Around the World: The Trump Insurgency

Donald Trump chose the Republican Elephant as the mount for his insurgent populist campaign that has ridden the divisive politics of the far-right deep into the American political system.

With the two main parties having settled - which might be an almost too painfully apt expression - on their respective candidates, it is now established who will stand, and for what they will stand, in the 2016 US Presidential Election.

Hillary Clinton will face Donald Trump - but only on the surface will it be a contest between Democrat and Republican. Beneath the party façade the Presidential race reflects a struggle that is a clear pattern emerging across the Western world, seen clearly in most of the recent elections in Europe, between the mistrusted mainstream and a Far Right insurgency.

Whether it was the Brexit referendum or the French regional elections, in this time of crisis progressives have found themselves having to wrestle with a difficult proposition: whether to oppose an imperfect mainstream at the risk of inviting in the Far Right, or to stand with the hated establishment, itself struggling for legitimacy against authoritarianism and sectarianism.

In the US, Bernie Sanders and his supporters tried to capture control of the mainstream Democrats so that the Left might lead from the front. Having failed, they're now left struggling with what to do in the face of Trump's mirrored insurgency succeeding in its capture of the rival Republicans. Despite Sanders' endorsement of Hillary, many of his supporters remain unconvinced.

Trump's insurgency has increased the sense of urgency, if not yet panic, across the Centre and Left. With no hint of irony, despite the hyperbole, even moderate commentators are expressing genuine fears for the future of American democracy (Finchelstein, 2016; Noah, 2016; Collier, 2016) - perhaps a part of which is an attempt to motivate the Left to fall in behind Hillary by stressing the seriousness of the fight ahead.

Political sensibility suggests that moderacy will ultimately win out - that Trump will eventually, whatever his rhetoric, have to bow to political realism. But that sensibility is cold comfort.

The most dangerous thing Trump has done is to force the coalescence of a constituency, previously scattered and with no common identity, that is persuaded by and supportive of authoritarian values (Taub, 2016). Trump himself, whatever his reactionary verbiage, is less of a concern than what this organised political movement, given common identity, might yet be used to accomplish.

The Republicans, the Grand Old Party (GOP), had already been through the long slow process, from Lincoln's time onwards, of coming under conservative control. But since the 1960s, conservatives have decisively consolidated their control over the party - including inviting the influx of Southern Democrats spurned by the embrace of the civil rights movement by the Democrats.

The consolidation definitively moved the GOP away from the Republicanism of Lincoln toward something more resembling the Republicanism of Jefferson - a parochial populist anti-establishment, or rather anti-elite, politics, with a strict and restrictive adherence to the constitution. Recent decades saw that combined with a sectarian Nativism and a politicised Evangelism.

What Trump has now rallied about the Republican Party is support for a popular authoritarianism able to cut across the distinctions, separating members of the coalition headed 'Republican', with a methodology: signified by a language that is brash, abrasive and often violent.

It is not surprising in the face of Trump's rhetoric that people have drawn connections between him and fascism. The theme of violence against others, against opponents, violence and conflict as decisive social positives, was a crucial tenet of fascism and has been inherited by its more 'democratic' successor populism (Finchelstein, 2016).

The Left and Centre getting behind the mainstream to oppose the rise of these violent ideologies is only the first step. Defeating it at one election is not the end of the matter. It does not address the reasons why people would seek out an abrasive, anti-establishment, anti-elite, strongman leader in the first place. The concerns of those voters must be understood, contextualised and addressed with positive solutions.

The angry, authoritarian-supporting, voters who would back a man like Donald Trump are not the enemies of progressives. For the most part they're victims of economic conditions, looking with misguided hope to strength and might for deliverance. The job of progressives is to extend a hand, show a better way to build a society and to expose the Far-Right programme for the fraud it is.

Spain shows us that to break old status quo and make proportional representation work, we need to outgrow adversarial politics

The Palacio de las Cortes in Madrid, home to the currently implacably divided Congress of Deputies. Photograph: Congress from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

In twenty three days, Spain will go to the polls for its second election in just six months. Its first saw the seats in congress divided between Left and Right in such a way as to make forming a government unlikely (Tremlett, 2016).

Therein lies the challenge of proportional representation. While each political party may be able to make its ideas and its membership more homogeneous, there ultimately remains the need to be able to work amicably with those holding other such 'purified' stances.

Over the last five to ten years, Spain's has seen it political mainstream collapse. New parties of Citizen movements have sprung up, and through the proportional electoral system have found themselves to be collectively a third force, along with the regionalist parties, that must enthrone a new government.

Yet they have found an old social democratic Left, that might make the more tolerable ally, weakened and shrunken and the old conservatives the intolerable but only realistic option. The numbers did not add up and a new election awaits.

In the UK, voices on the Left and Right have considered how the break up of the present political alignment, itself an incoherent and inconsistent series of alliances, might be redrawn with more coherency.

