May's foreign policy has the contradictions, nuances and cynicism of the twentieth century and it's alienating a generation who want fair, earnest and ethical government

Demonstrators in London turnout in large numbers to show that the Trump brand of exclusion isn't welcome. Photograph: Women's March London, 21 January 2017 by David Holt (License) (Cropped)

Prime Minister Theresa May's past week looks like the scary version of life after Brexit. To Washington, to play chief diplomatic sycophant to Trump. Then off to Turkey to sell Erdogan some British manufactured arms.

Diplomacy has always been about picking friends carefully. That has often meant making unsavoury friends and condemning the more reasonable ones. But now, more than ever, striking that delicate balance must account for the public.

Diplomacy and foreign policy is an art practised as far inside the 'corridors of power', and as far away from the citizens on the street, as any element of government. That cannot continue. It needs to change.

It is no longer sustainable for the Prime Minister to jet jet off around the world to gladhand, and do deals with, leaders who have human rights questions - inadequately answered - hanging over them.

In the US, Trump has the lowest approval ratings in history (Carlsen, 2017), and has faced protests against nearly every policy he has announced in his first two weeks - not just in the US, but around the world. But May is there on business.

May wants to talk trade, wants an exclusive deal. The trouble is that any deal is likely to be disadvantageous to all but American corporations and fraught with many of the same problems as EU-US trade talks: TTIP, food quality standards, private competition in healthcare (Umunna, 2017).

And what about Erdogan? The backlash from the PM's visit to America had not settled down when she arrived in Turkey, almost unnoticed in the furore, to sign a £100m deal for fighter jets (BBC, 2017).

The UK's cynical role in the arms trade has already caused a lot of controversy, waved away with denials, bluster and the promise of jobs. The UK-Saudi relationship has been a frequent embarrassment and horror - from the suppression of women's rights (Withnall, 2016) to, and particularly apt for May's visit to Turkey, British arms being used in the ongoing war in Yemen (Graham-Harrison, 2016).

In Turkey, 140,000 people rounded up, academics fired, and journalists suppressed or arrested, in a consolidation of power following last year's attempted coup (Lowen, 2017).

That these are likely to be the UK's new and enduring friends after leaving the European Union, as the UK scrambles to accumulate trade cash, will not endear Britain's new horizon to progressives.

It will be even harder to comprehend for many of the younger people who are turning out to protest, even many into their thirties, who did not grow up amidst the nuance and cynicism of twentieth century international politics.

Their formative years were under the governments of Bush and Blair. They saw dodgy dossiers lead to invasions, lead to countries collapsing, lead to extended occupations, lead to the selfish, almost gleeful, extraction of fossil fuels while all hell broke loose - and then the subsequent rise of terrorism.

It's not a mystery what these young people, whose views on international relations were formed in the years, want: ethical government. To be represented honestly. That's why Theresa May's visits to Trump, to Erdogan, can set people aflame and launch protest movements.

When Britain preaches its values one moment, threatens to withdraw from international human rights agreements and undermines the independence of the judiciary in another, then jets off for smiles and handshakes with the oppressors of minorities in the next, it is hard to find consistency.

Trump promises America First, and May to make a success of Brexit, but that sense of narrow interest belies the reality that many people now have broader horizons and greater empathy. This national-level cognitive dissonance, between the official voice and the citizens, will be expressed today in more protests.

Across Britain, Theresa May's foreign policy will face protests in solidarity with Muslims everywhere and with refugees who flee from violence and oppression just to be labelled and shunned by official acts of exclusion. And those demonstrations will carry with them the progressive call for the idea of a government, and international relations, based on deals that are fair and ethical.

Pluralism is more than choices - it is how we re-engage and build a real civic consensus

Corbyn, seen here speaking at at CWU event in Manchester, rejected the idea of a multi-party progressive alliance at the final Labour Leadership hustings in Glasgow.

The stalemate in Spanish politics, unbroken now by two elections and very much looking like leading to a third election in the space of a year (Jones, 2016), is the most obvious symptom of a divided society. But Spain is hardly alone in that.

Recent elections in the UK have shown British politics heading the same direction. The two traditional big tents are losing their grip and people are looking for other options. As a result, the broad social cross-sections needed to hold majority power - even under a majoritarian two-party system like first-past-the-post - are becoming harder to build and control.

The questions is, what can be done to avoid such an impasse?

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the surest path to stability is pluralism. But getting there requires rethinking what is meant by pluralism, away from the simplistic image of a fractured multi-party politics.

The tendency in the UK has been to portray plural systems, with their coalitions between multiple parties, as a system of never ending deal making - in contrast with the direct and little-trammelled power afforded to majority governments by the two-party system.

