Humanitarian government is under attack and progressive opposition can no longer afford to be weak, scattered and resigned

The humanitarian crisis signified by the proliferation of food banks is a controversial legacy of the coalition government. Photograph: Woodcock St food bins in 2013 by Birmingham News Room (License) (Cropped)

The financial crisis and the austerity that followed exposed a vein of deep conservatism in Europe. Prodded in this raw spot, Europe has become defensive, closed and mean (The Guardian, 2015). That has been most apparent in the attack that has been launched, across the continent, on humanitarian government.

Everywhere, there is an eagerness for the throwing up of fences to separate us (Colonnelli, 2015), as nationalism has reared its head. As it has risen, it has brought with it a creeping fear and a deep mistrust of otherness. Those tensions have become so obvious, and so threatening, that the question of whether the Jewish people of Europe are still safe on the continent has even been asked (Omer-Jackaman, 2015).

All the while, internally, the community safety nets are being torn down in the name of austerity. The harsh and narrow terms set for what little support remains has left it in the hands of individual insurance, food banks and personal philanthropy to 'handle' those who fall behind or fall outside of the system (Snow, 2015).

By advocating the protection of the poor from their poverty, openness towards - and acceptance of - outsiders, and the protection minorities from the tyranny of the majority, humanitarianism is flying in the face of these, the dominant political values of the time. As a result, the idea of a humanitarian government is being besieged upon all sides and is slowly being deconstructed.

One place where it would be tempting to lay all of the blame for this, would be upon the ascendency of conservatism.

Conservatives, taking the opportunity presented by government institutions weakened by taking on the debt of private firms to allay the financial crisis, have shown an aggressive determination to strip back the state in the name of 'fiscally responsible' austerity and balanced budgets.

Yet, a large part of the blame must go to a damp progressive opposition that has failed to stand up for humanitarianism. This has been particularly stark in the UK, where the Labour Party so spectacularly failed to oppose the Conservative's coercive restructure of welfare (BBC, 2015).

The largest factor in this weak response seems to be a loss of confidence in positive government action. The financial crisis damaged the reputation of government - even despite government having been the mechanism with which the original crisis, that the private sector catastrophically caused, was tackled.

Without confidence and trust in government, and its ability to tax and spend to act positively, the Left - liberal and socialist - has lost its traditional tool. That has left progressives stranded, caught between accepting the popular conservative austerity narrative and trying to resurrect the old statist one. The lack of fresh ideas has been astounding.

That lack of conviction, and ingenuity, is proving disastrous for the progressive vision of civil society, where something not far short of a class war is playing out.

Even as conservatives have taken away 'dependence' creating government organisations, withdrawing the state's helping hand, around the world NGOs - Non-governmental organisations - are facing regulations and crackdowns that hinder their work supporting human rights and humanitarian aims (Sherwood, 2015). Control over civil society is being consolidated by those in power and it is being reshaped around their own competitive agenda.

This is leading to a kind of class consolidation, reinforcing the social hierarchy with meritocratic competition. Individuals are being pitted against each other in order to generate innovation and end the 'dependence' of the individual upon society. However, the deconstruction of humanitarian government is burdening, predominantly the poor, individuals with the prospect of a life of servitude.

For the Left, communitarians and individualists alike, these factors aught to be acting as a rallying flag. This is a common humanitarian cause which strikes to the heart of what progressives cherish most: justice and liberty.

The old welfare state served as holding pattern, a bastion against conservatism. As the stronghold began to show cracks, in the UK the Liberal Democrats arguably held back the worst of the flood in government (The Guardian, 2015{2}). However, that party has been cast out to the fringes and the walls of the fortress have crumbled.

So new barricades are needed.

As the argument of Oscar Wilde goes: charity is an insufficient and insulting partial restitution to the people of what was taken from them; and the ethical aim is to reconstruct society so poverty is impossible. That is the kind of radical thinking that is demanded from progressives if they are going to defend humanitarian government.

From political reform, to economic reforms like the Citizen's Income, co-operatives and mutuals, to policies aimed at ensuring sustainability and addressing the cost of living like green energy and housebuilding plans, the necessary ideas exist. The task ahead of progressives is to construct a reformist program for government with these ideas, rooted in strong evidence, and to assemble around it a formidable alliance to stand, both in civil society and at elections, for the common good.

Election 2015: The campaign has started on Labour's terms, but beneath the surface there are negative undertones

After the first not-debate of the 2015 UK election campaign, the Labour Party is probably feeling like it has had the best of the opening exchanges. But not everything smells of roses just yet.