Tim Montgomerie has envisioned Westminster's political parties rearranged into parties for Solidarity (essentially Democrats), Liberals, Nationals (Conservative Christian Democrats) and a party of the Far Right (Montgomerie, 2016). And Owen Jones has argued that Labour's internal strife may not be curable, with a split into more coherent groups inevitable and ultimately desirable (Jones, 2016).

Spain reveals that this is only the first step. In their incomplete breakdown of two party politics, the adversarial division remain. The old grievances are clung to as a marker of identity. The next step has to be maturity.

If the future of British politics splits the establishment in four parties then at least two will have to work together to form a government - and it may not always be the ideal two. That will require the parties to compromise and cooperate, and to find a way to do so without feeling their identity is threatened.

The attitude of the Labour supporters or Trade Unionists who hissed BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg does not suggest a group of people ready to swap the UK's archaic adversarial politics for a system based on tolerances and compromise (Cowburn, 2016). Neither does the unbearable and vicious braying of the Tory parliamentarians every Wednesday at PMQs.

For the Left, finding a way beyond this confrontational, intolerant state is essential. Achieving progressive aims is only becoming less and less likely to be achievable through the medium of one, monolithic, party.

An alliance of progressives, of different strands, each on their own coherent - trade unionism, eco-socialism, democratic socialism, liberalism, social democracy and other various shades of centrism - requires those on the Left to find common aims, and to work amicably together with other progressives, while tolerating fundamental differences in ultimate priorities.

The introduction of proportional representation and seeing the old establishment parties split can only do so much to improve politics. Without the spirit of cooperation, without outgrowing adversarial divisions, we risk falling back into the same divisive patterns.

When the Centre is discredited only the Right benefits - the Left has no shortcuts, it has to build and engage to move forward

The advance of the far right Front National in France has given rise to fears for the future of European Unity. Photograph: France and EU-flag, somewhere in Dunkerque by Sebastian Fuss (License) (Cropped & Flipped)

Earlier this week, Marine Le Pen's Front National (FN) took a, sadly not entirely unexpected, lead in the first round of the French regional elections (Chrisafis, 2015). While by no means emphatic, with 28% of the vote, to 27% for the Centre-Right Republicans and 23% for the Centre-Left Socialists, the Far-Right party nonetheless holds a lead that is no joke - thanks to the majority bonus awarded to the leading party in each region.

It will be a cold comfort to progressives that Front National's success has been largely laid at the feet of the parties of the Centre (Nougayrede, 2015). The rise of FN has been described seen as the product of the failures of the parties of the political centre. Those parties are struggling, discredited by their failure to address France's long term problem of unemployment and the impact, and narrow rewards, of globalisation.

The transformist Centre parties, with their "conservative and social democratic modes of liberalism", have come to be seen as a 'complacent', 'insulated' and elite 'caste', and having laid the foundations for themselves to be supplanted by the Far-Right's more emotive and simplistic alternatives (Behr, 2015).

"No two countries have exactly analogous politics, but common threads run across Europe. The unifying dynamic appears to be the interaction of financial insecurity and the cultural detachment of governing elites from the governed... politicians of the technocratic centre are perceived as a caste apart, professionally complacent, insulated by hoarded privilege from the anxiety provoked in electorates by economic turbulence and abrupt demographic change..."

The fact that the Far-Right sit now on the doorstep of the establishment, so close to power in one of Europe's largest and most influential countries, has sparked fears of what the Centre's failure will entail for the broader European project (Betancour, 2015). The European system, a symbol of the time and effort required to build progressive institutions that break down borders and bring people together, was decades in the making - but appears now to be only years in the unravelling.

What is notable is that, as the Centre has collapsed, only the Right has really benefited. Meanwhile the Left has made few, if any, gains. In fact, in France, FN have largely made their initial inroads into the traditional heartlands of the Centre-Left Socialists (Nardelli, 2015). So the big questions for progressives are: Why? And, what can be done?

In France, the first steps taken in response by the scrambling Centre were to close ranks (Willsher, 2015). France returns to the polls for the second round today and in districts where Socialists trail in third place, the party has withdrawn candidates - falling back on tactical voting to ensure the victory of the least worst alternative (Chrisafis, 2015{2}). It also made the remarkable, though unrequited, suggestion of forming a Republican Front - uniting Centre-Left and Centre-Right - to hold back the rise of Front National.

From the perspective of those on the Left, it might be a lot easier to pour scorn on such a project than to become embroiled with discredited establishment's attempts to save their own necks. Yet becoming involved is precisely what some have proposed.

In an article based on a lecture he gave in 2013, before his adventure into political economics as Finance Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis argued that only the Right ever benefits from breakdown and disorder (Varoufakis, 2015).

