real power over their lives. We need to give people consent over their lives and how their communities are shaped. We need to build bridges within communities and between them. And, from the bottom up, reshape our perspective.

As Theresa May triggers Article 50 this week, progressives must begin forging new path to protect cherished values post-EU

This week will see Theresa May trigger Article 50 and the negotiations will begin to part Britain from the European Union. With this just over the horizon, there was another outpouring of support for the European Union on its 60th anniversary on Saturday (BBC, 2017; BBC, 2017{2}).

Even now the question has been settled by Act of Parliament (Asthana et al, 2017), there remains understandable opposition. Only a third of voters chose to support leaving the EU - contrary to the 52% claims of the 'Brexit Majority', that opponents of Brexit are have apparently had the last word on the matter.

However, while opposition, resistance and mourning will continue, there also needs to be a concerted effort and determined focus on building the new friendships, alliances and institutions that will ensure cherished values in the years to come.

The first frontier for this will be the city. As citizens of neighbourhoods and municipalities there is a whole new path, a local front, on which to work for progressive values to play a vital role in everyday lives.

In the United States, the Republican control of Federal institutions - the Presidency, the Supreme Court and both the Senate and the House in Congresses, however ineffective its leaders may be in using it (Revesz, 2017) - people have found in the city a frontier for effective opposition.

With the Dakota Access Pipeline having been green-lit again, opponents in a number of American cities have sought a new approach. Working with local government, they have sought to take public money out of the hands of the banks and financial institutions that back the pipeline.

The first divestment success has been won in Seattle, where community pressure led to the city announcing it would pull its money from the DAPL backing bank Wells Fargo (Gabriel Ware & Trimarco, 2017). Other cities have sought to follow their example - under the banner of public money being used only with more socially conscious partners (Tobias, 2017).

There is hope to be taken in the contrast that can be seen between the ineffectiveness, U-turns and deadlocks of central governments from the US to the UK and Spain, and the changes, such as divestment, that can be won at the municipal level.

In Barcelona, at the beating heart of the municipalist movement, Ada Colau was elected to the role of Mayor two years ago (Burgen, 2015) and governs the city with the support of just 11 of 41 members of the city council, in the form of the citizen's movement Barcelona En Comu.

And yet. The impact of the movement has been huge, not least in terms of the visibility that its open, engaged and transparent approach. For instance, the city has cut the pay of elected officials and freed up some $200,000 to support a social projects fund (Russell & Reyes, 2017).

Tackling housing issues was at the top of the list of things to address for Colau when she took office, as a former housing activist. The first issue they took on was empty homes. Right from the start, there were fines for holding properties empty in the city for a long period of time (Kassam, 2015).

The first step was to start securing these empty properties for social housing at a social rent - a project that in the first year freed up hundreds of homes (Rodriguez, 2016). It was accompanied by subsidies for those who are falling behind on their rent (Kassam, 2015), as part of the fight against eviction and homelessness.

More fines, and larger, were around the corner for long term abusers who had failed to respond to smaller fines the year before (Badcock, 2016). Yet there is also a carrot to go with the stick, as those willing to make empty properties available for low rents are offered subsidies on renovation and property tax rebates.

The second is tackling the negative impact of tourism in Barcelona, particularly on housing. In particular, AirBnB has been targeted by the city council for working around the city's tourist license approach to curbing the huge number of tourists (The Economist, 2016).

Reestablishing municipal control of important local services has also been a feature of Colau and Barcelona En Comu's time in office. In order to tackle costs, both a municipal funeral company and a municipal water company have been voted through (BComu Global, 2016; BComu Global, 2016{2}).

And Barcelona En Comu has been active on the international stage too. Working with other cities and local governments horizontally (Zechner & Hansen, 2016), they've been at the heart of organising on a range of issues from support for refugees and fighting TTIP.

This is of particular significance to those mourning the impending loss of EU membership. Over the past few years, continent wide city forums have become more prominent. From sharing best practice, to partnering up to take on big challenges together, municipal government is showing just how much of an impact it can have.

There are sparks of municipalism springing up around Britain too. In Preston, in face of the council's funding being cut in half, councillors have been trying to find ways to make the city more self-sufficient (Sheffield, 2017). The start of that has been to redirect procurement through local businesses - doubling its investment in local businesses over three years - to boost the local economy.

