General Election 2017 - A hopeful night for progressives: It's time to do opposition right

The provisional results, that give the Conservative-Unionist pact a very slim working majority.

The aim for progressives going into last night was supposed to be damage control. As it happened, they'd gone above and beyond - in fact, as the night went on, matters so very nearly tipped the Conservatives right out of government.

It will be interesting to see as the turnout is broken down to see how much of it came down to tactical voting among progressives - not organised by the parties, but voters themselves taking the lead and making their presence felt.

In the end, progressives had to settle for seeing off the Tory advance - a goal achieved with surprising comfort in the end. It came with the cherry topper of handing Theresa May an embarrassing rejection. She demanded the country unite around her and the country said no.

So much for strong and stable.

Theresa May has lost the Conservative majority and is now left dependent upon Arlene Foster and the Democratic Unionist Party - very recently hit by scandal and criticised over mismanagement in government at Stormont - to form a government.

Despite the Conservatives constant criticism of coalitions and relying on regional parties, Theresa May showed no hesitation in cobbling together a government that relied on the support of a narrowly focused regional party with some extreme views.

While the Conservatives deal with despondency, Labour are in a jubilant mood. Although celebrating and calling this a victory might be a little loose with the truth, it's a clear step forward.

In fact it is plenty enough for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to be justified in their stance that Labour are right now ready to govern as a minority government. It is a strong and confident stance they need to push and Labour MPs need to echo and reinforce.

You have to wonder if Corbyn and McDonnell always understood that Labour's route back to government would always take two elections. Last night they defied a threat of Tory advance, and revitalised themselves at home in their own seats.

Much criticised from within the party or focusing on boosting the party itself, in its own constituencies and ranks of members first, the strategy paid off. Labour's heartlands remained so and young turned out in droves.

Labour even expanded threateningly into Tory country. They took down junior ministers and established a following in the seats of senior ministers, that ran their incumbents very close and place them well for the next big push.

That will be at the next election. It will be a big moment for Labour. They've placed themselves breathing down the necks of the Conservatives and there will be no excuse next time. The platform is now there to launch Labour are into government.

However, Labour winning an election these days requires more than just Labour wins. It needs Liberal Democrat wins too. Last night the Lib Dems showed that they could win, but their performance was otherwise absurdly erratic.

From the nine seats they began the night with with, the party held four seats, lost five seats and gained eight seats. The Lib Dems also had a number of close calls either way - they really could have ended with anything from eight to eighteen seats.

The party largely held up its share of the vote - likely losing some to tactical voting, while gaining a little too. But the party could have hoped for a lot more and there will be some introspection among liberals in the days to come.

Honestly, considering the party's whole campaign at a distance, it's hard not to see Tim Farron's leadership as being compromised, despite the overall slight improvement in the party's position.

The leadership seemed to misjudge the public mood, unwaveringly focusing it's campaign on Brexit and rerun referendums, when many who the Lib Dems had to pitch to appear to have either gotten passed or not cared about in the first place.

And then there were the blunders Farron himself made, that were just plain ridiculous. No leaders of liberals should find themselves getting stuck with the label of intolerance on questions of support for LGBT and abortion rights.

The party's messy night speaks to the lack of clear message that connects values to policies to people, and resonated with an audience - as if the party simply wasn't sure to who exactly it was pitching it's ideas.

The return of Jo Swinson to the Commons for East Dunbartonshire on a clear majority perhaps presents the Liberal Democrats with a viable alternative leader - a woman, not least, outspoken and capable. All things the Lib Dems need to put at the forefront.

The SNP also had a dramatic night. While it is obviously on the one hand a tactic of media management to play down seat losses as best as possible, it was not unreasonable in this case. There really wasn't anywhere for the SNP to go after they swept Scotland last time out and the monopoly couldn't last.

The drama came from who the Lib Dems lost seats to: the Tories. Before the independence referendum that would have been, nearly, unthinkable. But last night, the Tories pretty much saved their political skins with gains in Scotland.

Their gains brought a particularly sad loss: Angus Robertson has lost his Moray seat. Sadly, Robertson will no longer bring his impressive performances to bear from the opposition benches in the Commons.

The big question going ahead now will be who can maintain their vote share and move forward. On several fronts, the Tories seem to have hit a wall that suggests they've maximised their reach. Labour, in contrast, broke new ground.