"If my prognosis is correct, and we are not facing just another cyclical slump soon to be overcome, the question that arises for radicals is this: should we welcome this crisis of European capitalism as an opportunity to replace it with a better system? Or should we be so worried about it as to embark upon a campaign for stabilising European capitalism? To me, the answer is clear. Europe’s crisis is far less likely to give birth to a better alternative to capitalism than it is to unleash dangerously regressive forces that have the capacity to cause a humanitarian bloodbath, while extinguishing the hope for any progressive moves for generations to come."

What Varoufakis touches upon is that progressive politics depends upon building things - like a free and open civic space, or the infrastructure for broadly available healthcare and welfare. These things that cannot be easily made or remade, but are all too easy to tear down. In contrast, social or institutional breakdown benefits the Right because it drives itself with simpler, emotive, even instinctual, constructs. Traditionalism, moralism, nationalism: these have the advantage of being old and familiar, and already deeply rooted in the identity of the audience.

For Varoufakis, when the Centre fails, the Left needs to acknowledge its weakness and take up the task of responsible government - including propping up elements of the old establishment, in order to save past progress and to have something left to reform.

"Yet my aim here is to offer a window into my view of a repugnant European capitalism whose implosion, despite its many ills, should be avoided at all costs. It is a confession intended to convince radicals that we have a contradictory mission: to arrest the freefall of European capitalism in order to buy the time we need to formulate its alternative."

Alexis Tsipras, Radical Left Prime Minister of Greece, has described any politician setting foot upon that road as needing to be pragmatic about what can be accomplished in government (from Horvat, 2013).

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

Yet Tsipras' approach, this pragmatic radicalism, has its critics. On the one hand, it plays an exhausting game with democratic institutions that can be easily become fatigued (Patrikarakos, 2015). On the other, buying into the game in order to achieve practical things comes with a risk of succumbing to its pressures and ultimately conforming (Anthony, 2015). Another concern with Tsipras' pragmatic approach, is that the line of thinking can very easily lead to the temptations of Blairism.

Just this week, Tony Blair himself took to the pages of The Spectator to offer a defence of the 'Blairist' approach (Perraudin, 2015). He was quick to point out the 'flaw' in his critics' thinking.

"In particular, significant elements of the Party saw the process of governing with all its compromises, pragmatism and embrace of changing times as implicit betrayal of our principles."

Blair's defence of his direction focusses tightly, as his defenders and successors often do, on being willing to make 'hard choices' in order to be in power - placing value on "aspiring to govern" over being a "fringe protest" (Blair, 2015).

Yet that attitude also features a dangerous obsession with basing practical politics in "reality". On the face of it, this is a call for rational politics, taking the world as what it is rather than the utopia you might wish it to be - to base policy, and the political moves used to achieve them, on the 'reality' of the world as you find it. The trouble is that, beneath the surface of this approach, what it really means is engaging in a deceitful game of playing on, and to, often incomplete or outright wrong public perceptions (Jones, 2015).

For those who feel New Labour wandered too far to the political Right, a big part of the problem was that they had become anchored to 'reality', largely purveyed by a conservative media, and played to popular prejudice in search of an easy route to power. In the process simply turning the Centre and Left into a vehicle for the popular conservatisms of the moment.

The danger of that course is, however, that if you keep playing to conservative perceptions you are only going to reinforce them. The result will be more citizens who interpret the world through conservative perceptions, and so make their decisions accordingly - ultimately making it more difficult to propose progressive policies in the future.

European politics, and in particular politics in France, have seen an expansion of this problem. Technocrats have spent decades quietly implementing the rules and regulations to bring about European unity - at least in the technical sense. Yet they have spent too little time on the engagement, debate and education in the civic space that promotes and spreads the values behind them, and creates the 'values consciousness' amongst the public that parallels institutions and builds a bridge between them.

In the UK, the Liberal Democrats stand as a cautionary tale. The Lib Dems spent decades rebuilding, offering a progressive alternative but where brought low in just five years when they failed to meet the expectations of their supporters - decades in the recruiting - trying to meet the popular expectations of a 'party of government'.

In order to build a lasting progressive politics, there needs to be a long term, concerted social project - for hearts and, particularly, minds - that develops and promotes a form of compassionate, rational, government (Clark, 2015). Progressive parties have to be engaged with the political tasks of spreading ideas and changing minds required for the construction of a progressive social consciousness.

To that end, simply sneaking into power by pretending to be conservative isn't enough, and it never will be. That doesn't mean that the Left shouldn't seek to be practical, like Varoufakis suggests, and, as in France today, be willing to be practical in its compromises with the Centre and the establishment to prevent much worse outcomes.

But the Left has to be about more than just words. It needs to act as well, to actively live its values and promote their means and purposes. Progressives cannot be afraid to govern, but they cannot sacrifice the necessary work for easy access to power. There is no trade off to be made. Trying to do the former without the latter will only lead to failure, compounding more failures to come.

