France 2017: Elections will be a stern test for the French political mainstream

The relationship between France and Europe will need to change regardless of who comes out on top in the 2017 presidential and legislative elections. Photograph: France and EU-flag, somewhere in Dunkerque by Sebastian Fuss (License) (Cropped & Flipped)

This year's French elections, both presidential in April and the legislative in June, represent the next important watershed in the struggle against the Far-Right. For progressives, they represent the next big hope for pushback against the extreme political trend represented by Brexit and Trump.

In the Netherlands, the failure of Wilders' Far-Right PPV to become the biggest party was celebrated by the mainstream - even by VVD's, despite their own loss of seats which makes their position as the largest and governing party more tenuous. Progressives have to start thinking bigger.

That won't be easy in France, where the political climate is fractious - which has been a consistent factor in the Far-Right's success wherever around the world it has reared its head. The governing Parti Socialiste and its President Francois Hollande and suffered a severe decline in its popularity and the fall in its credibility seems to have weakened the entire political mainstream.

As the Far-Right - the Front National under Marine Le Pen - threaten to gobble up a fifth or more of the votes, the parties from the Right through the Centre and Left are tangled in a close multi-party fight for the rest of the votes. The Far-Right is thriving on a mainstream in turmoil.

If the social conservatism, nationalism and hostile extremism of the Far-Right is going to be defeated, progressives in France need to find a way to work together despite their fractious splits. That will likely mean crudely rallying behind a single candidate in the presidential election. But for the legislative elections, it can mean a more practical alliance between separate parties or a simple willingness to engage and work together to freeze out extremists.

Electoral System

The presidential election, the first to happen on 23rd April, is a two-round contest. The election is completed in the first round if any candidate gets an outright majority. If not, the top two candidates face one another in a second round run-off.

The legislative election is contested in 577 single member constituencies, also over two rounds of voting - said to treated as the first vote cast with the heart and then the second with the head. The first round takes place on 11th June and the run-off is on 18th June (Henley, 2017).

Socialists and the Left - Hamon and Melenchon

Photograph: Benoit Hamon painted portrait by Thierry Ehrmann (License) (Cropped)

Under the Hollande Presidency, the Socialist government has faced painfully low approval ratings (Fouquet, 2016). Prime Minister Manuel Valls tried to bring about unpopular labour reforms and it has cost himself and his President dearly in political capital (BBC, 2016).

The result of the party leadership's unpopularity is that the chances of the party retaining power, either the presidency or in parliament, are low. Last year's regional election saw them drop to just 23% and 3rd in the first round - though they recovered a little to 28% and 2nd on second preferences.

In the face of a polling decline that was discrediting the mainstream of the party, the party's primary to nominate a presidential candidate saw an upset. Benoit Hamon, a centre-left critic of Hollande and a supporter of the basic income, became their official candidate for the 2017 election (Chrisafis, 2017).

But things are rarely simple for the Centre-Left these days. The Socialist situation is made much more difficult by the surge of support for an alternative candidacy. Emmanuel Macron, a former Socialist economy minister has launched an outside run - that is avowedly pro-European, liberal and centrist - for the presidency.

Macron's campaign, hoping to be a unifying candidate for the mainstream against Le Pen, even has the support of Socialist Premier Valls (BBC, 2017) - breaking a commitment Valls made to honour the outcome of the party primary, in order to back a candidate closer to his own position.

The socialist difficulties don't end there. They also face more opposition from further to the Left, in the form of Jean-Luc Melenchon's party Unsubmissive France. Melenchon received a positive public reception for a 'convincing' performance in the debate at the start of April (Willsher, 2017), thrusting him in amongst the leaders in the polls.

The nature of problems facing the progressive centre and left in France is demonstrated well by the Parti Radical du Gauche (PRG). The backing of the Radical Party of the Left is one of the few notes of consistency for the Socialists.

They have been a long time ally of the Socialists and, even entered their own candidate, party leader Sylvia Pinel, into the Socialist Party Presidential Primary. The Socialists had some relief when Sylvia Pinel announced last month that her party would honour the commitment to back the primary winning candidate (Le Monde, 2017).

And despite despite talk of discussions between the PRG and Emmanuel Macron, she acknowledged the need to unite and fight against the threat posed by the Front National. However, the Radicals are far from united behind the official stance, and some of its parliamentarians have announced their support for the outside candidacy Macron.

As for policy, there seems to be little on display in the campaign on any side - all of the focus is the notion of who best represents France. For Benoit Hamon's part, he has presented a more fleshed out set of policies than others.

Hamon has been vocal on wanting to further democratise Europe and to subject more of its policy convergence to be subject to the scrutiny and control of a democratic assembly (Flausch, 2017) - striking a compromises between a pro-EU position and the rising demand for change in the way the EU works.

At home he has made a pitch to recover working class support with policies like a robot tax, to tax automation that takes away jobs and cutting the working week to 32 hours (Serhan, 2017). He is also an advocate of the universal basic income.

However, without even the full support his party, it's unlikely that Hamon will even be amongst the chief contenders in the first round of the presidential election. The damage to the image of the Socialists seems just too much to overcome.

The Centre - Macron and Bayrou

Photograph: LEWEB 2014 Conference - in conversation with Emmanuel Macron by LE WEB (License) (Cropped)

In light of the negative perception that is hampering the Socialists and their nomination of a candidate some way to the left of the party mainstream, the party's former economy minister Emmanuel Macron launched a hastily arranged campaign for the presidency called 'En Marche!' (Lorimer, 2017).