For Labour, this is a platform to win from. However, to turn that potential into a reality will depend upon keeping young voters, particularly first time voters, engaged and coming back time and again - and that will mean rewarding their engagement.

Labour also has to make a big pitch to Wales over the next five years. Voters in Wales shielded Labour last night, but the party hasn't really earned it - even with Corbyn's bright new manifesto. It has to start delivering.

There is a progressive majority. Seventeen million voted for the Centre-Left, while fifteen million went for the Right. Yet there is a Conservative government - a Hard Right Blue-Orange Loyalist coalition, no less.

It's mandate and majority are thin. Labour has a platform to fight and overturn that now, but first things first. All of the progressive parties have to get opposition right. There can be no messing around this time.

All progressive parties - Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens - have to start coordinating. And right now. Right from the start. The infighting must stop. The progressives turning fire on each other must stop.

All focus now has to be on holding the government to account, to prevent its Hard Right nature from getting out. On LGBT, on abortion, on human rights, on welfare - there are so many crossovers for progressives were opposition will be needed.

Corbyn's result has restored hope to progressives. It has trammelled the Conservatives. The time to make that count is now. The next election campaign starts now - and this time it'll be a fight progressives can win.

General Election 2017 - Tory Manifesto: Demanding unity, making no promises

Theresa May has called for unity and social harmony, but she offers little to ordinary people in return.

This manifesto is Theresa May's belated opportunity to stamp her identity of the Conservative Party. In what became her very short campaign for the role of Conservative leader, she chose to emphasise the Unionist element of the fully titled Conservative and Unionist Party.

At the 2017 manifesto launch, "Forward Together" was written on the front of May's podium as she strained to come across as a 'compassionate conservative' and the word "Unionist" was restored to the party's name on the front of the manifesto.

Inside the document, there was an effort to rewrite what it means to be conservative. It called for "commitment to country and community", "belief in national institutions", and obligations to one another stronger than individual rights as community and nation demand.

That definition is unionist to its core. In her first major speech as leader, she listed her hero as the Unionist Joseph Chamberlain. As Mayor of Birmingham, he led the modernisation of the city through public-private initiatives and the establishment of public utilities, in decisive acts of intervention.

There are some among the Tories who are perturbed by what they see as a similar interventionist streak. May's first manifesto and her launch speech seem to have been shaped to confirm that impression. But there is a real contrast between the tone and the content.

The headlines that the Conservatives drip fed to the media over night, before the launch, were all focused on what the party would do to address the dire state of social care - which critics say has seen a funding cut of over £4 billion on their watch.

Theresa May pitched a long term plan. The first step appears to be to launch a raid on the middle class: from their assets on one hand - those with holdings over £100,000 will pay more - to their winter fuel allowance, which will be means-tested to raise £1 billion.

The belt-tightening Tory plan extends down the income brackets. Pensions will again see cuts. With £8 billion already shaved across the Parliament (2015-2020) with the flat-rate pension, ending the triple-lock will be further hurt for the low paid on just the state pension.

While an argument might justifiably be made that the triple-lock has proven very expensive - pensioner incomes have risen 10% above inflation - not enough is being done to lower the cost of living, particularly in old age, to ease such a 'rebalancing'.

It is perhaps this that has motivated an intervention in the energy sector with an unspecified "safeguard tariff cap" on prices and a commission and independent review into how to ensure energy costs stay low, with a promise to ensure fair markets.

But let's be clear: social care changes brought in by raising the means-tested level to £100,000 does nothing to change the conditions for the poorest. These measures raise maybe £2 billion per year, at best, in additional funding to aid an ailing system.

That means the poorest will continue to rely on strained and underfunded care services, while the homeowning middle class will be paying far more for privatised care - and still won't be able to pass on their family homes to their children.

In fact, when you take into account hinted Tory plans to give workers the right to unpaid carers leave, it paints a picture of Conservatives intending to wean people off of state care.

Perhaps learning from the Cameron years, hard targets seem to have been replaced by lots of vague promises: to simplify tax laws, to stop tax evasion, to protect gig economy workers and to put more money in the NHS (despite having yet to meet their previous targets) - though the promises to control immigration continue to be more clearly specified.

But what does not seem to have changed is their attitude to the fiscal role of the government.