In the aftermath of the Syria Vote and the Oldham By-election, New Labour has scored itself some marginal points in its struggle with Corbyn - yet Labour remains divided

Hilary Benn's speech in support of expanding military action into Syria has left the rifts between the Left and Right of the Labour Party as deep as ever. Photograph: Hilary Benn by Jodie C (License) (Cropped)

After a number of important events in the week leading up, from the Chancellor's Autumn Statement to the vote on intervention in Syria, it would not have been outrageous to expect some sort of fallout in the Oldham West and Royton by-election.

In the end, however, it was ultimately uneventful. The incumbent Labour Party won, even increasing its percentage of the vote (Pidd, 2015). There was no drama in the end for Labour, no dramatic surge of support away from the party by voters fleeing its Left-wing leader (Harris et al, 2015; Warren, 2015).

Yet the past week's events, Oldham included, have shifted the political field ever so slightly. In the aftermath of the Syria vote and the Oldham by-election, it is the Right-leaning Labour faction who find themselves the marginal beneficiaries in their struggle with Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

George Osborne's spending review, courtesy of the Office of Budget Responsibility's generosity in predicting a stronger economy, was as much a political play as economic. By performing a U-turn and not cutting tax credits, for now at least, and not cutting police budgets, Osborne was able to make his policies appear much more moderate (Kirkup, 2015).

From a Labour Right perspective, this was a master stroke by the Chancellor. In their view, Osborne will have countered and undermined criticisms levelled by Corbyn's shadow cabinet by removing its main threads and moved the Conservatives to occupy a centre ground they believed was being abandoned by their own leadership. With the Right of Labour feeling that the middle ground was slipping away from them, the Syria debate came at a politically crucial moment.

The vote on intervention in Syria saw a rebellion of 66 Labour MPs against the position of the party leadership (Sparrow & Perraudin, 2015), after - under a barrage of Conservative heckling - Corbyn had stumbled through his speech (Wallace, 2015). It also saw allegations from Labour MPs of abuse by angry constituents - the responsibility for which they were quick to pin to Corbyn (Dathan, 2015).

The biggest moment of the debate was clearly Hilary Benn's speech, which - while much applauded by Conservatives - in truth had little substance. There were no compelling facts, of which the debate as a whole suffered a disgraceful shortage, only emotional appeals. Described as a piece of political theatre (Shabi, 2015), it served both to stake out a distinct position for the Labour Right and to undermine Corbyn.

After so contentious a week, in was not unreasonable to think that sparks might fly at the Oldham by-election. Yet the result was a comfortable, status quo recovering, victory for Labour. Yet the Labour Right was again able to salvage something for themselves.

In Oldham, some on the Labour Right claimed the victory as a win in despite of Corbyn, amongst a population that had little warmth for pacifist republicanism (Pidd, 2015; Warren, 2015). The late Michael Meacher, a strong supporter of Corbyn and the Labour Left, was even replaced by a new MP, Jim McMahon, who is no follower of Corbyn.

This week has been a stern test for Labour. As a whole it has largely scraped through. However, while there were no decisive moments, the Labour Right will feel it has scored some marginal points in its struggle against Corbyn and his new direction. Yet for progressives more broadly, it was just another week of squabbling and division across the Left.

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.

As Labour divisions fuel fears of a 1980s SDP-style split, it's worth noting that Tony Blair could have prevented this crisis

Tony Blair at Oslo in 2011, in his role as Middle East Envoy. Photograph: Jonas Gahr Støre og Tony Blair via photopin (license) (cropped)

As, probably, a rather dramatic over reaction, it has been suggested that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the new Labour leader could lead to a split in the party. His election to power representing the party's Left-wing, it is said, could lead to another breakaway akin to that of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 1980s.

That split was led by Centre-Right, liberal and pro-European members of Labour, known as the Gang of Four - namely David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. That group left to form a new centre party, the SDP, in response to the rise of a Left-wing faction under Tony Benn and Michael Foot, when they found themselves unwilling to follow an overbearing Right-wing faction under Denis Healey.

The formation of the breakaway party almost saw Labour drop to third in the popular vote when the SDP, in their alliance (which later became a merger) with the Liberals, took 25% of the vote in 1983. But there was a time when such a split may not have been so bad of a thing for the Labour Party, for socialists, for trade unionists or for British politics.

In the 1990s, Tony Blair came to power in the Labour party and began his 'modernising' project. So strong was his position, he was able to rewrite fundamental elements of the party constitution to allow himself greater freedom of means in achieving the party's democratic socialist ends - his so-called Clause IV Moment.

At its peak, Blair's 'Third Way' New Labour held 418 seats in the House of Commons, had the support of the Liberal Democrats and benefited from the defection of a good number of moderate Conservatives. Only a few steps shy of completing this project, Blair stopped short. Blair could have created a new, broad, Centre party - a UK Democratic Party - that might have absorbed Tory and Labour moderates alike into a new, more progressive, establishment party. Instead, he left Labour in no man's land.