From being dismissed as a bubble bound to burst, Emmanuel Macron has become the favourite, leading in all of the polls for both the first and second round votes. He has held rallies that, even in Britain (DW, 2017), received the attendance of crowds in their thousands (Gendron, 2017) - numbers comparable to those who flocked to see Bernie Sanders in the US election.

Liberals and pro-Europeans from across Europe have flocked to his side and offered endorsements - including Nick Clegg and EU liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt, with others taking a close interest.

But beyond his promise to run a hard campaign against the Far-Right and to stand up for the European mainstream, his policy positions seem somewhat thin - one French commenter described his campaign as like a movie, a canvas for a beautiful image without much depth (Gendron, 2017).

That may change when En Marche! has its list of candidates up and running for the legislative election, as appears to be the plan - and it would be hard to see them running without some sort of platform.

But that isn't so critical for a Presidential race where the aim is broad unity. It is notable that he has invoked a legacy of France governed from the centre in which he includes Jacques Chirac - in 2002, Chirac was elected overwhelmingly as the mainstream candidate versus Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine, and his more openly extreme version of Front National.

Like with the Socialists, Macron is not the sole candidate of the Centre. But his chances are more clear cut. In theory, the 'official' centrists candidate would come from Francois Bayrou's Democratic Movement (Mouvement Democrate, MoDem).

In fact Bayrou only ruled out running again himself when he was sure Nicolas Sarkozy would not be running. As it stood, the centre was represented only by Jean Lassalle, a former MoDem Member of the National Assembly, on a 'Résistons!' ticket.

However Bayrou, having ruled out his own candidacy, proposed support for Macron (Willsher, 2017{2}) - an unsurprising move considering Macron's centrist campaign and rapid rise in popularity. The deal for Bayrou's support came a demand for a law to clean up French politics.

The tougher question is, how will Macron's En Marche! and Bayrou's MoDem mesh when it comes time for the legislative election? With plans in any definite form, it is hard to say what logo to expect candidates from the centre to be standing under come June.

The Right and the Far Right - Fillon and Le Pen

Photograph: EPP Summit Brussels December 2016 by the European People's Party (License) (Cropped)

The Republicans (Les Républicains, LR) started this campaign looking to have the presidency all sewn up. Former presidents and prime ministers were queueing up for a shot at being the party candidate (Vinocur, 2016) - including Nicolas Sarkozy, attempting a political comeback.

Yet their hopes have sunk low since then. Nearly every candidate was plagued with some sort of controversy or historical accusations of corruption in office. From Sarkozy to Alain Juppe, to Jean-Francois Cope, the leading candidates had track records they needed to overcome.

While it seemed for a brief moment that they had settled on a nominee free from such troubles in Francois Fillon, a social traditionalist and Thatcherite free marketeer, he also quickly found himself embroiled in controversy.

Fillon has been accused of creating, in essence phony, jobs for family members and using public funds to pay them. At a time when there is dissatisfaction with the political class in every country, it is the kind of story that won't go away.

If he had steered clear of trouble, he would still have found himself undercut - in efforts to be the mainstream candidate to face the Front National - by Macron, thanks to his platform that leans deeply into the territory of the Right.

On top of wanting tough measures against trade unions and ending the 35 hour working week, with restrictions on immigration, he wants cuts to public spending and an end to the wealth tax (McKenzie & Dewan, 2016). Hardly a broad platform.

The Right's ever further drift rightwards was to try and cover off the threat of the Far Right. After their performance in the regional elections last year, Marine Le Pen's Front National was seen as being in the strongest position amongst Europe's Far Right parties to rock the establishment.

Brexit only reinforced that idea. The fearful mainstream and grinning extremists alike presaged the EU's death in her victory. The trouble is, the 'surge' for Marine Le Pen and her party was never really what it seemed.

While passing 20% in the polls was a troubling landmark, her party has not been able to advance. The key is that it hasn't been able to convince a wider audience, despite efforts to make the Front National the respectable face of Far Right nativist nationalism.

In a departure from the more outspoken racism of her father, she co-opted mainstream values of French republicanism and sought to equate them with nationalism - as that which is native and needs protection. It hasn't worked. The most ambitious projections see her reaching the second round presidential run-off, only to lose profoundly.

Under the respectable surface are disturbing movements. There are dark and extremist rumblings. The face might be respectable but it is façade covering and benefiting from the rise of a cancerous extremism (The Guardian, 2017).

Implications

One thing is clear: the fallout from the French election will come with demands for things to change in Europe. Amongst the agreements that have kept the PS and PRG together is a commitment to overhaul the economic governance of the Eurozone and a call to harmonise Corporation Tax across the continent (Le Monde, 2017).

These would be gigantic, and necessary, steps and be a positive direction for the European Union, particularly in the fight against corporate tax evasion. From Far Left to Far Right, there will be pressure for some kind of action.

The presidential race is only the first and symbolic step. The second step will be taken in the legislative election, where some sort of consensus will need to be found among the progressive parties if they are to set the agenda.

Neither the Right, nor the Far Right, yet hold the balance. So what stands in the way of a progressive next step for France is whether or not the parties of the Left and Centre can find common ground.

In 2002, voters rallied around conservative Jacques Chirac in the presidential against Le Pen's father. It seems likely that the same will to unite behind anyone to 'beat the fascists' will stymie Marine in 2017.

But the various parties - the different streams of the Parti Socialiste, the Parti Radical de Gauche, Macron's En Marche!, Bayrou's centrist MoDems, Melenchon's Left groups and others - will need to pull together to ensure a positive progressive government emerges from the legislative election.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words Matter: When far-right groups hide behind masks, it's more important than ever for progressives to be clear what we mean

The rise of neo-Nazi white nationalism in the United States behind its mask, the self-ascribed label 'Alt-Right', exposes a problem that needs to be addressed. When the words we use to describe and define things in politics are obscured or blurred it leaves us vulnerable.