But that deeply simplistic picture ignores both the necessity for representation and the true building of consensus. Under the two-party system, politics is squeezed and distilled into narrow establishment and opposition positions - politics simplified into two parties locked into adversarial stances that drive a wedge through society.

That reduces politics to a polarised dynamic, with no space for nuance. Worse still, policy has become a professional art, the preserve of a narrow group of think tanks and party policy officers, that usually offers watered down versions of public campaigns - ostensibly to make them broadly palatable.

But trying to stretch a big tent over a broad membership, and expecting them to fall in line behind a professionally crafted policy platform, just alienates people from the responsibility to try to find consensus and imagine grounds for agreement.

It is politics made more efficient, but robbed of its essential character: as a public forum for critical debate on how to shape our common space, where representation and inclusion are the priority not minority voices competing to 'win' the right to direct everyone else from their own narrow perspective.

It is one of the more disappointing elements about the Labour Party that it has consistently failed to grasp this idea - even under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn talks of re-engaging social movements, but fails to engage with pluralism, with multiplicity, rejecting particularly the prospect of a Progressive Alliance.

Even under democratic socialist leadership, the party is still presenting itself as the self-styled only option, where the ideas of the Left - even when including trade unions and social movements of various and diverse kinds - must still ultimately be filtered through one single political party, pitching for broad public consumption, to achieve political expression.

What a contrast that is to how Barcelona's radical democrats view their task. Barcelona En Comu, not so much a party as a civic alliance, also talk of rebuilding the civic representation aspect of politics, but they are demonstrating it in practice.

Their municipal government is built around an alliance of various movements and parties. They understand their task in the civic space, in the movements and in the squares, is to involve both their opponents and fellow travellers of different parties alongside their own supporters, if they are really going to build a system of political pluralism - representative and inclusive

If Catalunya, the wider Spain and Britain keep down the road of adversarial politics the only result there can ever be is a society where the majority feel disconnected and uninvolved with their own physical and social spaces.

Politics isn't about winning. Its about representation. A plural politics takes as its starting point ensuring that people are able to see their views represented - whether directly through assemblies or a little more indirectly through multiple parties.

The next step is to rethink how these groups then interact. Rather than adversaries, these groups then hold a responsibility to craft, through debate, discussion and, yes, compromise, their various policy themes into a coherent shape that reflects the particular, distinct and plural society from which they have sprung.

Only then can people begin to reconnect, both with politics and with their civic spaces. Consensus is key. Representation is key. Pluralism is not the beginning of division and instability, but the only path to a real and lasting stability.

Progressives need to focus on the future: The first priority is guaranteeing basic rights

Night falls at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Photograph: European Court of Human Rights by Francois Schnell (License) (Cropped)

The referendum is over and Brexit has won. It might have been a flawed way to settle a dispute, with an awkward result that has split the country nearly completely in two, ensuring an outcome that will not be representative. But progressives have to push on.

The necessity now is to focus on future. Leaving the EU will leave holes in our rights protections, and the Left needs to give consideration as to how to plug the new gaps. That means getting behind a push for new rights protections above and beyond just legislation.

As the Labour Party's senior Brexiter Gisella Stuart was keen to remind us all during the referendum campaign, the UK certainly does have rights legislation of its own - gathered in a long history of campaigning and political reform (ITV News, 2016; ITV, 2016).

"It's been strong trade unions and strong Labour government which have produced that. If you look at any of the rights which we have, either started here or are better here. It is a nonsense to think that the EU protects us from ourselves."

The traditional approach of the Left, as Stuart alluded to, is to rally a movement, in this case the labour movement and unions, to build and maintain majority pressure for new rights and ensure the vigilance to watch over previous gains. That might be described as the 'democratic' approach.

What this approach is not, is a substitute for guaranteed rights - inviolable by the state, with the individual holding the legal power to challenge the state where it infringes upon their essential rights. Such protections are the 'liberal' approach.

In the referendum campaign, these two approaches - one democratic, one liberal - where presented to us as opposed to each other. The liberal guarantees where presented as unnecessarily safeguarding against ourselves, as an undesirable restraint on majority power.

Yet the point of both democratic and liberal protections is to check the abuse of power. Democracy holds individuals in positions of authority to account - as Tony Benn put it, "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?". Liberalism complements it by holding the majority to account, protecting the individual, or minorities, from the wrath of the many.

Combined together, the democratic approach with the liberal, provides an intricate web of protections ensuring progress made, opening up liberties and removing barriers, cannot be lightly undone - or casually put aside in a moment in which they are considered an obstructive inconvenience.