Labour have become a party of professional, pro-establishment, besuited politicians, who won't give up their connections trade unions and Left-wing politics even as they preaches Right-wing economics to an electorate turned cold. The hypocrisy inherent in falling short of a full transformation, by trying to have it both ways, has seen the party's idealistic Left-wing base fragment, scattering into a hundred different parties. The party is bleeding away its identity.

It does now seem as if progressives - of all stripes - may have been substantially better off had Blair, in fact, succeeded in his attempt to modernise the Labour Party into a moderate, centrist, democratic party. Not because Blair's professional Centrism offers a particular boon to progressive politics, but rather because the waters of the Labour Party's identity would not have become so muddy.

The socialists and trade unionists of Labour's left might have become a consolidated rump, a solid, united, party that could have kept together the various disparate socialist parties. It might have been a strong and idealistic voice, alongside Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats, to the Left of Blair's Centrist democrats - a loud progressive anchor, like Sinistra Ecologia Liberta in Italy, to the Left of their own Democrats, or as the SNP have sought to cast themselves.

Maybe Blair's democratic party would have had the courage to introduce proportional representation - ultimately reducing the Conservative to a Far-Right rump, powerless in the face of the support for the Centre and Left. Maybe there would not have been two elections with Labour scrambling ever Rightwards in their desperation to avoid losing power.

Blair's failure to follow through, along with his more controversial decisions, helped to lay the foundations of the Left's fragmentation. Left-leaning voters, who want to vote 'true to themselves' (Freedland, 2015), have found themselves disillusioned or cast adrift as first Labour and then the Lib Dems sought the Centre-ground in the hope of getting into power.

Yet the progressive parties can still recover. Labour remains the largest Left-leaning party and would need to be at the heart of any recovery. Labour's various factions, if they could work together under a new leader, would be the central pillar of Caroline Lucas' proposed progressive alliance for 2020 - which will likely be the best hope for the Left's election chances.

A pact would need to put electoral reform at the heart of its campaign and aim to confine the iniquities of the UK's political system - that force the creation of these alienating big tents that prevent truly representative elections - to the past. From that point on, the Left could be true to itself. There could be multiple parties, of socialists and liberals, greens and radicals, without each hurting the election chances of the other.

It might end the stifling of legitimate political voices, that denies voters the opportunity to make clear their priorities. The Left could still then work together in government, in the spirit of co-operation and consensus for the common good, to ensure that we do not again have a government of narrow interests ruling on just a third of the vote.

Liberal Democrat Leadership Election: Who's who and what do they stand for?

The Liberal Democrat leadership election is the first step to recovery for a party whose voice is being missed in the campaign to protect human rights in Britain.

After the party's electoral collapse in May, the Liberal Democrats have run an accelerated campaign to elect a new leader to replace Nick Clegg. Voting will come to an end on 15th July and the results will be announced the following day.

Clegg's resignation has, dramatic as it was following the party's disastrous election night, been seen as a long delayed inevitability (Wintour & Watt, 2015). Ultimately, the decision to go into coalition with the Conservatives seems to have been something from which the party could not recover.

And yet, early indications suggest that the party nonetheless possesses an enduring appeal. Their presence is already being missed in the defence of civil rights and liberties (The Guardian, 2015), and council bye-elections are already being won (Steerpike, 2015).

However, their collapse has raised a question within the party, one that has importance for all of the parties across the Centre-Left (Kettle, 2015). Is the response to the election loss to move Left and embrace more idealistic positions, or to move Right and try to win voters away from the Conservatives directly?

For the Liberal Democrats this has been distilled into the nominated candidates. The candidate representing continuity with Clegg, seen as the Centrist and Centre-Right wing of the party which is concerned with being a practical party of government, is Norman Lamb. The more Left-leaning candidate, which in the case of the Lib Dems means embracing its campaigning and grassroots tendencies, is Tim Farron.

Norman Lamb

Norman Lamb served in the last government as a Minister of State for Care and Support, a position he pursued with a personal passion. He has made a point of vociferous campaigning on issues of mental health, and was deeply involved in the party's aims of putting mental health onto an equal footing with physical health (Lamb, 2015).

Lamb is very much the designated heir of the Centrist liberal faction that took the party into the Coalition - something reflected in the endorsements he has received, which include Clegg's closest supporter and former party leader Paddy Ashdown (Lindsay, 2015). Little can symbolise that more distinctly in the minds of voters than the fact that Lamb voted for the Coalition reforms to tuition fees (BBC, 2010).

So far Lamb has argued that the party should not retreat to its comfort zone (Lamb, 2015{2}), a sentiment likely reflected by those in the liberal centre. Yet, at the same time he argued for new ways to tackle economic inequality that are not based on old models of redistribution - singling out mutuals and social enterprises as things that liberals 'instinctively' support.

Tim Farron

Tim Farron remained aloof of the government during the last parliament, during which he served as the party president - a position from which he was often a voice critical towards the coalition (Greenwood, 2015). As might be expected, he voted against the coalition tuition fee changes (BBC, 2010).