Words matter. They are the medium for communication and even our own thoughts and ideas. When we lose clarity in the definitions of words, we lose the medium for expressing these ideas in the ways that can bring us together in shared understanding, or defining for ourselves what something is and how it might be championed, improved or opposed.

The words people use in politics, to name their parties or their belief systems, can inform or deceive. And it is the norm in politics that these words are heard mostly in an adversarial context, as opponents seek to label and discredit one another. But the words of politics describe discrete positions and it is important that people know what each of them represents.

There-in lies the danger of the rise of the self-proclaimed 'Alt-Right'. When white nationalism tries to hide behind the term 'Alt', it is both a deception and an attack upon the language of progress and reform. It allows them to obscure their true nature while attempting to co-opt the language, and therefore identity and perhaps support, of well-meaning reformers and anti-establishment movements.

This game is not newly invented by them. It has been the primary avenue of conservatism for centuries. As political movements reform themselves, the adherents who stick to the old unreformed tenets find themselves caught in the gravity of conservatism.

For instance, the term liberalism has undergone a long series of changes. As its adherents' understanding of how best to achieve individual liberty has evolved, so to has liberalism undergone changes. But the old ideas don't go away.

And conservatism never misses an opportunity. It consumes these ideas and assimilates them, finding ways to fit parts of these ideologies into its own thinking to convey its own purposes - to protect its system of tradition, hierarchy and moral order.

From the elitist constitutional order of the old bourgeois liberalism, to the free markets of classical liberalism, conservatism has found a home in the liberal parties that didn't reform themselves or conservative parties have taken up the ideas as they have been abandoned by the liberals who did reform.

While the determined consumption and repackaging of liberalism has been much commented on, the same process, happening to democratic movements, has been given much less attention. But it is just as real and just as disconcerting.

Amongst the revolutionaries of 1848, there were democrats as well as liberals. In that broad opposition movement, the failure of the liberal part of was clearly pointed out by Marx and Engels. The bourgeois order was the liberal folly that allowed their movement to be absorbed by the conservative establishment.

The democrats were not immune from folly. Their own folly was nationalism. Their leaders, like Giuseppe Mazzini, looked to nationalism as a medium to unite the people around their common heritage and arose them to protect their interests.

But efforts to achieve popular liberation and sovereignty ended up taking a back seat to petty rivalries over 'national' claims to lands and borders - driving rifts between the Germans and Czechs and Polish; saw the Hungarians, who were fighting to end domination by the Austrians, themselves fought by Romanians and Croatians.

The sectarian ideologies reared their menacing heads. Militarism embedded within the conservative establishment, particularly in Germany, wielded nationalism in the forging of nation-states with grand armies as the martial power in a great game - a competition between nations for self-interested domination.

For conservatism, the bourgeois order provided the administrative tools and nationalism provided the means to shape the popular identity. The follies of liberals and democrats, in quests for power and order, had in the end simply fed the conservative establishment with palatable ideas for assimilation.

This pattern on the part of conservatism has not ceased. Their offshoots in national populism and liberal conservatism, and those movements containing both - like the co-opted Republican Party in the United States - continue to play these language games with an eye for opportunity.

Progressives of all stripes, liberal or democrat, need to be wary of this. They need to take great care over their words and ideas, and never be willing to simply give up our words - and everything that comes with them - to conservatism.

American conservatism has co-opted the centrist concept of the republic. European conservatism has co-opted the liberal concept of individual liberty. The far-right everywhere co-opted the democratic-socialist concept of social justice. Now, white nationalist sectarianism wants to present itself as 'the alternative'.

But, as with parties like UKIP and Front National, these parties of the far-right pitching themselves as 'liberators' are really the ultra-establishment forces, disguising themselves in the garments of the anti-establishment movements of the turn of the millennium. They claim words like 'Alt' and pitch themselves as the conservative rebel to the liberal-socialist tyrant because it suits them in this moment.

Progressives cannot keep giving ground. They cannot lightly allow words to be taken as new disguises or fresh ammunition for conservative movements - movements that promise liberation but will deliver only the conservative triumph: tradition over reason, moral order over sound ethics, hierarchy over equality.

Flags at The Proms: Blue and Gold have become the colours of those calling for tolerance and openness in Britain

On Saturday night, the Royal Albert Hall was a sea of flags. Photograph: Interior of the Royal Albert Hall from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

A plan by a small crowdfunded group, to hand out the European flag to be waved alongside the Union Flag at the Last Night of the Proms, is just the latest attempt by those among the 48ers to show their continued belief in an open and international Britain.

It is also the latest demonstration to provoke the ire of those in the Brexit camp. Every time there has been a show of support by 48ers, there has been a response of equal volume decrying the show as some kind of protest against democracy.

It is as if the most hardline Brexiters see the European flag as a direct attack on their identity - a challenge to their personal Britishness that must contested and squashed wherever it arises. That response is a profound overreaction.

The particularly notable thing about the best represented form of pro-European attitude in the UK is that it carries the belief that you can be British and European. It is inclusive. Support for membership of the European Union is not seen as the negation of Britishness, but distinctly part of it.

The support shown at gatherings where the Blue and Gold flags have been abundant has been for Britishness, to represent Britain, not to oppose it or protest against it - to celebrate a view of Britain that is tolerant, open and takes an international view.

Reducing these outpourings to the tantrums of "precious snowflakes", crying because they lost, who should "accept democracy", is itself a profoundly undemocratic attitude. Democracy is supposed to be about representation, not domination.