With Britain's exit, the protections for the individual provided by the EU's social chapter - negotiated and enforced across all of the EU's member states in cooperation, presented - will be withdrawn. That creates a large hole in the UK's rights protections.

That hole could be widened by an ending of the UK's commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) - put at risk in the UK by Brexit, thanks to leading Conservatives like Theresa May, seemingly likely candidate to run against Boris Johnson to be the successor to David Cameron as leader of the Conservatives, expressing a loathing for the ECHR and a wish to withdraw the UK from it (Asthana & Mason, 2015).

For progressives, this marks out clear territory. On the one hand there is a need to reinforce that which the EU's social chapter previously protected - particularly the rights of women and of workers - and on the other to ensure protections remain in place for essential human rights. These hands must work together.

The only current effort to provide some kind of domestic level of protections had been the Conservative promise to introduce a British Bill of Rights. Yet that effort has never fully materialises, and what information has come out of the process has been roundly criticised.

Bella Sankey, Director of Policy at Liberty UK, stressed that 'British' Bill of Rights proposals represented a fundamental diminishment of the protections of our basic rights and put the most vulnerable at risk (Sankey, 2016, Sankey, 2014)). The Conservatives bill risks creating tiered rights, that fail the universal test and hand powerful vested interests the right to decide whether an individual should be protected by human rights, in order to make a crudely naked nationalist pitch.

Sankey goes on to argue that the 1998 Human Rights Act, which set the stage for British judges in British courts to rule on human rights claims domestically, is still the far superior protection. That makes defending the UK's place upholding the ECHR essential.

As for workers' rights - in Europe covering everything from maternity leave to fair treatment for part time workers (Inman, 2016) - it has long been an aim of the Conservatives to 'repatriate' powers over employment legislation, what the Tories call the EU's bureaucratic red tape (Syal, 2013).

Apparently to help reduce costs for businesses, the Conservatives have said they want to cut back these restrictions. What they don't disclose is that most of these 'restrictions' were basic workers' rights, public health & safety standards, and legislation designed to ensure the common market could function as easily as possible by all businesses working according to the same harmonised expectations - basically helping to maximise marketability.

Outside of the EU's system of mutual guarantees, covered in legislation applying to all member states, workers fall back to trusting to the reliability of political parties and movements to be a bastion for their rights at work.

Under Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system, that has meant clinging to Labour even as the party has drifted to the right and accepted the neoliberal consensus. That simply trammels voters, restricting their freedom to choose - as splitting the vote between other parties, in pursuit of other objectives, would risk letting down the guard protecting workers, preventing voters holding parties like Labour to proper account.

The situation calls for a solution that gives people reassurance that their rights at work have protections even when absolute vigilance isn't possible. To that end, the next step for workers rights should be a charter that, either by international treaty like the ECHR or under the domestic protection of the Supreme Court, guarantees employment rights beyond simple majority influence.

Beyond the reach of the EU and European rights protections, the ability of citizens to hold governments to account is reduced to a desperate struggle - between Unions and employers, and for voters between their ideals and pragmatic necessity in their choice of political parties. The UK's time in Europe has shown a glimpse of how things might be done better, that the fear and tension that comes with the uncertainty of whether your rights will survive the next election or cabinet whim could be reduced.

The task ahead of progressives now is to think constructively about the future and build a consensus to set basic rights, in Britain, in adamant.

PMQs isn't fit for purpose. But it is the symptom not the disease

Week after week, the noise at Prime Minister's Questions has gotten louder. The half hour sessions have been drowned in noise growing more inconsiderate, more deliberately vindictive, with each passing week. Having to listen to the Conservative benches braying, on live television, to drown out the questions of the opposition, can be an exercise in masochism.

It seems pretty obvious at first look that PMQs is broken. And yet, it fits so perfectly within the Westminster system. That in itself is a sign of a much deeper problem in the British political system.

The essential trouble with PMQs is that it fits in a little too perfectly with the adversarial political culture in the UK. The two sides, the government and opposition, line up opposite to one another to, supposedly, hold the government to account.

The trouble is that this polemic is bias refined, a subjective contest where the government holds one view and thinks it is right and the opposition holds another and thinks it is right. What follows is a sparring match between the unstoppable and the immovable.

That contest is perfectly fitted to the UK's us-versus-them, first-past-the-post and winner-takes-all politics. Two implacable foes, coming from fixed positions having arguments that by their nature cannot be resolved. The government will do what it will and the rest is theatre.

There is certainly am uncontestable need for the public to see, in the flesh, what it is that each side stands for, argued for, hopefully, eloquently - maybe even persuasively. Yet PMQs is one the very few public moments in which there is an opportunity to enforce upon the government - handed extraordinary power in the UK - some kind of accountability.