The MP for Westmoreland and Lonsdale has received the endorsement of the party's more radical, campaigning, Left - including former leader David Steel, who was very critical of how the Coalition was handled (Steel, 2015) - and the leaders of the Welsh and Scottish Lib Dems (Perraudin, 2015). He also, notably, has the endorsement of both The Guardian and the New Statesman (The Guardian, 2015{2}; New Statesman, 2015).

Farron's main distinctive positions came up in the debate between the candidates at 2015 Conference of the Social Liberal Forum group (Lindsay, 2015{2}). He displayed his openness to liberals increasing taxes to fund public services and expressed a willingness, should he become leader, to not get into conflicts with the party conference policy making processes. Farron has also stressed his intention of rebuilding the parties grassroots and so increasing party membership 100,000 by 2020 (Farron, 2015).

Quiet establishment man or the problematic firebrand?

Voices in the social liberal and liberal centre wings of the party have their own reasons for leaning either way. Those in the liberal centre argue that there is value in the consistency of remaining in the Centre, from which the party's only opportunities to make its policies a reality will come through coalition with the Conservatives or with Labour (Tall, 2015).

For social liberals, however, there were important things ignored by the party leadership from 2010 onwards (Howarth, 2015; Smith, 2015). They argue that the leadership abandoned the radical Left-of-Centre causes and ideals, upon which they had been elected, in favour of a Centrist coalitionism - built around stability, unity and the embrace of a Toryism-lite - for which they had no mandate and were duly punished.

The Guardian has argued that there is a need for a figure who can lead a 'charismatic insurgency' (The Guardian, 2015{2}). But there are also warnings against the danger of traumatised parties electing 'feel good', comfort zone, candidates (Kettle, 2015). That need for a comfort zone candidate may factor in if there is felt to be a strong need to distance the party from the previous leadership and its direction.

One way of ensuring that distance could be embracing the rebranding of the party, with talk going around of a possible name change. Changing the name of the party could be a powerful moment upon which to hang the interviews and coverage that would make clear how the Lib Dems have heard their critics and responded (Withnall, 2015). In that case, Tim Farron's detachment from the Coalition would seem to make him the more ideal candidate - and he has certainly floated the idea of a fresh start (Farron, 2015{2}).

Yet there remain lingering reservations about Farron, in regards to his seemingly anti-liberal personal stances on a number of pressing social issues from abortion to gay rights (Birrell, 2015). With the party desperately needing to regain trust and a consistent identity, his own inconsistency could well factor against him and the party.

Though Farron might suggest that these personal standings should have no bearing, it is hard to escape an overriding feeling that there is also a decision to be made between the candidates' different characters: the quiet and practical, though establishment, man or the problematic firebrand. It's as if liberals are once more being faced with the spectre of siding with Asquith or Lloyd George. A more easily unifying figure would have been preferable, such as Jo Swinson - who would surely have been a leading candidate had she retained her East Dunbartonshire seat.

Rebuilding trust

In The Guardian, back in 2006, the late Charles Kennedy argued that:

"Fewer people are joining political parties, yet single-issue pressure groups continue to flourish. Mass international movements - from opposition to the war in Iraq to last year's Live 8 - demonstrate how great issues and principles can still motivate on a huge scale. But somehow our current political culture seems unable to accommodate and address such concerns...

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

For Liberal Democrats, and liberals generally, this has become a matter of great importance. Regardless of who becomes party leader, their first task must be to regain political trust. That means carving out a distinctive position that the whole party can comfortably adhere to and, importantly, campaign on. It means opening the party to working with others for electoral and political reform and encouraging a progressive alliance, even if only informally.

From a pragmatic point of view, those will likely remain the priorities - for the moment at least. Anything else might simply lead to a division that would strip the party of any credibility it has left, which means that neither candidate is likely to pick a fight with the supporters of the other. As a result, the issues that arise between the Centre and Left strands of liberalism are likely to go unresolved in the present. This election will instead be about who leads, rather more than to what they lead the party.

The referendum in Greece is asking a deeper question about dissent: do we have to conform in order to belong?

Protesters gather on Syntagma Square in the centre of Athens. Photograph: Syntagma sqr @ 3-Jul-15 via photopin (license) (cropped)

Last week's deadlines for Greece to secure the money it needed, to pay what was due to its creditors, came and went without a deal (Traynor et al, 2015). Even with the deadlines being pushed back, and the future of the Eurozone in the balance, no agreement was found.

Without alerting his European creditors first, Prime Minister of Greece Alexis Tsipras, of the Radical Left Syriza party, subsequently announced his intention to hold a referendum on whether Greece should reject or accept the austerian terms to which Greece have been expected to conform (Traynor, 2015). It was a decision that has been treated as controversial by those who reject his party's anti-austerity agenda.