It also turns a blind eye to the reality of the hostility provoked by the Brexit vote - and ignores how the Blue and Gold was the starkest and simplest symbol that people could use to show their opposition to intolerance and their solidarity with the victims.

The reality at the Last Night of the Proms was that an overwhelming display of British pomp and ceremony, in a sea of Union flags, was dotted throughout with many other flags of which the European flag was just one - a nod to Britain's presence on the international stage.

The difference is that the planned presence of the Blue and Gold was taken as a personal affront. For those riled by its presence, they need to realise that it is no challenge to their personal identity - and that the 48ers also fear authoritarian attack on theirs.

Those fears are stoked when, amidst suddenly rising intolerance, thin-skinned patriots undemocratically question the legitimacy of celebrations for an opposition view that had the support of 48% of voters. Democracy begins in acknowledging the legitimacy of the opposing minorities and their right to dissenting views.

The stark lines of nationalism are reappearing across Europe. It would be a travesty for the UK to start suffering from the enforcement of a narrow 'Britishness' that leaves no room for other identities. That, in short, is what the Blue and Gold flag has come to stand for in Britain.

Secularism is supposed to be at the heart of free thought and expression, not an excuse to suppress them

Written over the door of the Faculte de Droit in Paris is the promise of liberty, equality and brotherhood from the secular state to its citizens, yet secularism still faces accusations of overbearing paternalism.

Secularism, at its most literal, means the separation of church and state. At the core of the principal is the idea that no religion - or any other formal, organised, set of beliefs - should play an integrated role in the governance or administration of civic institutions, so as to maintain their neutrality.

However, it is also intended to guarantee to citizens the freedom of conscience, and through that policy give support to freedom of thought. So as much as it means religion staying out of public administration, it also meant the state leaving personal beliefs, including religion, as a private matter.

How that principle is applied in practice, in modern times, has come under a spotlight in the past week thanks to the response of some to a rising fear in Europe of fundamentalist Islam. In France, local government in some areas have passed prohibitions against certain kinds of outward religious expression - the most notable result so far being the clamp down on 'burkinis' (Amrani, 2016).

One thing is absolutely clear. Issuing legal commands as to what women can and cannot wear does not convey "la légitime et saine laïcité", the legitimate and healthy secularity, or the guarantee of the freedom of conscience, promised by the French secularism that descends from the 1905 laws.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is that the world today is not the world into which those particular laws where issued. Listed amongst the laws of 1905, almost paradoxically next to the freedom of conscience, was the prohibition of public displays of religion.

The France that had the 1905 law applied to it was a country deeply entwined with the Catholic Church. The entangling influence of the church was deeply resented and the emergence of laicite came hand in hand with a history of anti-clericalism that pushed back and tried to wrestle society out of the grip of the clergy..

The Left bloc government that advocated secularism, formed by Radicals and Socialists, wanted in particular to end the influence of Catholicism over education - which had been traditionally provided almost exclusively by the clergy. Yet the broken clerical influence was simply replaced with that of the centralised state.

As much as laicite, and in particular secular education, was a republican and humanist project, it was also deeply nationalist. In early twentieth century France, secularism was at the centre of a broader policy of 'modernisation', that sought to establish and project the power of a centralised nation-state - seeking to make the civic state the centre of a society with a singular, integrated and unifying, language and culture.

In modern Europe, secularism has largely succeeded, yet it has done so alongside the advance of the centralised nation-states and nowhere in Europe has secularism and the nation-state been so heavily intertwined as in France - as to represent a major component of the 'national values' and national identity.

The rise of extremist and fundamentalist religion, and extremist and fundamentalist ideologies - that seek to play an active role in government to directly impose their values on citizens - do call for careful thought. The Nationalist Right's answers to these complex matters has been to call for a more strict imposition of 'national values' - and in France that has meant using secularism as the means to legitimise an overbearing policy.

This is a threat to the principles of secularism. The independence of the functions of government from any interest group is a worthy idea. The freedom of conscience is essential. As George Clemenceau - former Prime Minister of France, a radical and a contemporary to the 1905 laws - argued that you do not get liberty by fighting one tyranny with another tyranny.

Clemenceau wrote of his certainty that "apprenticeship in liberty can only be served through liberty" and that to "struggle against the church there is only one means - the liberty of the individual". Support for free thought, openness and tolerance are the progressive response to closed tyrannical intolerance. Stooping to the regulation of citizens' clothing just swaps one degrading paternalism for another.

Closed or Global - is that the only choice? South America's political tides hold an important lesson for Europe

Mauricio Macri, Argentina's new globalising President, casting his ballot in 2015. Photograph: Mauricio Macri vota by Mauricio Macri (License) (Cropped)

Europe, after nearly a decade of economic turmoil, seems to find itself on a precipice. Behind lie the shattered ruins of the social democratic consensus and the overbearing shadow of its failing replacement globalisation. Ahead in the darkness is sectarianism: populist, nationalist and authoritarian.

Populism in South America

While wrestling with this seemingly polarised and precarious position, Europe should look to South America. After its own struggles to shake off America imperialism, the Regan-Thatcher neoliberal doctrine, a crisis of poverty and, in parts, conservative authoritarianism, South America saw a popular electoral revolt in favour of populist parties offering social rights.

In obviously varying circumstances, but with some common discontents, from Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Socialists in Venezuela 1998, to Nestor Kirchner's Peronist Justicialists in 2003, and Evo Morales' Campesino Socialists in 2005, and others in between, a so-called pink tide overturned the neoliberal status quo.

Despite the obvious allusions to socialism, the popular campaigns for social rights where fought within an increasingly closed state system, with overtly nationalist overtones - and frequently at the cost of political rights and transparency. Those who began as reformers faced accusations of endorsing narrow and unshakeable parties of power, with the "typical vices: personalism, clientelism, corruption, harassing of the press" (Bosoer & Finchelstein, 2015).