However, when you cross the two purposes, the party publicity exercise and holding the government to account, only one of them is ever going to win. Accountability is sunk beneath bravado, noise and petty point-scoring.

In Scotland there has been attempt to début a revised First Minister's questions, changing up the system to provide more time for a calmer session with more interrogation. But even that is limited in what it can achieve.

It cannot escape a political culture of fixed adversarial positions and that is expressed, at its worst, in an exercise that is not supposed to be 'political' being consumed by politics.

Ideally, the process of holding the government to account would be something akin to a committee hearing. The Prime Minister would be brought before them and have to give acceptable answers to fundamental questions: What is your government doing? From where does it derive the mandate for that action?

The government's reluctance to put PM David Cameron into the election debates suggests an immediate weakness to this particular alternative: Would the party political machine ever submit to the Prime Minister and the government being put so clearly on trial? Probably not.

Right now the European Union's democracy is under scrutiny. But Westminster's shortcoming shouldn't be swept under the rug. Winner-takes-all makes a mockery of political representation and the adversary system simply reinforces the alienation of citizens from their government - keeping the real business far from the vigilant eyes of those who would want answers to the difficult questions that could hold it to account.

The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 things you should know about TTIP, free trade and the European Union

One of the most controversial elements of the UK's membership of the European Union, at present, is the TTIP - Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - trade deal. Between the United States and the European Union, it is intended to break down trade barriers limiting free trade.

The prospective deal has been controversial from the start - being assembled in negotiations deemed secret, under a cloud of fear that business is being given legal rights to seek recompense from governments for profit-hurting policy, reduce Europe's regulatory standards and open protected domestic institutions to aggressive corporate competition.

I: The EU is only what you make of it

The misconception here is that the EU is a distinct, abstract institution, pursuing its own agenda - thus imagining the deal to be the work of the EU alone, with exit a simple blocking measure. But the EU doesn't work like that. It is driven by a council of the governments of the member states, including the UK.

Right now, Britain's representative are David Cameron's government and the Prime Minister has argued forcefully in favour of TTIP. Leaving the EU is not going to stop the UK's Conservative government seeking the pass TTIP-type trade agreement.

The basic reality is that the opposition to TTIP is to be found in Europe, not out of it. In Germany, 250,000 people have marched against the treaty. In France, the government is opposing the treaty for the way it threatens its protection policy covering certain of its own domestic interests. The movements are right in step with the major concerns over the treaty in Britain.

II: Remember ACTA?

As ever, the problem persists of national governments hiding behind the EU - using it as an excuse or a way to pass policies where the public aren't watching, when it is simply a system whose strings they are pulling.

Consider the controversial ACTA treaty. ACTA, which was intended to ensure an international 'harmonisation' of copyright enforcement, was criticised as potentially allowing private companies to violate basic personal liberties like privacy and even threatening generic medicines to protect the financial interests big pharmaceutical companies.

While many national governments around the world and across Europe signed, including the UK, the treaty was ultimately blocked in a vote by the directly and proportionally elected EU Parliament, following massive public protests across the EU.

III: What is the point of free trade?

On TTIP, Prime Minister Cameron has tried to make out that there are stark lines over the deal. From his perspective, on his side - supporting TTIP - are all those who want free trade and the benefits it brings, and on the other are people who are 'against free trade and wanting to see an expansion of trade and investment and jobs' (Mason, 2016).

It is not unfair to suggest free trade is a worthy principle, but why can't we have it on ethical terms?

In its more idealistic form, the EU is all about constructing an ethical free trade area. In its origins, it was conceived of as a way to end war in Europe by stopping national governments getting into strife with each other over control of the natural resources with which to construct to materiel of war.

Going further back, into the 19th century, the campaign for free trade was about breaking open cartels. Under the system of trade formed by the competing systems of national protection, the basic necessities were made prohibitively expensive by the stranglehold over them of powerful and unaccountable landlords and bosses whose interests where served by national government protection.

The Anti-Corn Law League, the early radical liberal campaign in the UK for free trade, sought to break up these cartels to reduce the cost of basic food and goods, so that the poorest could afford a decent and healthy life. The campaign for free trade was in service to the public against the protected interests of the rich landowners.

IV: What does EU trade look like?

What the EU has attempted, but not completed, is to ensure that the free trade it promotes takes place on a fair and ethical playing field. Basic standards, enforced by regulation (the mythical beast the Right love to talk of slaying), protect workers' rights, prevent animal testing and in a host of other important areas ensure a basic minimum expected of business practice in Europe.

Internally, this comes hand-in-hand with policies like the Regional Development Fund. The fund is intended to invest in the poorest, sub-national, regions of the EU to raise the standard of living up, so no country can look to undercut another on basic standards or be cut out left unfairly behind.