But this referendum stands for even more than whether to say no, or say yes and submit to austerity. The big question that will hang over the whole referendum concerns the right to dissent.

Syriza's election victory, on a manifesto that promised an end to austerity has already been opposed by Europe's economically conservative elite (Lapavitsas, 2015). Pressure has again now been exerted by them to ensure a result favourable to their priorities at the referendum (BBC, 2015).

This struggle between Greece and its creditors - between their conflicting ideological aims - forces us to ask whether, in order to belong and take part, must we always toe the same narrow line as everybody else, or do we have the right to disagree and yet remain?

There is a strong feeling on the Left think that, as far as the Right are concerned, the answer they're receiving is no. Voices on the Left have criticised Eurozone policy towards Greece as an ideological crusade designed to inflict humiliation upon a country for deviating from, and posing a threat to, a particular political script (Williams, 2015). The Left have also faced opposition within Greece, where former Prime Ministers have joined the Yes campaign (Smith, 2015).

Meanwhile there has been support from the Left for the difficult game that Alexis Tsipras and his finance minister Yanis Varoufakis are playing (Elliott, 2015), presenting themselves as reasonable, responsible reformists. Back in 2013, Tsipras made clear his wish to save Europe, to reform it back onto its old path of democratic co-ordination and co-operation (Horvat, 2013; Tsipras & Zizek, 2013).

Even with the referendum looming, Greece's leaders have continued to try and squeeze out a negotiated deal (Rankin, 2015). As they have struggled to find a deal, there has been a show of support even in the UK, which has seen anti-austerity protests in solidarity with Greece and the creation of a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for a bail out (The Guardian, 2015; Feeney, 2015).

There have also been efforts to demonstrate the theoretical validity of Syriza's position of opposition to austerity, by exposing the failures of the austerian approach (Fazi, 2015). Even the IMF, one of Greece's creditors, has admitted that the debts of Greece are unsustainable without greater support and, effectively, and end to the pure austerity approach (Khan, 2015).

In the face of these arguments, there have been the first signs of a softening towards the hardship in Greece from their major opponents, represented by the German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble who said that Greek people would not be left 'in the lurch' (Hooper, 2015).

However, compassion in the face of suffering is one thing - and important. But tolerance and acceptance of difference is also essential. Greece has a right to dissent that has not been respected - a right to refuse the conditions with which it has been presented and yet remain a part of the Eurozone, and the European Union.

Underlying this referendum will be the question of whether the European powers will respect the democratic will of the people of Greece should there be a no vote - and austerity be again rejected. If that decision is respected, then there may yet be hope for Europe. It might still become a truly democratic place, with the necessary space for dissenting and alternative voices.

The crisis in Greece makes for a painful reminder of why solidarity and co-operation are so important to democracy

Greece has not been shown much solidarity in its time of crisis. Photograph: Greek flag via photopin (license) (cropped & flipped)

As Greece and their European creditors have scrambled to work out a deal to prevent their exit from the Eurozone (Traynor, 2015), there has been a stark absence of solidarity. The apparent lack of a political will to negotiate, compromise and co-operate for mutual benefit, seems very much at odds with the values upon which Europe was founded.

Against the dominant values of the twentieth century - a world divided between collectivism and competition, communism and capitalism, East and West - Europe stood apart. Social democracy dominated the political arena, with negotiated settlements between capital and labour, free enterprise taxed to provide welfare, and co-operation and co-ordination trusted to produce superior results (Feffer, 2015).

As the present economic crisis has rumbled on, the urge of European conservatives to impose their rigorous austerian economics onto the economies of other European nations - in pursuit of some capitalist revival grounded in 'competitiveness', or the power to produce cheaply and therefore profitably - has called into question the commitment of the member states to the core ideals of the great European project (Krugman, 2015).

No where has that been more apparent than in the alarming way that a debate centred on the state's fiscal responsibility, to citizens, to businesses and to creditors, has seen the creeping introduction of the politics of identity. Some have tried to stress cultural roots to the ongoing global economic crisis as if it were the result of certain failings of a collective national character (Harvey, 2010). Those sentiments have spiralled outwards to feed into the Far-Right response to the crisis, with the likes of UKIP, Front National, Golden Dawn - regressively more extremist, respectively - dredging up early twentieth century notions of national sovereignty, identity and intolerance to immigration.

For an internationalist, the European project was supposed to be the beginning of the end, not to diversity or distinctiveness through gentrification, but to the chains of dogma - built out of ethnicities, cultures, religions, nations and even class - that have been used to shackle, divide and keep control over people. It was hoped that peace and co-operation could instead bring about greater tolerance and acceptance of diversity, which might be celebrated, and through freedom lead to more diversity still (Riotta, 2012). It was and remains a very progressive liberal dream.

What the crisis in Greece has told us, is that the old shackles are hard to shake and that the progressive dreams cannot be achieved without a strong, reciprocated will to co-operate.