Populist-Globalist Revolving Door

As social conditions have undermined the globalist response to Europe's crisis, economic conditions have undermined South America's closed populist system. Weak exports have led to a continuing downturn (The World Bank, 2016) - exposing the fact that it is easier to maintain repression if social rights keep being extended along with the money to fund them.

As Europe is increasingly turning from globalism to find populism ahead, South America is doing the opposite. Mauricio Macri, for Republican Proposal party and Cambiemos coalition, presented Argentina with an open globalised alternative to the closed populist nationalist government of the Justicialists in 2015 and was elected President.

But there is little reason to believe that South America's new open global option is likely to meet any less dissatisfaction than it has in Europe, where the 2008 financial crisis, and the sovereign debt accrued in managing it, was seen as an opportunity by the globalised financial sector - ostensibly pressing the idea that governments are not above the law, in order to effectively claim rent on state debt.

Argentina itself already has long experience of wrangling with this system, that has used American courts to try and force state policy on repayment of national debts, accumulated through bond sales. The power of that global finance sector and its power to shape fiscal policy, in effect essentially shaping the economics of entire states, is all too familiar a subject of exasperation in Europe.

The Role of Social Democracy

While South America has struggled for stability between populism and globalism against a back drop of military juntas, in Europe, for a time, there was shelter to be found within social democracy. The social democratic project provided safeguards against either extreme, closed and global, while trying to include the benefits - like social rights and widespread access to capital and investment.

However, the 2008 crisis undermined social democracy. Its adherent parties have been severely weakened, perhaps fatally. Too many times, social democracy chose to back the alienating establishment instead of reforming it and the moderate left, in Europe and South America, found itself shackled to neoliberalism as part of a desperately defended mainstream.

South America's leaders responded to economic pressures by advancing a closed system. Leaders in Europe, after 2008, embraced the global system to overcome its problems. Now, with both under pressure, they seem ready to swap. But neither have proved to be a sound solution.

What is needed is a 'new' social democracy, a replacement for the old and worn out system. But a new balance has to be found. It isn't enough to be a part of the establishment, to be an insider, taking the edge off of its worst extremes. A consensus that recognises the demand for political liberties, civil rights and pluralism alongside social rights, that embraces an open society through internationalism rather than globalism.

Right now, the choice presented to the people of South America and Europe is between closed and global. But it doesn't have restricted to these exclusive polar positions. It is a false and exclusionary dilemma. A better consensus is possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II: ...after Nationalism had nearly destroyed us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV: ...but the real solutions remain international

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

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

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

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

What do progressives want from politics?

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

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

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

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

Where is the grand vision? EU referendum debate is mired in a contest over who really represents the 'national interest'

The European humanitarian vision of peace, rights and prosperity for all individuals, regardless of nationality, religion or borders, is not just under attack but being largely ignored by two sides arguing over who represents the 'national interest'.

One of the saddest parts of the European Union referendum debate is that it seems to consist only of two patriotic factions, each arguing that their way represents the 'national interest'. For anyone with progressive, humanist and internationalist leanings, that clearly reflects the same narrowing of political debate that has hit the UK over the last decade.

The scope of the political imagination is being hemmed in. Europe, finding itself once again in the grip of 'national interests', has seen the grand vision that once underwrote the European project hollowed out (Spinelli, 2016).

Europe has faced at least two major crises that have hit the continent over the past decade, one financial and one refugee. If well administered and democratically accountable, European Governance could in itself have been part of the solution. And yet the idea, the entire political direction, has been largely suppressed as taboo in the 'national interest'.

David Cameron's renegotiation was entirely framed by the 'national interest'. Its primary purpose seemed to the search for opt-outs from a European system (Sparrow, 2016) - the ability to restrict or withdraw social security for non-nationals, exemptions from measures that might impact on the finance sector based in the City of London, reductions in regulations affecting business, and a two speed EU that removes an UK obligation to ever closer union.

The proposed Conservative bill of rights is a salient example. It proposes to console lovers of European Human Rights with a national counterpart, but it offers only certain rights - and those it gives to some people with less rights for others, with different categories of rights, creating different strata of people (Chakrabarti, 2015).

The In campaign has approached the referendum on much the same terms. The Labour Party's website for its 'Labour In For Britain' group makes its pitch all about Britain - national security, national economy and national influence, always framed as 'Britain' in the collective. This dynamic is an effect of the narrowing of vision, a seeming fear of anyone questioning patriotism, the kind of fears that lead to the advent of an left-wing party promoting itself with an anti-immigration mug.

As a result there has been little defence of the EU's work on its own terms. Its work across borders, for peace and prosperity and for individuals regardless of identity - protecting the environment, fighting globalised corporate corruption, supporting and promoting rights of the individual, often against infringements by their 'national' governments and nation-state authorities.

Under the aegis of the European Council, National Governments - including that of the UK, and with all of their attendant political bias - have in recent years taken control of the European agenda and turned it away from the grand vision according to their own 'national interests'. In doing their faces have turned inward, their vision narrowed and their eyes closed.

These governments have let fear be stoked, fears based on perceived threats to identity and vital safety nets (Zatat, 2016). This has pushed an EU exit onto the table, that would drop the pursuit of an international politics in favour of an uncertain future of globalised capitalism, doing business with countries who have little or no safeguards to protect their workers - that would in turn, in globalised competition, only undermine the safeguards protecting individuals in the UK.