Current spending stands this year at around £720 billion to £740 billion in revenue, while Capital spending sits at around £80 billion. As the Tories combine Current and Capital spending to calculate the deficit, it stands at about £59 billion.

With further commitments to eliminate the deficit, across both Current and Capital spending, a National Productivity Investment Fund of £23 billion - even if it turns out to be rebranded rather than new money - heralds more austerity cuts to come, either from other infrastructure spending or from departmental budgets.

And that matters. Britain has already been hard hit by austerity. Yet despite in her manifesto disavowing the liberal conservative legacy of Cameron and Osborne and claiming that the state has a role, May is continuing their squeeze on public services.

Note here, that what can be interpreted about how the Tories will manage the economy has no help from the manifesto, which has no costings whatsoever. Just vague promises and vague numbers with no explanation of where money will be found, or taken.

The reality is that easing the social care strain by having the middle class pay more and by restraining the pensions of the least well off does nothing to increase the stake of ordinary people in their country. May is preaching a new Union, but it's still the same old unredeemed and hard to believe Tory slogan: "We're all in this together".

This is not an inclusive manifesto. It is not progressive. It is social harmony Unionism, putting the vague notion of a 'country' before the needs of the actual people. Theresa May demands unity, but doesn't offer ordinary people a real stake in the country.

Progressives and reformers will also be particularly unhappy to see Theresa May doubling-down on retaining power, with specific commitments to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, preserve First Past the Post and to require voter ID - all measures empowering the government of the day to stay there.

The path ahead, under the Conservatives, will continue to see the burdens fall on the poorest. Nothing in this document changes that. It is imperative that there be a progressive alliance to resist and oppose, because we need a strong opposition.

Unionism: What is Mrs May pitching?

Unionism was Joseph Chamberlain's special province when he dominated Victorian politics. Today, Theresa May is trying to spark a resurgence. Photograph: Joseph Chamberlain plaque by Simon Harriyott (License) (Cropped)

At the beginning of last week, Theresa May launched her first full year as the leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party with a speech that called for a 'shared society' (BBC, 2017). Over the years, the Conservatives have made many rebranding attempts. Is May's any different?

For the most part, the attempts of her predecessors - Major, Hague, Duncan Smith and Cameron - have been focussed on repackaging Thatcher. They have tried to soften the harsh anti-government and anti-interventionism tone to the policies of the Thatcher-Reagan consensus (BBC, 2017{2}).

But they all contained the same disdain for the idea of a 'society' as a figment created to justify collectivism - to justify a claim that people have duties towards others beyond themselves and their own families, expressed through taxation and the state. They just tried to make rejection of the state, and embrace of the free market and privatisation in its place, palatable or 'empowering'.

May's rebrand seems different. She has appealed harder to the idea of the state's role, promising intervention in a way that none of her recent forebears would perhaps have contemplated. She has hinted at moving away from austerity and letting the state intervene more. But how does this all relate to what we know of conservatism and do these appeals follow through?

Chamberlain and Unionism

Theresa May's inspiration, it seems, for this deviation from the legacy of Thatcher is Joseph Chamberlain. Chamberlain was the Victorian political heavyweight who broke his Unionists away from the Liberals and led them into alliance, and eventual merger, with the Conservatives.

A businessman, and industrialist, he was at first aligned with the radical liberal reformers who campaigned for enfranchisement and free, compulsory - and local authority run - education. As Mayor of Birmingham he reorganised municipal utilities, bringing them under municipal control, cleared slums, and rallied public and private money to public works, such as building libraries, museums, schools and parks.

On the other hand, he proved himself to be an aggressive nationalist. He opposed Irish Home Rule and defended the Union, and further wanted to see the Empire become a truly, exclusively, British trading system, protected by trade tariffs and was willing to back military action to advance Britain's interests - in ventures not so far removed from the interventions of the neoliberal governments in oil rich countries in the early 2000s.

The Unionists, of which he was a leading figure, where a strange coalition of aristocratic Whigs with landed estates, who as a faction were drifting away from the Liberal mainstream, and a group of radical reformers led by Chamberlain. These two groups were united mostly by their opposition to Irish Home Rule, which would break up the Union.

The composition of the Unionists shifted over time, but it settled around a particular outlook: a British nationalism that transcended its constituent nationalities, built upon institutions like Westminster government, and preserved the Union; and, economic intervention at home with a protected British system of trade abroad, directed to British interests alone.