Saturday's massive anti-austerity, protests across the UK and particularly in London, brought together a mix of Greens, Labour, trade unionists, environmentalists, socialists and campaigners on a range of progressive issues (Khomami, 2015; BBC, 2015). But to succeed in their aims, there are more who need to get on board.

There is hope for that outcome in the form of ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown's suggestion of a progressive convention (Wintour & Watt, 2015), following up on Caroline Lucas' rallying call for a progressive alliance (Lucas, 2015) Ashdown has suggested holding a convention where progressive groups might put aside their tribalism and co-operate on formulating a joint progressive agenda. His suggestion did however fall short of the electoral pacts proposed by Lucas.

The old Left had some key values to which it aspired. For the democrats and socialists they were justice and community. For the liberals is was freedom and individualism. For the environmentalists it has been sustainability. But their visions have been dimmed by a lack of solidarity between these movements, which have often taken to fighting against each other to establish their own grand narratives, determined to pull everyone into their big tent - and thus usually diluting their own message while suppressing that of others.

The progressivism of the future must be defined instead by co-operation - the likes of which, if it had been embraced across Europe from the start, might have been able to stave off the present Greek tragedy before it ever began (Pianta, 2015).

As the Labour leadership candidates had their second debate on Saturday (BBC, 2015{2}), they would have had the anti-austerity protests and the down-to-the-wire struggle between Greece and the Eurozone hanging over their heads. And those events bring with them a big question: does Labour embrace these new proposals or does it continue to try and wrestle with the Conservatives over control of the establishment?

It is well worth considering that a progressive alliance, based on the spirit of co-operation, may well consign the concerns of the old system to obsolescence - thus freeing Labour from its endless and disaffecting chase after majority power. A progressive alliance could put from and centre electoral reform, to create a system that is representative, with a multi-party system that reflects ideals and values, and where co-operation brings those smaller parties together on common ground rather than herds them all into a faceless, ideology-less big tent.

Greece has shown us what happens without co-operation, without solidarity. A detached and emote system that ignores the social aspect of economics and shows more concern for creditors receiving their payments than for ensuring that Greek people have enough food. We are long overdue embracing a better way of doing politics.

The Labour leadership election begins in earnest. But what will the candidates stand for?

With the nominations counted and the candidates confirmed, the 2015 Labour leadership election campaign has begun in earnest. The day was marked with the first televised debate last night in Nuneaton, which had been a prime Labour election target seat where the party had failed spectacularly (BBC, 2015).

For the position of party leader the candidates are Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall (BBC, 2015{2}). At the same time, there will also be an election for the deputy leadership. Standing for the position of deputy leader are Ben Bradshaw, Stella Creasy, Angela Eagle, Caroline Flint and Tom Watson (New Statesman, 2015).

The most pressing issues for the leadership candidates will be to address what they believe went wrong in 2015 (Wintour, 2015), and to find answer to those beginning to ask what the point is of the Labour Party (Jones, 2015; Todd, 2015).

Amongst the prospective leaders, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper most represent continuity with the New Labour project, having both been deeply involved with Blair and Brown governments and regular frontbenchers over the last Eighteen years. Both Burnham and Cooper announced their candidacy with an appeal to the party not to move Left or Right, but to make a broad appeal with an emotional connection to everyday lives (Wintour, 2015{2}; Gayle, 2015).

Liz Kendall was the first, and is both the youngest and most right-wing, candidate on the list, having made it clear that she believes the Labour Party did not 'do enough to appeal to Conservative supporters' (Chakelian, 2015).

The final candidate, who just scraped onto the list, is Jeremy Corbyn, representing the old Socialist Left-wing of the party. His candidature has been commended for opening up the leadership contest, turning it into an open, public debate between the Left and Right on the future of the Labour Party (Kelner, 2015). Corbyn declared his candidacy by mocking the other candidates' obsession with 'aspiration', by declaring his aspiration the close the inequality gap (Corbyn, 2015).

At last night's debate in Nuneaton, all four had their first chance to connect with an audience (Wintour, Watt & Mason, 2015; Watt, 2015). What was most starkly remarkable about three of the four candidates was how very little seems to have changed from the 2015 general election campaign message. The leaders in waiting are still talking about immigration, work as a responsibility to work, of leaving Labour's past behind and embracing business.

There is a growing consensus that Labour is going to need something more from its next leader if it is going to get into government after the next election. A big idea (Robinson, 2015). Conviction (Behr, 2015). The Green Party MP Caroline Lucas even offered her thoughts, proposing that Labour finally embrace multi-party politics (Lucas, 2015). All of these things will factor as decision time approaches for Labour. It awaits to be seen whether the party will the party stay in the Centre-Right, hoping to beat the Tories at their own game, or if they will try to come up with a real, progressive, alternative message?

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

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

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

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

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

The Historic Centre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shifting Centre

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

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

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

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

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

A Decision to Make

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

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

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

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

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

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

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