And in 2015, Bristol City Council established 'Bristol Energy' as a municipal energy company to fight unfair energy prices (Melville, 2016) - with assistance from the EU's European Local ENergy Assistance (ELENA).

Last year's local council elections showed that in Britain, even under the dark cloud that seems to hover over progressive movements at the moment, winning big elections is still possible on the ground, in local government - even in the days of the "unelectable" Jeremy Corbyn.

Sadiq Khan became Mayor of London, despite the hostile campaign of Zac Goldsmith; and Labour won three other Mayoral elections in Bristol, Liverpool and Salford. Meanwhile the Lib Dems made the most gains of any party.

With more cities getting devolution deals and brand new mayors come the summer, there are not just more chances for progressive parties, but for progressive local action by and for citizens.

In Greater Manchester, the favourite, Labour's Andy Burnham, has already made a number of significant promises that could make a big difference at the municipal level, including longer term security of tenure for renters, longer term security of funding for the community and voluntary sector and paying off student loans for graduates who stay and work in the Greater Manchester NHS (GMCVO Hustings, 2017; Weston, 2017).

But there is more to be done. For instance, an experiment with participatory budgeting in Madrid, were funds were earmarked for local projects decided by online polling, caught some attention in Greater Manchester were the People's Plan was formed, with journalist Paul Mason expressing his support for the idea (Mason, 2016).

What all of this reminds us is that real political and social change starts in your own community, in your own municipality. Whether trying to fix local services or build an international movement, the starting point is your own neighbourhood.

On health, housing, energy - on any of the chief issues - action can be taken at the local level that makes a tangible difference. With Brexit, one path towards cooperation is closing. But others are open and we must turn out attention towards getting the most out of them.

The Alternative Year: What kind of year has it been? Four sparks of hope from 2016

For progressives, 2016 has felt like the season finale of an Aaron Sorkin drama. The political world seems to have fallen into a very dark, and rather conspicuously, 1930s shaped hole. Neoliberalism's war of attrition on public services has taken a deep toll and ordinary people face a difficult future. From natural disasters to terrorist attacks and wars, to the humanitarian catastrophe that is the refugee crisis, people have died.

Amidst all of the upset and unrest, the far-right are back and they're getting into positions of influence and power. Russia, America, Hungary and Poland all have authoritarian governments, while France, Austria, and the Netherlands have far-right parties within touching distance of power. Britain, Germany, Italy and others are being deeply affected by far-right populist movements.

What anyone with empathy is looking for now is hope - a sign that humanity's ongoing journey, its progress from the darkness into the light, has not stalled or ended.

Away from politics, there are still plenty of signs: the Ice Bucket Challenge worked, with money it raised being directly credited with a huge breakthrough in the understanding of ALS (Woolf, 2016); Starbucks worked with charities to make perishable foods donations, from end of day leftovers, possible - making tracks into reducing the West's copious food wastage and tackling hunger (Addady, 2016); clinical trials are being carried out for precision cancer treatments, that medical professionals hope will usher in a new era of higher survival rates with lower toxic side effects (Boseley, 2016); and, after bans on CFC aerosol chemicals, the Ozone Later is recovering (Milan, 2016).

We can make a positive difference. We'll be back in January 2017 to continue advocating for the progressive alternative, but in the mean time - to focus on the positive - here are some of the political events of 2016 that show that the progressive view of a humanity still holds true.

Liberalism in Canada

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau at Pride, August 2016. Photograph: Pride Parade 2016 by GoToVan (License) (Cropped)

Now technically, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada was elected in October, and entered office in November, 2015. Yet their first year in government was all 2016. So it counts.

What the election of Trudeau and the Liberals in Canada showed was that social liberalism - open, positive, progressive and tolerant attitudes to others - can win. That matters.

Regardless of what you think of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or whether his Government will deliver, or of liberalism - which many seem content to conflate with neoliberalism right now, and leave to burn with it in the rising nationalist flames - their election win matters.

Trudeau and the Liberals stood as openly feminist and multicultural, proposing to intervene to help those worst off - including reaching out and openly welcoming refugees. Not only did they win, their polling numbers have risen and remained high.