Externally the protections, of standards and rights, require trading partners to meet certain conditions for access to Europe's common market - like those of Norway and Switzerland that have been much publicised as alternatives in for the UK during this EU referendum campaign.

All of these ideals depend, however, on who is in charge of policy and negotiation at the EU. Right now, it is the conservatives of many EU member states who are in the ascendency and control policy and decision making at the European level. As a result, the EU's actions have been tinged with conservatism.

Within that system, it has been the Right, and the far right, who have been the ones pushing most aggressively for the UK to do away with the EU's standards - though it has faced resistance. The solution for the Right has become doing away with the EU, but keeping the market intact, as they still want to trade with Europe, but want to be undercut everyone else and help big business pad its profits by doing away with concern for the environment or workers' rights.

What do progressives want from trade?

Exiting the EU will require new trade deals to be negotiated. The conservative Right is unlikely to make those standards and regulations any kind of priority in its negotiations. Maybe, of course, those who want a 'left exit', unrestricted by the European system, will get a government of the Left before too long, to set about forming a new progressive trade policy.

But what are progressives in Britain going to negotiate for, if not an ethical trade area? An ethical trade area underscored by democratic accountability and cooperation?

Even a progressive exit would mean the dismantling of systems of cooperation, decades in the making, that have supported advances in rights, in a move that could only make the Far Right happy - only to have to then try to rebuild it all over again.

Right now for progressives, fighting corporate power and ensuring trade is conducted ethically and with appropriate standards and rights protections, remaining in the EU - not idly, but campaigning for progressive, democratic reforms - is still the best option.

This is Part 2 of  a multi-part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

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

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

An Individual's Scandal and Stability in Iceland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Institutional Corruption and Hypocrisy in Brazil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barcelona Municipalism and the Cities of Europe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Citizen Government as a remedy for Corruption?

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

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

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

Policing and Crime Bill, with oversight and transparency reforms, goes to Commons unlikely to face much opposition

Theresa May's Policing and Crime Bill has a stated aim of improving disciplinary and complaints systems, along with the Inspectorate, in order to improve public confidence in the Police.  Photograph: Police Motorbike from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

In Parliament today, Home Secretary Theresa May presents her Policing and Crime Bill to the Commons for its first formal vote (Parliament, 2016). With a Conservative majority, its passage at this stage should be just a formality - particularly when English Votes for English Laws is applied. That only makes it all the more important for those outside of Parliament to pay particularly close attention.

The government claim the bill will 'finish the job' of police reform (Home Office & May, 2016). Included in its aims are reforming the police disciplinary and complaints systems, strengthening 'the independence of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary', increasing protections for people with mental health problems, allowing chief officers to "confer a wider range of powers on police staff and volunteers", and introducing a requirement for 'suspected foreign nationals to produce a nationality document'.

While moves to increase oversight and accountability are always welcome, along with further considerations for mental health, elements of the bill have faced some criticism. For instance, the expansion of volunteers in police service with police powers has raised some concerns (BBC, 2016) - with suggestions that it may be an artificial way to inflate police numbers in the face of austerity and cuts. There is also some scepticism regarding the continually expanding role of the Police and Crime Commissioners (Russell Webster, 2016), though it has been argued that accountability brought by PCC's election are having a positive impact (Baird, 2016).

The Policing and Crime bill itself is being steered through Parliament by Theresa May. As Home Secretary, Theresa May has already overseen a number of disputes over law enforcement and policing policy.

May has been the force behind the slow and controversial progress of the Investigatory Powers Bill, the so-called snooper's charter (Watt, 2016). Nick Clegg, as Deputy Prime Minister, had forced early bills covering public surveillance, particularly on the internet, to be withdrawn. The most recent attempt has been criticised, not just for being an infringement of liberty, but for being largely unworkable (The Guardian; 2016).

By way of contrast, a positive move was made by May in response to Boris Johnson's wish to deploy water cannon in London. May promised never to deploy police with military style equipment, for fear of undermining the legitimacy of the police (Dodd, 2015) - which is supposed to be based on the principle of policing by consent.

Between refusing water cannons and promoting mass data gathering, and her lack of surety on elected Police and Crime Commissioners (BBC, 2016{2}), Theresa May has cut an inconsistent path as Home Secretary. That inconsistency, along with the Conservative government's poor attitude towards human rights, since cutting loose the Liberal Democrats in May 2015 (Bowcott, 2015), call for a particularly critical eye to be turned on any reform efforts they spearhead.