The grand vision needs to be recovered. There are movements, such as Another Europe and Democracy in Europe Movement 25, and individuals, like Caroline Lucas and Yanis Varoufakis, that believe in staying and taking back Europe for its citizens. They want to improve democratic accountability, to recover the ideals of humanitarianism.

To leave Europe is no genuine alternative. It casts us, culturally, back into a small, narrow, inward-gazing isolation, while throwing us out onto the global markets without the kinds of guarantees that the EU has, at least tried, to offer. To leave is to pursue a revisionist false past, to satisfy some lingering notion of glorious empire. To stay, with a positive approach and a critical eye, presents the possibility of building the future.

In Argentina, Macri's broad Centre coalition secured the Presidency. Yet the question remains: when can the Left cut ties with neoliberals to pursue truly radical reforms?

Mauricio Macri, pictured casting his vote in the August primaries, united the Centre-Right and Centre-Left opposition to defeat the Kirchner candidate and become the first non-Peronist, non-UCR President. Photograph: Mauricio Macri vota by Mauricio Macri (License) (Cropped)

After twelve years in power, the Kirchnerist faction of the Peronist movement, in the form of the Partido Justicialista, lost their grip on the Presidency of Argentina (Watts & Goni, 2015). In the second round of voting Mauricio Macri, leading the broad centre coalition Cambiemos, defeated the Justicialista, and former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, backed Frente para la Victoria candidate Daniel Scioli (BBC, 2015).

Macri's victory has been received positively as, possibly, the beginning for a new moderate Argentina (Cottle, 2015). And yet, while neoliberals, in particular, rejoice in a pro-market victory, Macri's Presidency has only come with the complicity of the centre-left, specifically the Union Civica Radicale (UCR, Radical Civic Union).

That tentative alliance raises the question of whether, sooner or later, those with Left-wing tendencies, particularly within UCR, will feel the need to go their own way - though there is a lot of work ahead before a progressive slate could win without some sort of agreement with, or against, the Peronist movement.

Not the least consideration is that the election of the conservative liberal Mauricio Macri will not, alone, be enough to change the direction of Argentina. Although, the defeat of Kirchner's populist Peronist candidate - which has brought a positive response from neoliberal pro-market voices - has been regarded as a new turn for Argentina and, possibly a little optimistically, the overthrow of populism (Rodriguez-Brizuela, 2015).

While the Peronists are still the largest group in the Congress, that may shift over the course of Macri's term as half of the Chamber of Deputies is elected every two years in legislative elections. And the efforts already launched by Macri at tackling Argentina's immense economic challenges have received praise (The Economist, 2016). So, for the moment, the momentum is with Macri.

However, Macri's support came from a coalition primarily divided between the Centre-Right party Propuesta Republicana (Republican Proposal, PRO) and the Centre-Left party Union Civica Radical - backed by a mix of supporters from across the centre (The Argentina Independent, 2015). So what of Macri's Radical partners?

Despite the party's name, the UCR is a moderate centre-left party, seen by the harder Left as bourgeois, that has for decades been caught between other factions. The traditional opponents of the Peronists, some internal and breakaway factions such as the Radicales K have nonetheless found themselves sometimes allies with Peronist factions, in pursuit of reforms that promise social justice and improvements to the lives of citizens (La Nacion, 2006).

Yet the authoritarian character of the Justicialista - with fears ranging from electoral fraud to intimidation and suppression of the press, along with policies like the confiscation of pension funds to plug financial holes (Marty, 2015; Crandall, 2012) - seems to have helped align the UCR with the opposition. That has led the UCR on the path joining Cambiemos, despite its mainstream, globalising, neoliberal approach (Rodriguez, 2015).

Now, it would not be a surprise to see the election of 2015 presented as a contest between the market and the state. Yet in reality, it was more after the fashion of the statist, populist and nationalist Peronists, holding a long-term authoritarian grip on power, versus a broad opposition, that Macri has succeeded in rallying around his open and 'neoliberal' way - that embraces the global system.

That is a story replicated across Europe in different shades - liberals and social democrats shackled to the neoliberal mainstream, in the face of rising fear and nationalism, rallying to protect positive gains embodied in the the establishment institutions. So why, the question might well be asked, would or should the Centre-Left consider breaking away from the Centre-Right? It is certainly clear that the global economic crisis is not over and that populist nationalism has not retreated - even in Argentina after its defeat.

The answer is because, ultimately, neoliberalism is no friend to social progress.

For all his moderate liberal credentials, as Mayor of Buenos Aires Mauricio Macri behaved in a typically neoliberal way - defunding social programs in search of competition at the expense of social security (Esperanza Casullo, 2015). And Argentina's Macrinomic path out of its present crisis will likely follow the same austerian path as many countries in Europe - particularly the UK under George Osborne Chancellorship.

But that doesn't mean that some overnight, clean break is imminent. Progressives in Argentina must build gradually towards an unshackling, because the election demonstrated that there is not yet much of a political space for a radical alternative to Peronist statism or the neoliberal market. Yet Macri's election has levered open the door and progressives must step into that new space to develop a fresh consensus around a just, sustainable and liberating alternative, amenable to the building of broad Left movement.

What can progressives learn from elections around the world?

Progressives have struggled in recent years to get their distinct narratives heard over the cry of populist nationalism. Photograph: Argentina Elections posters from 2013 by Beatrice Murch (License) (Cropped)

On Sunday there where general elections in two countries separated by eight thousand miles, including two half continents and an ocean. Yet they both told a similar story. In neither Argentina nor Poland was there a revival of the Centre-Left like that which brought Justin Trudeau to office in Canada.