Amidst intolerance and closing doors, it is important to know that open, decent, tolerant social attitudes can win elections, and emphatically at that. As with Syriza in Greece, it is important to see these progressive ideas reflected in a government.

The Majority in America

Hillary Rodham Clinton's long career, that seemed destined to peak in a return to the White House as President, came to a shattering end with defeat by Donald Trump. Photograph: Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at UW-Milwaukee by WisPolitics (License) (Cropped)

It might be small consolation at this point, but Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote in the US Presidential Election, and by some three million votes. In fact, along with the socially liberal Libertarian and Green party candidates, that's a socially progressive lead of some six million - a 52% to 46% lead.

And, as journalist John Harris cautioned after the Brexit vote, you cannot conflate all the poor and desperate people voting for the Right with the hatred and intolerance of the people they vote for. Most are afraid of the future, feel excluded and justifiably want change.

Despite all of the hate and vitriol, and Trump's self-aggrandising and media-hungry campaign, only a quarter of US voters turned out for Trump. More turned out for Clinton - and she wasn't even, perhaps, a favoured candidate for the Centre and Left.

As with Brexit, the fully roused expression of anger and hate, poured through a political funnel, has produced a dramatic victory for the Right. But it is based on a much smaller cross-section of society than people fear. It's still an unrepresentative minority, amplified by adversarial political systems.

It is important that progressives see that. Progressive politics in the US needs fixing, that's for sure. Too many people have been alienated, driven into dangerous arms. But it's fewer than people fear, and the majority of those are just people looking for a better life, for a better deal.

The Far-Right's first big defeat

Alexander Van der Bellen, former leader of the Greens, stood for the Presidency as a unifying Independent and defeated the Far-Right. Photograph: Alexander Van der Bellen by Franz Johann Morgenbesser (License) (Cropped)

In Austria, the first far-right Head of State since the second world war was narrowly avoided as Alexander Van der Bellen - a former Green who ran as an independent - won the Presidential Election for the second time in a re-run.

It is the first major defeat for the Far-Right in a contest they were thought to be ahead. However the Far-Right Freedom Party, for whom Norbert Hofer stood as a Presidential candidate, remains a rising force - currently the third largest group and polling high.

The alliance that defeated them was a broad spectrum - perhaps too broad to realistically maintain a united front. But what matters at this point is that a majority in Austria rejected the Far-Right. As important as it is to see progressive ideas in government, it is important to regressive ones defeated.

The Municipal Movement

Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona who has been a leading figure of the municipal movement. Photograph: #‎PrimaveraDemocratica‬ amb Pablo Iglesias i Ada Colau by Barcelona En Comú (License) (Cropped)

And finally, to municipalism. It is an idea whose time appears to have come. Emerging in Spain, in Barcelona and Madrid the city governments are being run by citizen's municipal movements that are trying to radically change the way that cities are run.

On the ground, these municipal movements, like Barcelona En Comu led by Ada Colau, have brought together citizen campaigners, all with a local focus, and pursued a fascinating course. Their focus has been on trying to build spaces around the people who live in them and to bring more power over decisions to them - an essential priority at a time when so many people feel alienated.

And their work doesn't stop there. These municipal movements have been at the heart of effort to build pan-continental networks of cities, helping to tie the European continent together in new ways. For progressives, this work aught to be a lighthouse in the storm.

From housing, to utilities like energy and water, to facing the refugee crisis, the municipal movement has brought these issues into the local sphere. They're engaging people, in the places where they live and work, with tough issues and empowering them.

Lessons for 2017

That is world's away from the walls of silence, disengagement and alienation that proceeded the rise of the Far-Right. If progressives can take anything positive 2016, it can be this: social progressives are the majority, their ideas can win, their ideas can engage and empower, and the Far-Right can be beaten.

The first task for 2017 will be to build bridges. To build networks. To include and empower. To give a voice. The Alternative be back in the New Year to help progressives with that task as best we can.

Around the World: Corruption, Operation Car Wash and the Rousseff Impeachment

National Congress of Brazil, in Brasilia, where now former President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in two majority votes. Photograph: National Congress of Brazil from Pixabay (License) (Cropped).

Dilma Rousseff has lost her battle against impeachment in Brazil, with the Senate confirming the decision of the Chamber of Deputies to expel her from the office of President (Watts & Bowater, 2016). Three-quarters of Senators voted to impeach her on charges of corruption and mismanagement of the budget.