It is only the early stages for this bill. A bill whose aims will likely be disrupted by disputes over further 'efficiencies' to be found in police budgets (ITV, 2016) - and maybe still further cuts as those scarcely avoided by the Chancellor last time, through heavy dependence upon the prediction of an improved economy, may well come around again in next week's budget with the economy struggling and tough choices expected (Elliott, 2016).

Yet whenever one party seeks to make changes to the enforcement of law and order, it is important to stress the need for the public to remain vigilant. Reform is need. Oversight and transparency are needed. Clear statements of powers, who has them and when, are needed. But the process of reform should too be constrained by those principles.

Cameron's EU draft deal makes a two speed Europe a fact and gives the European Union a chance to move forward

For progressives, the bright side of Cameron's renegotiation for two speeds of membership is that it keeps Britain at the heart of the EU, where they can continue to campaign for better, more democratic, system.

David Cameron has got, in draft form, his deal on Europe (Sparrow & Smith, 2016). The deal came with an unequivocal statement that the Prime Minister would, if Britain where not part of the EU, join if these were the terms. The Cameron deal, negotiated and Donald Tusk, President of the European Council (chair of the council of EU member states) came to a short list of agreements.

Member states to have the right to use an 'emergency brake' on providing social security to migrants when movement was above ordinary levels, that those outside bodies like the Eurozone should not be expected to fund them, a commitment from the EU to better regulations and more efficient administration, and for national parliaments that make up 55% of seats on the European Council to represent a veto on European legislation (Sparrow, 2016). What these concessions most clearly establish is a two speed Europe (Verhofstadt, 2016).

Romano Prodi, former Italian Prime Minister and former President of the European Commission (Europe's executive branch), had previously foreseen this outcome (CNN, 2004). An attempt had been made to bring together the various European treaties to create a clear Constitution for Europe, only for it to be rejected at referendums in both France and the Netherlands (BBC, 2005; The Guardian; 2005).

Prodi accepted that, with the failure to establish a constitution for Europe, to make progress the European Union must now move at two speeds (EurActiv, 2007) - so that those who do not want to move forward could have their choice respected, without it overriding the choice of others to move ever closer. Without some formal resolution on that direction, however, Europe has seemingly spent the last decade stalled.

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberals in Europe, praised the chance the renegotiations offered for clarity (Verhofstadt, 2015). Verhofstadt stressed that their was common ground in Europe for clearing up the messy boundaries and agreements, so that all countries could align themselves with a sure understanding of where they were headed.

Making the European Union a two speed institution essentially realigns Europe into two groups: some countries pursuing ever closer union, while others stay at arms length. The first group will accept the Eurozone, Schengen, joint border agencies, and the pursuit of better political and economic governance. Those at the edge will continue to have a seat at the table and important relationships and votes on governance, but there will be opt-outs rather than a veto.

For those in the UK who favour European Union membership, this seems to be the best deal on the table for now. What it certainly does offer is a chance to remain close. As Romano Prodi put it (EurActiv, 2007), "a two-speed Europe does not mean that countries that are in the second group cannot move to the first".

To the UK's progressives, this means the chance to renew efforts for a more social Europe (Shaheen, 2015), for the positive impacts that the EU can have in the fight for a greener world (Vidal, 2016), and to engage with continental campaigns for better democracy, like that being launched in Berlin next week on 9th February by Yanis Varoufakis to improve democracy in Europe (Varoufakis, 2016).

Still opposition even as Italy on verge of completing historic year for LGBT rights, but progressives must maintain their optimism

The Catholic Church stands in the way of Italy extending legal recognition to same-sex couples. Photograph: St Peter's Basilica from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Later this week, the Senate in Italy will be deciding how to respond to condemnation for the lack of legal recognition of same-sex couples (BBC, 2016). The government of Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister and leader of the Partito Democratico, has put legislation on same-sex unions before the Senate to introduce civil partnerships after criticism from the European Court of Human Rights.

Italy was ruled by the ECHR in the summer as being in breach of human rights by not allowing same-sex unions (Kirchgaessner, 2015). That ruling seems to have inspired fresh hope of progress, with campaigners out in numbers over the weekend to call for a change in the law (Kirchgaessner, 2016).

The road to change in Italy, though, is still filled with obstacles. There are deeply ingrained attitudes to overcome (Scammell, 2016) and the power of the Catholic Church is behind the conservative opposition (The Guardian, 2016).

However, the public campaigns for same-sex unions show that there is a possibility of change. The successes of other civil rights campaigns around the world also highlight what can be accomplished. Big steps forward where made last year, on a number of fronts - even when just considering the fight for LGBT rights.

In the US there were reassuring steps, with a Supreme Court ruling establishing that equal marriage was a constitutional right (Roberts & Siddiqui, 2015). Barack Obama celebrated the decision as making the 'union a little more perfect', marking a rare win for the Democrat President in an extremely partisan time in the White House (Jacobs, 2015).