In Argentina, the populist and nationalist Justicialist Party, of outgoing President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, had nearest competitors who were fiscal conservatives, ruling party dissenters, and small state neoliberal capitalists. In Poland, that contest was reversed, with the neoliberals in power and the populist nationalists as the main opposition.

In both cases, the populist and nationalist parties were victorious. For the Left, that serves as a stark reminder that there are many places where the progressive voice remains quiet in opposition to populist nationalism, or where centre-left collapsed during the seemingly global discrediting of social democracy and has yet to be rebuilt (Lawson, 2011; Guinan, 2013).

General elections in Argentina

In Argentina, President Kirchner had reached her term limit and so her successor Daniel Scioli was leading their populist coalition Frente para la Victoria (FpV, Front for Victory), dominated by their Peronist Justicialist Party (PJ, Partido Justicialista), into the election. Their main opposition was the broad centrist coalition Cambiemos (Let's Change), featuring Presidential candidate Mauricio Macri's Centre-Right Propuesta Republicana (PRO, Republican Proposal) and Centre-Left Union Civica Radical (UCR, Radical Civic Union). The third major group were the conservative UNA, Unidos por una Nueva Alternativa (United for a New Alternative), a dissenting faction of the ruling Justicialists.

In the Presidential primaries, Front for Victory took 38% of the vote, while Cambienos took 30% and the UNA took 20% (Hodari, 2015). FpV and Cambienos had 8 and 12 senate seats at stake, respectively (with the Radical Civic Union alone holding 7 of them), while the majority of the 130 lower house seats at stake were Justicialist, in total 84, with only 21 from Cambienos (again, the Radical Civic Union alone holding 13 of them).

These parties and coalitions went into an election with the national economy facing escalating inflation and stagnant wages, with a slow recovery from high unemployment on uncertain ground. The election was also mired in scandals, with fears of electoral fraud and intimidation, and somewhat unsettling outbursts from Scioli accusing social network users of plots to damage his image.

Observers had expressed exasperation at the impact of Peronist populism remaining strong, with its nationalists and crowd pleasing facets, for its obstruction of a much more serious debate (Lampa, 2015). Criticism was levelled at the parties only drawing vagaries between the centrist's Cambiemos' more neoliberal approach, toned down to fiscal responsibility, and the populist FpV's centralised state intervention.

The election itself produced a recognisable situation: a country divided multiple ways between several parties. In the Presidential election, there was no clear winner with FpV's Scioli and Cambiemos' Macri both claiming around 35%, with the UNA candidate Massa claiming 21%, which will have to be settled in a run-off in a month's time (Davies, 2015). In the Senate and the House of Representatives, the indications where that there would be more division, with FpV increasing its upper house seats but losing overall control of the lower house (Watts & Goni, 2015).

General elections in Poland

In Poland a similar situation had evolved where one essentially conservative party ruled with others as their primary opposition. Yet in Poland, the situation was slightly reversed. The ruling party where the neoliberal Civic Platform party and the opposition where the populist, nationalist, Eurosceptic, anti-immigration and anti-abortion  Law and Justice party (Nardelli, 2015).

Despite eight years in government and having steered the country through the economic crisis with relative calm, in comparison to other European countries, polling and a loss in the Presidential election in May showed that the Civic Platform party was losing support - falling from 39% at the last election to 25%. For progressives that would have been welcomed as part of the rising tide of support for the radical Left or the recovery of the Centre-Left.

Yet the Presidential election was won, not by the Left, but by the hard-Right Law and Justice party (The Guardian, 2015). That party took 30% at the last election but had risen in the polls to 36%. Meanwhile, efforts to assemble a United Left group to contest the election have only managed to gather around 9% in the polls.

When the exit polls where released, it became apparent that the shift from the Centre-Right to the hard-Right in Poland was in fact being undersold by polling data. Law and Justice were set to take 39% and enough seats to govern alone of the vote while their Centre-Right opponents had fallen even further to 24% (BBC, 2015).

Even more remarkable was that the exit polls suggested the complete failure of a parties of the Left to gain even a single seat. The United Left electoral alliance appear to have fallen short the 8% lower threshold (Cienski, 2015).

Progressives still haven't found their voice

In both countries, the full official results are still coming in. Yet what is clear is that elections in neither Argentina nor Poland have shown the strong progressive movements that the Left in other countries, like Canada and Portugal (Evans-Pritchard, 2015), have tapped into. The progressives parties that do play a prominent role, such as Argentina's Radical Civic Union, find themselves caught up in a politics polarised between conservative electoral factions that are split only over state intervention and whether they should pursue big state or small state conservatism.

Both elections serve as a stark reminder that the Left has still not found a convincing answer to popular nationalism. In the UK, Ed Miliband, under the influence of Blue Labour, simply tried to mimic it so as to steal it away from conservatives. Yet nationalism, and appeals to popular power, remain difficult subjects for the Left. Progressives are at once drawn to popular movements - to protests, marches and popular organisation - and critical of the dangers of suppression of the individual and irrationality inherent to them. The Left is also often seduced by the cohesion and commonality of national pride, even as it undermines internationalist humanitarian ideals.

If progressives are going to compete with and defeat conservatism - and the political divisions apparent across the world say it is very possible, whether it is popular, traditional or economic conservatism - they must build a convincing approach founded in co-operation and pluralism. Those are the characteristics by which the Left stands truly apart from the Right and progressives need to be brave in making the case for them, regardless of how much better nationalism may play with the crowd.

Catalonia hands pro-independence parties a majority. The road to independence starts here. But where does it end?