That is unlikely to be the end of the controversy. But for now, it marks the end of a chain of events set against a backdrop of general unrest, with protests against money being spent on huge international events like the World Cup and the Olympics, instead of on practical measures to support the people - like housing and welfare - and an economy deeply affected by the global crisis.

A lot of the present crisis surrounds Brazilian oil. Accusations of bribery surrounding the state oil company Petrobras surrounding the awarding of contracts and its deep connections in Brazilian politics, was uncovered by the corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash (Watts, 2016).

The result has been a political crisis that has seen Rousseff's predecessor Lula da Silva set to face a corruption trial and the larger part of the political class implicated in the corruption. Rousseff's adversaries have also manoeuvred to have her thrown out of office, though as she is so far avoided direct connection to the scandal, they have pursued her through accusations of fiscal malpractice (Prengaman, 2016).

The impeachment leaves Rousseff's former ally, and now leading figure amongst her opponents, Acting-President Michel Temer in the office of President. While he has the support of the political Right and business that wants austerity measures imposed, he isn't popular - having been booed during the Olympic opening ceremony.

Like Italy's Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) investigation that wiped away the country's established political system and all of its political parties in the early 1990s, Operation Car Wash has thrown open the doors to show how Brazil's system operates behind closed doors - and no one working within that system is likely to come out clean.

That situation is what has toppled Rousseff. The worry is for the political vacuum that might follow the toppling of the rest of the establishment - in Italy it was occupied by the arch-populist Silvio Berlusconi for twenty years.

Yet despite her defeat in what has been denounced as a parliamentary coup, Rousseff insists upon appealing her impeachment by who she describes as usurpers and coup-mongers (Watts & Bowater, 2016). But against a backdrop of massive political-corporate corruption, it is unclear what more can be done at the federal level until it is all swept away.

Clearly, Brazil needs a path out of this dense tangle of overlapping problems. The clear implication is that a new approach is needed.

One option that has been proposed is to embrace the municipal movement, most notably at work in Barcelona, at the local government elections in October and November (Wyllys, 2016). What municipalism offers is a chance to do things a bit differently.

Movements in Brazil are already organising around municipal principles - Muitxos: Cidade que Queremos (Many: the City We Want) in Belo Horizonte, for example (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016) - as a way move power away from political-corporate cliques.

With Brazil's federal politics - where pro-market corporate forces face off with populist social democrats over tax and spend projects like social welfare - mired in corruption and accusations, shifting the focus to local government instead could provide a route for citizens to get into politics in a more direct way and perhaps even start to dismantle the corruption from the ground up.

As elsewhere in the world, national politics has been choked by political-corporate cartels, whether de facto or de jure, that restrict political action and assume the driving seat in decision-making.

That path has lead to failures of leadership, where vigilant oversight is lacking - of which, if anything, Rousseff might be legitimately accused, due to being in a senior position during the height of the corruption and yet claiming no knowledge of what was going on.

Devolving power to citizens in their communities and encouraging open city government could help renew the system. And for the municipal movement itself, success in the cities of Brazil would be a major breakthrough.

It is one thing to argue for open source cities, using the twin means of free online resources and open participatory public spaces, that make the municipality a place where people can express their real political power (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016{2}).

It is another entirely to see municipal ideas applied to cities on different continents, with different contexts, and see them challenge massive corruption from below by engaging with people in their own communities and returning hope and power to them.

An Alternative Easter Round-up: Three political stories from around the world

With Parliament away on Easter Recess, politics in the UK has been reduced to the government hoping for quiet days with as few intermittent controversies as possible. So while politics takes a breather in the UK, here are some of the stories brewing elsewhere around the world.

An Individual's Scandal and Stability in Iceland

Faced with popular pressure following the Panama Papers leak, Iceland Prime Minister Gunnlaugsson has resigned. Photograph: Reykjavik from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

The story that has excited press reaction the most this Easter has of course been the leak of the Panama Papers. The leak has made life difficult for the leaders of a number of countries, from those affected more directly like Mauricio Macri in Argentina (TeleSur, 2016), to those more tangentially involved like David Cameron in the UK (Sparrow, 2016).