During the not-debate Labour's leader, Ed Miliband, showed himself to be at least credible. Now the party has staked out its territory on the NHS by committing to restricting private company profits taken from NHS contracts and to the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (Wintour, 2015{1}).

Furthermore, the Conservatives were forced to be defensive over leaks purporting to be their proposed welfare cuts for the next parliament (Wintour, 2015{2}) - which would involve the end of industrial injuries benefit (for £1bn), restrictions on child benefit (for £1bn), taxes on disability benefits (for £1.5bn), and reducing eligibility for carer's allowance (with 40% to lose out for £1bn).

The coverage of the leak largely overshadowed David Cameron's own announcement - accompanied by insults aimed at Labour, describing them as ''hypocritical holier-than-thou, hopeless, sneering socialists" (The Guardian, 2015) - to expand the NHS to a full-time 24/7 service (BBC, 2015{1}). He was hardly helped by a British Medical Association warning that an expansion of services would require extra funding (BBC, 2015{2}).

This will all have been precisely the start Labour will have wanted. Labour looking credible on the NHS, and the Tories looking nasty with their cuts agenda.

And yet. While everything may look rosy for Labour and progressives, there is a negative undertone bubbling away just beneath the surface.

Nowhere is that negativity shown best than in the debate on immigration. The latest outrage has come courtesy of the Labour Party itself. Diane Abbott, Labour MP, has expressed her anger at the party's merchandising of a 'Controls on Immigration' mug. The party is using it to promote one of its key election commitments, itself a platitude to cover themselves with voters for whom immigration is a concern (Perraudin, 2015).

The Labour Party's attitude on the matter of immigration shouldn't really be a surprise at this point. Their language during the European elections, at the possibility of a UKIP threat to its working class base, made clear their turn towards appeasement of anti-immigration rhetoric (Watt & Wintour, 2014; Cooper, 2014).

In many ways, Labour and the Conservatives have become mirrors of one another. Both have tried to court the voters of Britain's broad Centre-ground, and in doing so forsook some of their native territory - and they have both underestimated the level of resistance that they would face from their old, alienated, supporters who would refuse to move with them.

When the Conservatives couldn't keep their house in order while trying to modernise and claim centre voters it spawned an ugly offshoot. Those Right-wing voices have since been allowed to dictate the terms of the debate, and to tie together, in people's minds, their agendas with the insecurities people fear. The sad thing is that the solutions to insecurities of work, or to the lack of homes, are not to be reached by the Right's favoured response of shutting themselves in. There are far more open and progressive solutions.

A strong minimum wage and a citizen's income. House building and social housing. More money made available to the less well-off to create their own start-ups. More support and funding for workers to take over their workplaces as co-operatives when big companies pull the plug and reek havoc in communities. The publicly funded public healthcare system supported by health professionals and service users alike.

There is also support for these ideas. Labour, and the Greens and Lib Dems, are all on board with a rising minimum wage, with house building and with co-operatives. The three main parties of the left and centre are all half way there. All that tends to stand in the way is a commitment to an effective public sector, around which there might be an equitable redistribution of income for health & welfare, and for housing and public investment like co-operatives - whether centralised at Westminster or decentralised to regions and localities.

And yet. Once again Labour has found itself against a wall of public opinion and has not found a voice with which to cut through the propaganda. Instead, feeling weak and set upon, it has paid lip service.

Labour's health proposals are part of a similar theme. They have offered a check on privatisation which, by definition, precludes an end to PFIs (Private Finance Initiatives) in the NHS - which expanded first of all under Labour's stewardship (Dathan, 2015). While it would certainly raise more funds for the NHS, it is still only an attempt at making capitalism work for socialism - or at least democratic socialism - rather than a means of addressing or responding to the fundamental mistrust of private business becoming involved with public services.

Labour's attitude to healthcare and immigration are problems with a common root. On healthcare they have their same old idea - of using private investment to raise public funds - and are just looking for a new way to sell it to people redressed in new packaging. On immigration the party has a fairly positive core - one focussed on a minimum wage increase and working conditions - which it has now encased within a language and policies of anti-immigration scapegoating.

In each case, Labour has come to its own position but has not tried to win the debate over the fundamental ideas underlying them. They have merely looked for how they might sell the idea. That has produced the inconsistent result where the party has resisted public pressure to end NHS privatisation, and yet has caved to it on immigration.

Labour's mix of aloof policy-making and aggressive populism alienates them from the people they should be debating with, trying to convince them of the benefits of progressive alternatives. While the political Right scraps for dominance, Labour needs to wake up to the fact that the Left doesn't have to play the game the same way.