La Diada Catalan independence rally, which saw around a million people take to the streets of Barcelona. Photograph: Onze de Setembre, Badalona i Meridiana by Castellers d'Esplugues (License) (Cropped)

On Sunday, the pro-independence parties of Catalonia put a proposition to voters in the regional election (Kassam, 2015). If you want independence from Spain, they said, then vote for us. After years of wrangling, the pro-independence leader Artur Mas promised that a majority of seats in the Catalan Parliament would begin a process leading to independence for Catalonia within eighteen months.

Voters responded by handing the pro-independence parties a majority of seats (BBC, 2015). That part, at least, is unequivocal. The rest will likely be contested down to the last possible moment and measure. Yet the separatist struggle, and how it comes to an end, will regardless have a profound effect upon the rest of Europe - particularly upon the Left.

The two sides of separatism in Catalonia

From the beginning, the legitimacy of the entire separatist movement has been challenged by the government of Spain. From constitutional rulings against holding referendums (Govan, 2014) to threats of legal action against separatist leaders (BBC, 2014), the establishment in Spain has made strenuous efforts to shut down the movement.

Yet even if Spain succeeds in preventing a breakaway, as the UK did, that will not alone solve its problems. The old establishment would most likely remain intact and those supporting the separatist movement, as in the UK, will not likely change their minds and back down after so clear a show of support. The establishment has also left it rather late to start negotiating a compromise solution.

At this point, a breakaway only looks likely to be halted by either a belated compromise deal - unlikely but at least theoretically possible, if the Spanish general election in December follows opinion polling that suggests the ruling, establishment conservative, Partido Popular will suffer a drastic loss of support (Penty, 2015) - or through further suppression. Neither of which is a recipe for long term peace and stability.

For the Catalonian Left, independence represents a new frontier on which the stubborn and intransigent old establishment might be contested. It is an opportunity to reconstruct the state and bring democratic power closer to the people, enhancing self-determination without closing off the provincial community from solidarity with the people of the wider continent (Sole i Ferrando, 2015).

The trouble is that the separatist struggle is not that simple. The Left has long struggled with the questions of identity embedded in nationalist struggles, which largely go against the internationalist and humanist themes inherent to democratic and liberal ideologies - that concern themselves instead with economic inequality and individual opportunities for people in a broader sense that crosses traditional social boundaries.

That makes the division in Catalonia uncomfortable for progressives. The contest between separatists in Catalonia and the establishment in Spain has been described as a struggle between two nationalisms (de Beer, 2014), with conservatism playing a leading role on both sides.

On the Catalonian Right, part of what Convergencia represents is a resentment, also felt in some other of Europe's richer provinces, at the unequal contributions they believe themselves to be making (Jackson, 2015). Like with prosperous industrial provinces such Bavaria, or Northern Italy where Lega Nord receive strong representation with its Far Right interpretation (Kirchgaessner, 2015), there is a belief that central government takes far more away from these regions that it gives back and is not serving their interests - not dissimilar from the sentiments of some regarding the UK's role in the European Union.

The separatists still have large hurdles to clear

After the last election, the two main pro-independence parties of Right and Left - Artur Mas' conservative Convergencia Democratica de Catalunya (CDC), leading the Convergence and Union coalition (CiU), and Oriol Junqueras' democratic socialist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) - between them held 71 of 135 seats (Nardelli, 2015).

At the European elections and in opinion polling since then, between them they have usually polled an overall plurality, and at times an outright majority, of support in the province. Individually, the ERC and CDC have polled as high as 24% and 26%, respectively. For this election they agreed to pool their support and stand together as a single pro-independence party, 'Junts pel Si' (Together for Yes, JxSi).

On Sunday that alliance resulted in the parties being just six seats short of a majority in the Catalan Parliament on 40% of the vote, but with pro-independence groups being, overall, in the majority (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2015). According to the pledge made by Artur Mas, that means the eighteen month countdown to independence has begun.

However, there are huge discussions to be had before the new form of Catalonia can be unveiled. The Left and the Right must still come to a settlement over their respective wishes for reconstruction. Then, together, they must manage their relationship with the establishment in Spain, which has no intention of allowing Catalonia to break away, and the European community - that will not look favourably upon a unilateral declaration of independence without the support of an outright popular majority.

That means, first, overcoming their stark political differences. The ERC and CDC each each represent a deep vein of separatist and reformist sentiment in Europe. For ERC, the pressure from the Left will be to embrace a radical democratic reform of the state. For the right, the CDC exemplifies a regionalist, pro-business, attitude that sees independence as a way of increasing economic efficiencies and integration into the European economic system.

They will both also need to find a way to work with the other pro-independence party, Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (CUP) - a far left, socialist and radical democratic party in the mould of its namesake in Greece. Overcoming their differences will not be easy.

The impact of the separatist movement will be felt across Europe

The separatist struggle, however it comes to an end, will have a deeply profound effect upon the rest of Europe. As with the Scottish referendum, moderates, separatists and nationalists of all stripes across Europe will await the outcome and ponder - likely with some anxiety - what it will mean for them.

After decades of trying to achieve reform within the establishment, often being thoroughly complicit in the decisions taken by the establishment, the Left is faced with - particularly social democrats - the possibility of the peaceful and progressive break up of the establishment institutions in various European nation-states.

As shown in Scotland, the mainstream Left has struggled to find a response to the fracturing of the power structures it has come to rely on. As the arguments within the UK Labour Party have shown, it is caught between propping up a crumbling edifice and embracing a new one that does not yet have firm foundations.

For progressives, as with Syriza in Greece, the hope lies in an outcome that shows an alternative to the old establishment positions is possible. An outcome that lays out a path that might be followed to a more civil libertarian and socially just society, able to marry self-determination with an open attitude to the world. For the more cynical, the hope is for clarity as to what the modern state should look like, from where its power should be derived and upon what basis it should claim legitimacy.