Not least affected was Iceland's Prime Minister Gunnlaugsson. Having been connected to millions in offshore accounts, he sought an election to, it would seem, seek the absolution of the people. However, his request was denied by the President - who pointed to the lack of Parliamentary support for new elections.

Backed into a corner, with no escape hatches left and protests being held against him, Gunnlaugsson resigned (Henley, 2016). It is both fascinating and deeply troubling that he seemed willing to throw a country's entire political sphere into upheaval and instability, just to save his own position and career.

He would not, by a long margin, be the first to seek out politics for such reasons and be prepared to use its powers and mechanisms in such a way. But in this case, at least, it seems that the constitutional structure of the government in Iceland was robust enough to fend off such efforts.

'Macri Gov't Claims President's Innocence in Panama Papers Leak'; on TeleSur; 5 April 2016.

Andrew Sparrow's 'What David Cameron did and didn't say about his father's offshore trust: The prime minister chose his response to reporter’s question about Blairmore Holdings very carefully – and he will probably get away with it'; in The Guardian; 5 April 2016.

Jon Henley's 'Iceland PM steps aside after protests over Panama Papers revelations: Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson steps aside amid widespread anger over allegations his family attempted to hide millions in offshore account'; in The Guardian; 5 April 2016.

Institutional Corruption and Hypocrisy in Brazil

Politics in Brazil is mired by the corruption investigation into its current and its former President. Photograph: National Congress of Brazil from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

The situation facing Brazil, where a corruption controversy threatens to pull apart an already divided country, there do not seem to be the same constitutional assurances to fall back on.

President Dima Rousseff, Vice President Temer and former President Lula all face impeachment over corruption charges (BBC, 2016). There is allegedly mounting evidence of kickbacks, deal-making and corruption in the billions and apparently trusted polls suggest two-thirds of the people support impeachment (Davies, 2016).

Yet the country is divided (Davies, 2016). Rousseff's party - the social democratic Workers Party, which under her and her predecessor's governance has introduced far reaching welfare programs to help the poorest - is largely supported by the working class, while the opposition protesters have been largely from the white middle classes.

Amongst the working class there seems to be genuine concern that the scandal is little more than an attempted coup (Weisbrot, 2016). That isn't helped by the fact that the opposition seem to have overstepped the mark, by politicising corruption probes with orders for police detentions and questioning, and the leaking of wire taps.

Middle class double standards have also been singled out (Davies, 2016). Less concern has been shown by Rousseff's opponents for the Swiss bank accounts and corruption allegations, shielded by the legal protections of Congressional office, that have been levelled at opposition politicians.

That hypocrisy exposes one of the most dangerous facets of widespread corruption. When everyone is dirty, within a system set up only to serve divisive interests, there can be nowhere to turn for help and little hope of bipartisan action that could both clean matters up and be a bridge to rebuild commonality and unity.

Wyre Davies' 'Brazil crisis: There may be bigger threats than Rousseff's removal'; on the BBC; 21 March 2016.

'Brazil Vice-President Michel Temer could face impeachment'; on the BBC; 5 April 2016.

Mark Weisbrot's 'Attempted Coup in Brazil Seeks to Reverse Election Results'; on TeleSur; 5 April 2016.

Barcelona Municipalism and the Cities of Europe

Barcelona En Comu's municipalism is getting an outing on the continental stage, as Europe's elected city administrations look for a voice in setting policy. Photograph: Barcelona from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Beneath the press coverage of the refugee crisis, there have been frantic discussions in Europe over how to address the large numbers of people fleeing to the continent. The primary mechanism has become a migrant-exchange deal with Turkey to facilitate deportation of migrants, out of Greece to Turkey (Connolly, 2016).

However, the refugees welcome campaign refuses to go away. On Tuesday, Mayors from a number of EU cities gathered to discuss ways of supporting refugees already in Europe. For Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona and face of the Podemos-affiliated and citizen-led Barcelona En Comu, the meeting represented a chance to show the merits of municipalism on the continental level and issue a call to action to shelter refugees.

And it would seem that the municipalist message is getting through. The EuroCities group, bringing together and giving a voice to the elected administrations of European cities, conducted a survey that suggested that, despite the role being played by cities in managing the refugee crisis, they distinctly lack a voice in setting policy (Bramley, 2016).