Meanwhile Ireland became the first country in the world to secure the passage of equal marriage by a popular referendum, with an emphatic 62% voting in favour (The Irish Times, 2015). That vote had the additional significance of leaving Italy as the last Western country to not have some form of civic union for same-sex couples (Duncan, 2016).

Later this week in the UK, the Commons will be considering an amendment to the Civil Partnerships Bill that aims to extend civil unions - originally intended as a same-sex alternative to marriage - to opposite-sex couples (Bowcott, 2016).

Though it may seem like a sideshow, at a time when these matters are being debated, it would be a positive and signal step to make all forms of civil union equal, whether marriage or partnership, regardless of gender pairing. For those who are socially excluded, the aim is to be treated as equals.

A chance to take some steps towards that parity approaches in Italy. Yet the outcome of the Senate vote is far from certain. Italy has had a difficult history with liberalising reforms. Campaigns have long been left to parties on the fringe, such as the Radicals, who have campaigned for everything from the separation of church and state to the rights to divorces and abortions (Moliterno, 2000).

And over everything, the Catholic Church casts a long shadow (The Guardian, 2016). The Pope, weighing in on the upcoming vote, declared that god wanted only one type of family union, procreative and insoluble, and no other.

It can be demotivating as a progressive to have a year filled with conservatism, populist nationalism and neoliberal austerity, with discrimination still protected by powerful institutions. To discover in the news that, in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, those most in need of help face segregation - in the most recent case, refugees being forced to wear red wristbands as distinctive markers used to distinguish them (Taylor & Johnston, 2016).

But 2015 also served as a reminder of how much that is positive might be achieved, even under a conservative stranglehold. Progressives must draw upon these accomplishments for strength as they move forward, in order to, as Yanis Varoufakis argues (Varoufakis & Pisarello, 2016), maintain the optimism needed in the continued struggle against discrimination and the hegemony that protects it.

Conservative Energy Bill changes energy priorities at exactly the wrong time

After a rapid expansion, new community energy projects are in retreat as Europe's governments focus their energies on other problems. Photograph: Solar Panels (License) (Cropped)

Only a month ago, David Cameron, on the UK's behalf, signed the Paris Agreement (ITV, 2015). Those accords, however vague, nonetheless committed Britain and 199 other countries to the reduction of carbon emissions and to work towards a target of zero emissions (Vaughan, 2015).

However today, even as this weekend a senior UN official has praised the agreement for showing that the world can come together (Goldenberg, 2016), Cameron's government is promoting an Energy Bill that is leading the UK away from those goals.

The government's Energy Bill, in the Commons for its second reading, has been criticised for prioritising short term economic gains over the long term picture of sustainability (Lucas, 2016). The bill has been accused of encouraging the pursuit of coal and fossil fuels instead of leaving them in the ground and for failing to address fuel poverty - the scandal that as many as one in ten struggle to afford basic warmth.

That drive towards fossil fuels follows on the heels of cuts to subsidies for community green energy projects, which where allowed to lapse (Harvey & Vaughan, 2015; Vaughan, 2015{2}). Under the Coalition, the Liberal Democrats had encouraged these community projects (Davey, 2013). Their government research showed that community energy projects were sought out by the public to keep costs down, as well as fight climate change and to help in disadvantaged neighbourhoods - making a difference on many social and economic fronts.

These cuts to community energy subsidies and encouragement of fossil fuel recovery would seem to be a drastic change of direction for the government's public stance on energy. However, this disappointing shift in policy would not be the first. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the government had long been undermining its own commitment to clean energy (Monbiot, 2015; Monbiot, 2014), with a previous bill encouraging the maximization of exploitation of fossil fuel resources.

At the time when is there a need not only for clean and sustainable energy but also for a way to take power over the energy we consume out of the hands of big energy companies and despotic states, to increase competition and reduce the cost of energy, support for decentralised clean community energy should be a priority.

Community utilities providers have a proven track record of success in Germany and the US (Thorpe, 2014; Heins, 2015). With community projects still taking their first steps in the UK and the municipal movement in Spain acting as an inspiration across Europe, now is the time to be encouraging communities to get engaged with civic life in pursuit of the common good.

Local and provincial communities are showing the chief internationalist value of empathy in the face of the refugee crisis

The Greek Island of Lesbos, where locals have voluntarily rescued and cared for refugees. Photograph: Mytilene, Lesvos Island by Anna Apostolidou (License) (Cropped)

The past decade has seen the rise of two forms of nationalism in Europe. One is a vaguely Left-leaning provincial separatism and the other is a Right-wing nation-state sovereigntism. Both of them have found support expressed both at elections and in popular protest.