But what was perhaps most significant, from where Theresa May sit, was that the Unionists brought a working class base to the Conservative coalition. Chamberlain's personal support, centred on Birmingham, included working class voters, gave the traditional party of the landed aristocracy a broad enough base of followers to dominate government in the twentieth century.

May and Unionism

May's first conference as leader was at Birmingham, the centre of her hero's political empire and was the scene for the first two big moves of her ministry: to disentangle a still United Britain entirely from continental entanglements and to prioritise some spending over paying down the deficit (BBC, 2016; BBC, 2016{2}).

And there have been other moves. Intervening to delay Hinckley Point, alleged promises made to Nissan that speak of protectionism, hints of economic planning in the promises to develop an industrial strategy, and the continuance of the Conservative policy of devolution to the local government level that could have pleased Chamberlain (Goodall, 2016).

However - and it is a big, emphatic, however - no Conservative leader has been scared to use central government, top down, intervention when it suited them; privatisations continue; part of the Brexit rhetoric is that Britain is leaving the EU in search of freer trade, not more protected; and devolution has been hand in hand with cuts, as a way to impose austerity while handing off responsibility for its results.

Without a tangible set of policies to mark her approach out as distinct, what part of the legacy of Unionism is May promoting? Well, so far, the main thrust of May's Unionism has been cultural. Her speeches focus heavily on acknowledging injustice (Kuenssberg, 2017) and warning that it will 'undermine the solidarity of our society' (May, 2017).

That word - 'solidarity' - seems like an odd choice of phrase for a Conservative in the modern era, but it might be understood better when coupled with her phrase 'bringing our country together', which is what May presents as her solution to the rising resentment.

That phrase makes clear that this isn't 'solidarity' in its usual collectivist democratic sense, of the people standing together for mutual empowerment - an egalitarian mass movement of people aiding each other as a counter the power of an elite class.

Rather, May's point - her Unionism - seems to be very conventionally conservative: the traditional institutions have broken down and people are lost without their place in the established order. To end resentment, May seems to be arguing that a Burkean social harmony must be restored.

In that, there seems to be marked a drift in the party away from liberal conservatism towards something more purely conservative. Since the decision to enter the Coalition, a reaction within the party has grown ever louder against Cameron's soft conservative neoliberalism. In its place, rises an effort to reconcile individualism and competition, with an appeal to nationalism and community coherence, to unite the two errant wings of the ideology.

It is in the prioritising of these first two, and neglect of the last two, from which May sees resentment springing - and it certainly seems to fit how resentment has been filtered through Farage and UKIP. What May also sees is an opportunity.

Chamberlain combined local social reform with banging the patriotic drum, pitching a British system that carried a sense of a nation and tradition in which ordinary people have a stake - where everyone has their part to play. May sees a chance, in evoking the Chamberlain heritage of Unionism, to bring working people into a Conservative coalition.

Society as seen through a Prism

To do this May has taken up the language of the Left, but filtered its cause through a conservative prism. For instance, she wants to equate social justice with social harmony - in the process stripping it of its sense of distributional equality, leaving behind only class collaboration and perhaps, in the conservative sense, a 'fair deal' on work and pay.

The trouble is that social harmony is illusory. It requires citizens to accept exclusion and inequality in exchange, maybe, for a place of safety and security within the fold. Meanwhile the true elite - the wealthy, the rentiers - do not need to give up or compromise much of anything to take up their place within the harmonious order.

"A Britain that works for everyone" is not a slogan that promises very much - just as "We're all in this together" proved an empty promise to ordinary citizens, their sacrifices unmatched by the elite. Unionism addresses resentment by falling back on nationalism, looking to 'the nation', 'the Union' and their institutions as a rallying point.

Chamberlain's own Unionist star fell when colonial adventures brought misery and his closed economy could not compete with the benefits of being open to the world. The reality is that his Unionism did not leave ordinary people better off, however much it rallied them about a patriotically waved flag. Theresa May is trying to pick up and claim that fallen standard.

Progressives should not be seduced. People cannot be content with a place within May's social hierarchy: tightly ordered, tightly surveilled - living under close control, in exchange for just the hope of a little basic social security. Unionism, and its social harmony within a hierarchy, offers citizens neither liberty or justice.