There is so much hunger on the Left for more engagement and less half measures. There is so much room for more co-operation, more optimism and more positivity. Diane Abbott speaking out against Labour's immigration policy is a positive constructive step. People are crying out for a radically positive vision and Labour, as the biggest party on the Left, have the responsibility to facilitate it.

British voters prefer moderate Centrism... so why are Far-Right groups making gains?

There has been much speculation over the years as to the dominant political attitudes of the British people. That debate has been reflected in the long term efforts of the Conservative Party to rebrand and modernise (Watt, 2015{1}). It has been the driving force behind movements within the Labour Party, such as Blue Labour (Berry, 2011).

The answer is, according to NatCen's British Social Attitudes Survey, that political attitudes in Britain appear to be very particularly Centrist and moderate (NatCen, 2015).

A recent study has shown that voters are Centrists who pull more to the Left, or more to the Right, to restrain the drift of the government in power (Watt, 2015{2}). These drifts to the Right, against Labour in 2010, and to the Left, against the Conservatives in 2015, tell us something very interesting about the electoral chances of the main parties.

The apparently determined Centrism of voters turns efforts to stay in government into a battle to stay in the middle ground, and to keep away the perception of drifting towards more extreme positions. The economic policies of the main parties - as demonstrated by the debates over last week's 2015 Budget announcement (18 March 2015) - despite being at apparent odds with one another, reflect this reality by all fitting tightly within the accepted economic consensus.

There is, however, something paradoxical in all this: the rise of the far right.

It has not happened in isolation. Across Europe and in the United States, Right-wing and Far-Right groups have gained a lot of ground. From the Tea Party in the US, to Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, there are anti-establishment protest groups springing up across Europe that have a distinct conservative overtone. In the UK and France, Right-wing parties UKIP and Front National have been the main benefactors.

These rising reactions - with their nationalist, religious and cultural overtones - seem to defy the analysis. While UKIP have yet to break through 10% of the popular vote at an election, in France Marine Le Pen's Front National look set to become France's largest party.

It is not impossible, though, to bring these events within the findings of the study. First to consider are the groups and movements themselves which seem to have two components:

• First, an anti-establishment vote, acting in response to the government or political consensus of the day,
• and second, the deep sectarianism to which these movements have frequently appealed.

Taking the assessment of the study as a starting point, it is possible to imagine - as others have done before (Bogdanor, 1983) - the mainstream of politics not as a struggle between Left and Right, but between the Centre and extremisms on all sides.

Most multi-party, majoritarian, political systems feature the Left and the Right revolving around a centrist, moderate (even liberal) core of voters, with those centrists swapping between the two options to Centre-Left and Centre-Right. Wherever these parties began on the spectrum, competitive politics pulls everyone towards a consensus - though not necessarily at the centre.

In Britain, and in Europe, the consensus is currently firmly within in the Centre-Right. In the face of the dominant forces driving that consensus - capitalism, globalisation, modernisation - the anti-establishment element of the Far-Right movement fits well within the expectations of NatCen study.

The harder to explain element is how the anti-establishment movement has fed the Far-Right, rather than the Left - as the study predicts. The answer to that lies, again, in comprehending the political spectrum in terms of the Centre and extremes.

With multiple parties, the emphasis is placed heavily upon taking a moderate course so as to have the broad appeal needed to catch the broad range of voters needed for a majority, or to present greater grounds for co-operation in the event of a coalition. While the system forces out extremism, it reduces political debate down to a few digits here and there in a fiscal plan.

In the UK, for example, the closeness of the main parties has effectively shut out alternatives. In 2010 the Liberal Democrats were seen as the alternative, not to Labour or the Conservatives, but rather to Labour and the Conservatives - as the keepers of the establishment. With the Lib Dems joining the ranks of the governing parties, alternative debate is closed down further still.

That exclusivity can breed alienation.

In France, it has been suggested that the concerns of the working class have been ignored - allowing the far-right to feed on their discontent. While the mainstream has focused on the politics of austerity, capitalism, modernisation and globalisation - forces alienating enough - the Left has focussed itself (so the assessment goes) on the plight of 'minority groups', leaving a section of white, working-class, men feeling 'left behind' (Willsher, 2015). The last US elections certainly showed that the Right had become deeply connected to a predominantly white, older and male, Christian voter base. That tendency is also reflected in UKIP's supporters (Goodwin & Ford, 2014).