For internationalists, who have struggled for fifty years to open up Europe and break down its borders, the return of nationalism - of any stripe - has been seen, and treated, as a threat. In that mindset, no differentiation has been made between these different kinds of nationalism.

This isn't particularly surprising. To an internationalist, a return to nationalism represents a retreat into a closed-minded, closed society. The fear is that such a closed state would only further the alienation of people from others living elsewhere in Europe and so result in a substantial decrease in common understanding and empathy.

In light of the Eurozone's imperious attitude towards Syriza and Greece, it isn't hard to see why internationalism has struggled to make its case. The European Union, the great internationalist project, has been hijacked by national conservatism as a means to spread and enforce its social and economic beliefs. But, more than any other factor, it is migration that has exposed the tensions that Right-wing nationalism feeds upon: the fear of the other, the anxiety of difference.

Those anxieties have found particular expression in the UK, where the Foreign Secretary and even the Prime Minister have made dangerous and dehumanising references to migrants - humans travelling to escape poverty and war - as 'marauding' 'swarms' (Perraudin, 2015; Elgot & Taylor, 2015). It is the pinnacle of internationalist fears that people who are safe in settled stable societies, though scared and rattled by an ongoing financial slump, could show such a lack of empathy for the plight of those whose lives and homes are torn apart by violence, terrorism, war and poverty.

From refugees to migrant workers, exploited for everything from farming to prostitution (Lawrence, 2015; Harper, 2015), there is a painful tendency to blame these victims rather than those exploiting their desperation.

In the UK, part of that comes in a gross overstatement of the scale of the 'threat' posed by migration. Contrary to the opinion of UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, the overwhelming majority of migrants are not 'economic', but refugees fleeing from dangerous situations (Kingsley, 2015).

With a continental population of 750 million, and a European Union population of 500 million, it is unsurprising that a United Nations expert - Francois Crepeau, UN special rapporteur on the humans rights of migrants - believes it would be not only feasible but practical and desirable to offer resettlement of one million Syrian refugees, across the continent, over a period of five years (Jackson, 2015; Jackson, 2015{2}), as a way to end the present humanitarian catastrophe.

However, his recommendations seem as if they'll fall on deaf ears as national governments, retreating deep into sovereigntist nationalism in the face of the financial crisis, aggressively reaffirm national borders and national control over decision-making.

And yet, even as governments, like that of Greece, have struggled under the weight of debt and austerity and have been stretched to breaking in managing the refugee crisis (Kingsley & Henley, 2015), or have turned inwards to exploit anger and mistrust, there are still beacons of hope for those who champion commonality beyond borders.

Where governments are failing, volunteers, local activists and communities have taken up the responsibility. On Greek islands, even in the midst of their own crisis, locals have saved refugees from their stranded boats, taken them in, fed them and provided them with supplies and shelter (Kingsley, 2015{2}; McVeigh, 2015).

In such actions, in their wilful choice of empathy in defiance of the establishment, there is hope for internationalism. What there is for the internationalists still to see, however, is how to comprehend that this empathy, this pursuit of self-determination and anti-establishment opposition to hegemony, has also been at the root of the Left-leaning separatist 'nationalism'.

These ideals are what have differentiated the Left-leaning separatism from the Right-leaning sovereigntist nationalism. The open, reformist, pro-European attitudes, so deeply connected to internationalism, can be seen in the motivations of voters electing separatists - particularly in Scotland where the SNP want to break away from the UK, which is itself rapidly turning inwards, in order to remain an integrated part of a wider Europe.

That pattern has been repeated from Catalunya to Greece to the Green Party in the UK, where Caroline Lucas had called for reform of the old establishment - nationally and continentally - in pursuit of Europe's founding principles of co-ordination, co-operation and solidarity (Lucas, 2015).

The current crisis has internationalists, like the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, calling for more compassion and more positive action to alleviate suffering during this crisis (Leftly, 2015).

But in order to address the crisis in full, the difference between nationalists, retreating in fear to the shelter of the old institutions, and the separatists who want self-determination, reform and progress, has to be comprehended. In the one, nationalism, is national, social and fiscal conservatism that is driving a wedge between people. In the other, separatism, there are radical and democratic ideas to which internationalists are instinctively drawn.

To build a comprehensive movement that supports internationalism and human rights, across borders, with a broad empathy, means understanding all of the different strains of local, provincial and international activism that are so closely interlinked in their values. With such an alliance, in the spirit of the solidarity that has been seen in the anti-austerity movement, the compassionate empathy of Greek Islanders could be turned into a general, political and even economic campaign for human dignity and the common good.