While there clearly wasn't unanimous agreement on the EU's refugee plan at the meeting, there was at least agreement that central governments were failing to allow enough discretion to cities over the control of funds that could be helping people now (Valero,2016).

Kate Connolly's 'EU-Turkey deal begins as Syrian refugees arrive in Germany and Finland: Three planes from Turkey, carrying a total of 43 people, land as part of migrant-exchange agreement'; in The Guardian; 4 April 2016.

Jorge Valero's 'Red Cross questions Turkey refugees deal'; on EurActiv; 5 April 2016.

Ellie Violet Bramley's 'Cities need more power to deal with refugee crisis: report - Refuge cities - Despite urban centres having to receive and integrate huge number of refugees, cities lack crucial input when it comes to policy, says a new European report'; in The Guardian, with the Rockefeller Foundation; 4 April 2016.

Citizen Government as a remedy for Corruption?

From individual to institutional corruption, it always poses a threat to good governance. And that is never more obvious than when poverty is spreading and budgets are tight - as less eyes are turned blind to those grafting something extra for themselves or their friends.

In the face of austerity and broad discontent with the political system, Spain's local governments have looked to the horizontal rather than the vertical for solutions - pooling resources, and working side by side, with other municipalities.

That message of devolution and citizen government, for municipalism, is a tonic for anyone needing to feel a reinvigorated belief in democratic government. Alone, it cannot do everything that is needed to chase out corruption. But what might municipalism achieve as a broad movement of democratic citizen-governments, in league, working together?

Crisis in the neoliberal economic system may not be a guaranteed springboard for a radical new economy, but it does signal the need to prepare a coherent alternative

With the world economy in seemingly constant crisis, progressives need to have a credible alternative ready. Photograph: Euro Bank Notes from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Yesterday brought some gloomy economic news. The global economy is struggling, markets everywhere are slumping, and to all intents and purposes the great recession appears to be heading on into its eighth year (BBC, 2016). Not even a new low for unemployment in the UK could bring much cheer, as wages continue to stagnate (BBC, 2016{2}).

With 20% of Europe's young people unemployed (European Parliament, 2016) - as many as 50% in some cases and trapped by nearly a decade of slim to no opportunities - and with austerity cutting away at social security (Gaffney, 2013; Nielsen, 2014), it wouldn't be surprising for some on the Left to at least take in hope in the idea that the lack of return for all of the precariousness and the sacrifices might be a crisis in the making for the neoliberal order.

And yet, as Yanis Varoufakis has warned, a crisis is not so easily exploited by progressives (Varoufakis, 2015). In fact, they often play out at the expense of the Left. With the aims of the Left so often dependent upon the building of a social institutions - something taking time and public support - progressives can find themselves in the unenviable position of defending the establishment in the face more extreme populist positions.

So, building an alternative economy is not going to be accomplished overnight. Neoliberalism certainly wasn't (Ridley, 2016). It took decades, around a half century, of work and preparation for the neoliberal theorists to promote their cause to the mainstream.

That doesn't mean, however, that some of the work has not already been done. For the Left, the construction a new path has been bubbling away since at least the beginning of the great recession - almost a decade ago - and breakthroughs have been made.

In the past year, Syriza won two elections and a referendum as an opponent of the prevailing system (Mason & Skarlatos, 2015) - and even as they have been strangled and forced to concede endless ground their leader Alexis Tsipras continues to argue for the room to build something more inclusive and sustainable (Tsipras, 2016). Yanis Varoufakis, now the former Finance Minister of Greece, has become a figurehead for the European Left for the way in which he stood against the austerian establishment.

In Spain, the 15M Indignados movement has taken just two years to launch the Podemos party and become a real presence of the national scene (Jones, 2015). In the last year it has won control of some major cities with its municipalist ideas, becoming an inspiration for movements across Europe (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016).

Also of note is that in Utrecht (Perry, 2015), in the Netherlands, and in Finland (Unkuri, 2015), trials are being rolled out to test the merits of the Basic Income. An idea that could erase poverty and bring some salve to those suffering caused by the precariousness of the times, the Basic Income is an important idea whose time has come.