Theresa May in Birmingham to set out her Conservative & Unionist agenda

Theresa May is setting out her agenda at the Conservative Party Conference at The ICC in Birmingham, city where her Unionist hero Joseph Chamberlain made his name. Image: ICC Birmingham by Bob Hall (License) (Cropped)

This weekend's Conservative Party conference in Birmingham became Theresa May's first attempt to set out a distinct policy platform. A chance to define her own approach to being head of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, separate from that of the Cameron Government that she inherited.

At the conference some major policies positions were announcement, including setting of a date for the triggering of Article 50, that begins the two-year long process of the UK exiting the EU - for which the government's negotiating position was leaked - and the prioritising, by the Chancellor Phillip Hammond, of spending on housing over the budget deficit.

These policies together produce an image of Britain as the new Prime Minister wishes to see it. But before the larger picture can be assembled, let's look at the pieces themselves.

First, there is the Government's position on Article 50 negotiations. The main thrust of the official announcement was only to establish that the two-year Brexit process will be triggered by the end of March 2017 and that the government was set upon the course to make the UK no longer be part of a supranational institution (BBC, 2016).

From the Prime Minister's own statements, it was clear that she intended to pursue particular priorities, getting UK out of European Court of Justice jurisdiction and establishing new migration controls, that made Britain's continued membership of the Single Market no longer a red line in negotiations (Kuenssberg, 2016) - a huge deviation from the position of the Cameron Ministry and the Conservative Manifesto.

Second, but by no means of less importance, is the decision by the Chancellor to give priority to infrastructure spending over paying down the deficit (BBC, 2016{2}). Few shifts could more dramatically demonstrate that the Cameron-Osborne era is over than to decrease the priority of tackling the deficit, which has been held over all government spending decisions for six years.

Compared to the leanness of Chancellor Osborne's approach, the dropping of the 2019-2020 target for eliminating the deficit and now a plan to invest in the UK's housing and transport, and even new borrowing to do so, is a big leap. Chancellor Hammond has called the shift a pragmatic response to new circumstances (BBC, 2016{3}) - part of the more mundane, pragmatic attitude that has replaced the 'flash' of the Cameron-Osborne era (Kuenssberg, 2016).

Yet despite what the Chancellor says, expert opinion has for years now (Elliott, 2016) called on Osborne to change tack and reject austerity as damaging to economic prospects in the UK. For Labour, who have spent six years being crucified for its pro-spending attitude its hard to say whether they will feel vindicated or bitter at the change of direction in the Conservative Party.

So what kind of picture do these pieces make when assembled? What do these key policies add up to?

Earlier speeches from Theresa May's leadership mentioned her admiration for Joseph Chamberlain and expressed an intention to restore the place of Unionism in the Conservative & Unionist Party. Chamberlain's two most famous projects were to lead, as Mayor, the rebuilding and reordering of Birmingham and, as an MP, to lead the opposition to free trade and champion trade tariffs between the British Empire and the rest of the world.

Chamberlain's attitude made an us and them of the English-speaking British Empire and the rest of the world, putting 'British' priorities first. While the barriers he put up around Britain served to subsidise and protect domestic business, they did so mainly by hurting the poorest - as the Liberals of the day pointed out with cold facts (Marr, 2009). In its day Chamberlain's aggressively nationalist & imperial vision was ultimately defeated by the Liberal Party of Asquith, Lloyd George and Churchill.

That sense of national unity, in distinction between a British way and everyone else, seems present in May's vision - less individual and competitive than Cameron's, more social and corporate. So inspired by Chamberlain does Theresa May's own platform seem, that announcing her positions at a party conference in Birmingham seems not to be a coincidence but rather a purposeful statement. A symbol of the increased prominence of Unionism within the Conservative brand.

In her pursuing her independently British path, some sort of Chamberlain-esque increase in the will to use the proceeds to fund pragmatic interventions that improve the state in which workers live would be appreciated - especially compared to the austere whittling of front line services and civic spaces of her predecessors.

Yet May's own scepticism of 'supranational' institutions risks putting Britain behind a new set of barriers, with many of the same problems as those erected by her hero. Whatever her Government's slogan proclaims - "A Country That Works For Everyone" - Unionism, by its very nature, buys into the idea of exclusivity. The new Prime Minister will have to go a long way to convince progressives that those outside of the highest echelons will ultimately benefit from, and share in, the spoils of this British corporation.