Herein lies the dangerously effective power of the Far-Right narrative. Rather than a narrative of Right versus Left, it becomes a matter of this section of the people against the establishment - frequently depicted as a detached and privileged minority.

By calling out an establishment that is detached and corrupt, and deriding an opposition as being unconcerned or dismissive of the concerns of the majority, Far-Right groups are able appeal to people beyond those who would normally find the Right-wing brand of tradition, hierarchy and nativism. It feeds on alienation and discontent, and fuels it with stories of the threat posed by immigration and European bureaucracy to the 'traditions' of 'natives' (Skey, 2013).

In short, the very same political system that pushes extremism to the fringes, also fuels it with anti-establishment fodder when it fails to address the common good.

So can the establishment respond?

Both the Conservatives and Labour seem to think that the answer lies in moving further to the Right. Both parties have made efforts to step up their anti-EU and anti-immigration rhetoric (Watt, 2013; Sabin, 2015) and Labour has seen the internal faction Blue Labour argue that the British people are inherently conservative, and that Labour has to accept that and adapt (Berry, 2011).

However, this displays a misunderstanding of the social forces involved. The rising anti-establishment movement is being exploited by Far-Right sectarian, extremist elements, against the civic consensus - but it is not of the Far-Right. Moving to the Right would do nothing but reinforce negative attitudes and confirm conspiracies and suspicions about the motives and habits of the mainstream establishment parties.

The British Attitudes Survey tells us that voters in Britain are Centrist, and that they move Left or Right as a countervailing force to reign in extreme governments. This tells us something clearly: these movements are predominantly against the establishment and the predominant consensus, and Far-Right parties have merely been a way for, some, to express an opposing opinion in a system that has become closed to alternative voices.

An important lesson can be learned from the anti-establishment movements that have leaned to the Left - Occupy, Syriza, Indignados and Podemos. They have all carried a strong and positive message of inclusion and engagement. They have challenged mainstream narratives with the common good in mind, and have sought the decentralisation of government and the devolution of its power.

These ideas have to be at the heart of a reformed establishment if it is to retain its legitimacy as a facilitator of the common good in the face of an aggressive assault by Far-Right groups.

Gender Inequality, Laissez-faire and Positive Action

Last week, in the run-up to International Women's Day, there were efforts made in Germany to tackle inequality between the genders in the workplace. While a new law was passed for gender quotas to be introduced to the boardrooms of large companies (The Guardian, 2015), there was still ongoing resistance to legislation aimed at exposing, and ultimately undoing, gender inequalities in pay (Osborne, 2015).

The fact that these moves are necessary in a wealthy and developed country like Germany - or in the UK where the Liberal Democrats have been pushing for similar moves for some time, particularly in the face of a failure of the Conservative 'voluntary' reporting system (Wintour, 2015) - highlights the scale of the problem. Quotas, in turn, represent the practical response to the continuing inequality (Saul, 2015).

And yet, resistance remains to levelling the playing field. There is an insistence in the Western world upon trusting in laissez-faire - removing the obvious formal institutional obstacles and letting the world right itself. That attitude is not helped much by gender quotas being considered an imperfect solution (White, 2015).

However, the world is uncomfortably unequal. In the face of plain unfairness, the simplistic, and false, answer to the struggles of others is victim-blaming (Burkeman, 2015). There is a determination, witnessed in the wider struggle against inequality, to shift the responsibility for unfairness from the established order and those who benefit, and to turn it into blame to be placed on those who aren't succeeding (Seabrook, 2014).

The facts are pretty clear: matters can't just be left to right themselves (Topping, 2015). It was true for the poverty and desperation in Victorian England that led to the collapse of the old Laissez-faire economics, and made way for the gradual rise of social insurance, pensions, welfare and the public healthcare. It is true now tackling gender inequality. The world needs a helping hand to combat problematic institutional biases (Dudman, 2015).

The feminist rallying-calls of public figures like Emma Watson is a reminder of how to tackle these great challenges (HeForShe, 2015): positive thought and positive action, in the pursuit of progress.

In the pursuit of social progress, the old ways of thinking have to change. The 'let alone' attitude is not good enough, particularly when the solutions of negative liberty - simply keeping people free from outside interference - don't, and can't, bring meaningful equality of opportunity, or offer the people the path to the better, and more fair, lives they want.

There is a pressing need to demand a more positive liberty. Affirmative action, in this sense, is about acting to make the principals of fairness in a free society a fact. That burning heart of feminism, is the same one that beats in the breast of all struggles for equality and fairness. Quotas may not be a perfect solution, but they are a positive and practical solution in a world that is imperfect and unfair.