There has also, of course, been the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum within the Labour Party (Mason, 2015). Corbyn is faced with plenty of struggles with his own parliamentarians and with the mainstream media. Yet his ideas have led to a huge upsurge of engagement with the Labour Party that represents - regardless of whether it is enough to win a national majority - the emergence of a significant voter base for radical democrats in the UK.

As elsewhere in the world, much like how Spain's Podemos was born from the Indignados, this base of voters has been brewing and coalescing in the UK since the Occupy movement launched its protests around the world in 2011. Occupy saw individuals and groups coming together, organising themselves, in a massive show of civil disobedience.

All of these elements carry with them ideas and theories about how the world might alternatively be constructed. Yet so far they have been, not to sound disparaging, just protests or singular parties, isolated in the mainstream.

The next step is overdue. A part of it is coming from Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, in a move that seems like something New Labour's masters of spin should have come up with a decade ago. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell is taking his rockstar economists, assembled in October as an anti-austerity economics advisory body, on the road to debate and promote the building of a new economy.

Another part will come from in the not too far future with the launch of Varoufakis' movement for rebuilding democracy in Europe in February (Wingard, 2016). As he has been keen to stress, the next step has to include the building of a broad movement, bringing together many ideas, across the whole of Europe (Varoufakis, 2016; Varoufakis & Sakalis, 2015) - on the same scale as globalised neoliberalism also functions.

To topple a broken and unequal system in a time of crisis may not be more than a romantic Left-wing notion. But the stumbling of neoliberalism, from crisis to crisis, makes it essential to put together the various threads of thought into a coherent proposal that is ready to step up when neoliberal thinking finally runs of credibility.

From the basic income to the reduction of full time hours, a living wage to a living rent, municipalism to community energy, there are many elements that could fit together and complement each other. The job ahead is to construct that bigger picture and start showing it to the world.

As the Conservative Housing Bill faces criticism, Spain's municipalism movement offers hopes for an alternative way forward

The housing crisis in the UK is deep rooted and impacts on everything around it. Photograph: Regency Houses from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

The housing crisis is one of the biggest challenges facing the UK. On Tuesday, the Conservative government's attempt to address it, the Housing and Planning Bill, returns to the Commons for its third reading.

The bill aims to introduce one of the government's priority manifesto promises, namely the extension and expansion of rent-to-buy (Foster, 2016). The Conservative plans, including forcing local authorities to sell-off high value vacant properties, have however faced criticism and protests.

Progressive critics have warned that the Conservative plan will only exacerbate problems, risking simply shifting housing out of the reach of the poorest (Chakrabortty, 2016). The dangers of the direction in which the Conservatives are heading only highlights the need to explore other avenues to find creative, positive alternatives - the most promising of which appears to be the new municipalism movement.

The Housing Crisis

Britain's housing problem is extremely serious, but can be boiled down to two main factors. First, a shortage, and second, the exorbitant cost. Recommendations call for at least 200,000 new homes to be built each year to keep up with demand (Rutter, 2014). Yet building is not even keeping up with the sell-off of social housing into private hands and costs, for buying or renting, continue to rise far beyond the reach of ordinary people (Williams, 2016).

In the face of these problems it is of the utmost importance to stress that Britain's housing crisis is at the root of so many other problems and is the impediment of so many paths to reform. Britain's housing crisis is central, not least, to the struggle to arrest the cost of living, which is afflicting both businesses and individual citizens. To name just one problem, welfare reforms, whether progressive or conservative, are hindered by the huge cost of housing benefit.

Nor is it an exclusively modern problem. The large and integrated problem of housing is a long term issue, even being pointed to as the weak link in William Beveridge's analysis and his attempts to build a flat-rate, contributory, subsistence system of social welfare (Birch, 2012).

"The attempt to fix rates of insurance benefit and pension on a scientific basis with regard to subsistence needs has brought to notice a serious difficulty in doing so in the conditions of modern Britain. This is the problem of rent. In this, as in other respects, the framing of a satisfactory scheme of social security depends on the solution of other problems of economic and social organisation."

Amongst the impediments to fixing Britain's housing problems is the matter of buy-to-let (Gallagher, 2015). Alicia Glen, New York's Deputy mayor for housing and economic development, remarked in 2014 that one factor undermining efforts at establishing affordability was the small scale of private rented housing in the UK (Murray, 2014) - an inefficient and expensive system that ignores the benefits, particularly reduced costs, of operating at scale.

Conservative Opportunism

Into the breach have stepped the Conservatives, with plans that represent an attempt at a fundamental shift, not only from public to private but also from rental to ownership (Allen & Parker, 2015). However, Conservative plans to increase housing stock in the private buyers market - by opportunistically siphoning homes out of the social housing sector - so as to drive down prices through competition, will not by itself tackle the crucial element of affordability (Williams, 2016).

In fact, critics see it as only further alienating ordinary people by taking away affordable rented housing and consolidating more of the UK's housing within a market house price bubble - far beyond the reach of those earning around the national average (Chakrabortty, 2016).

For the Conservatives, the point seems to be to complete the plans of Thatcher and theories of Willetts from the 80s and 90s (George & Wilding, 1994). Those efforts focussed on dismantling the welfare state in favour of purely market systems - which included privatised social insurance and privatised housing.

From the perspective of a progressive, the obsession with subjecting the public welfare to competition for 'earned privilege', in a kind of conservative meritocracy that ignores preordained advantages but also, of course, disadvantages, is distressing. In a system that seeks to marry negative liberty, the removal of obstacles, with selfish conservative elitism - pursuing market solutions which look for cost cutting 'competitiveness' even at the expense of livelihoods - social security would begin to look fragile.

The fact that the conservatives are ascendant and have the majority necessary to impose their ideological system makes it urgently necessary to develop a realistic, alternative progressive solution.

Better Ways

In opposition to the Conservative response to the crisis is Caroline Lucas of the Green Party (Lucas, 2016). Her Lucas Plan calls for a serious rethink of the UK's housing model. It addresses the escalating rents by calling for a Living Rent - with a clear cap that not only tightens the reins on out of control rents but seeks to reduce the cost of housing down to an accessible level.

Lucas combines this with the need for getting on with plans for building new 'eco-fit' homes and renovating existing housing to be more energy efficient. These steps could together help to tackle two of the key elements in the battle to arrest the cost of living: the cost of housing and the cost of energy.

However, there are other questions around the issue that cannot be ignored in an effort to rethink the housing model. How should these homes be built, owned and run? There is a clear divide, with scepticism being poured from one side to the other for the idea of centralised authorities holding monopolies over something as fixed as land and shelter - whether that be scepticism towards the state or the exclusionary and elitist actors in the private market.

Hope for a new way forward might be found in the new municipalism movements (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016). In Spain, a number of cities have elected administrations born from the 15M Indignados protests, affiliated with Podemos. These local based projects are finding new ways to organise and operate, including massive horizontal co-operation between different city administrations (Shea Baird, 2015).

In Barcelona, for example, the new Barcelona En Comu led city council is making headway in tackling their housing shortage with a plan to use empty, privately owned houses for social rent properties (Rodriguez, 2016). The plan has already secured the use of 150 properties, with maybe 100 more soon to be added - with the owners compensated - which has provided secure, social rent accommodation for 450 people.

This has been achieved at the municipal level, an example of what might be achieved in cities where citizens learn they can run their own public spaces for the common good. Where citizens learn that they can lead radical administrations towards creative solutions. Exactly that kind of active and participatory concern on the part of citizens in the common good, embraced alongside a decentralisation of power, is not beyond the UK's ability to adopt.

In fact, the UK has already seen this kind of co-operative movement with community energy projects. In the UK, there have already been community owned and run green energy projects which have sought to install wind turbines and solar panels (Vaughan, 2015). However, what little support there has been from the government in the form of tax relief has been slowly cut away (Voinea, 2015).

That move has angered those on the Left who believe that community energy represents a way to a sustainable, affordable future that can oppose the power of big energy corporations (Lewis, 2015). Yet, even under attack, community energy has shown that this kind of civic action is possible in the UK. That they are possible, at least, should be an inspiration to those looking for fresh solutions to the problems of housing and energy in the UK.

On the housing front, the Lucas Plan, backed by a renewed appreciation for housing associations and an embrace of giving residents, citizens, and the community a greater stake, offers the outline for a progressive way forward. One that combines smart legislation and regulation with decentralised municipal action in pursuit of smart, creative ways to ensure availability, affordability and sustainability.