The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum: 4 basic things you should know about the background to Britain's EU referendum

Photograph: European Parliament at Espace Leopold from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

With the question of Britain's membership of the European Union being put to a referendum, it is important that people know what it is that they're voting for. Whether instinctually in or out, the core of progressive thinking is basing decisions on the facts. So, from a progressive view, here are four of the basics necessary to making an informed decision.

I: This isn't the first referendum

Back in the 1970s, Britain's Conservative government of the day, under Prime Minister Ted Heath, joined the then named European Community. It was not until later, under his successor, Labour's Harold Wilson, that the decision was put to the people in the form of a referendum.

As in 2016, 1975 saw Britain already committed to the EU and the question was whether to end that partnership. As now, the referendum followed a period of renegotiation of the terms of membership and the question divided the government.

The main difference is that in 1975 membership was a new step, at the beginning of a new phase for the project and today Britain has long been a member and has to consider the impact of its membership over a significant period of time.

In 1975, in answer to the question "Do you think the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community?", Britain voted by 67% to remain.

II: How the EU has changed since 1975

The European Union has come a long way from where it began as the steel and coal trading agreement between the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, through the European Community of the 1970s referendum into today's political maze.

Today's European Union is the successor to a set of international organisations, including the European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1952, and the European Economic Community (EEC), founded in 1958. These bodies worked for cooperation between nations in Europe following the war - founding thinker Robert Schuman said to "make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible" between, particularly, France and Germany, through economic integration.

The organisations created a common market in Europe that would reduce direct competition between countries for control of natural resources, and secure for businesses in any member country access to the resources they needed, without endless red tape, treaties and national policies requiring domineering control over resources that in the past gave unequal preferential treatment for one domestic economy.

The Maastricht Treaty of 1993 formed these various bodies into the European Union was perhaps the biggest change there has been between 1975 and 2016. It was certainly controversial - leading to the founding of what would become UKIP.

Yet these efforts to promote integration are fully within the spirit of the European project - pursuing a step by step, democratic integration of Europe - as laid out in the Schuman declaration:

"Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity."

The most controversial change, however, has been less a change than an ongoing process: the continued expansion of the European Union, with the entry of new member states. As the borders of Europe have grown larger, the balance of economic strength between member states has also shifted. The economic weakness of some of these countries, and the relative, comparative, lack of wealth of their citizens, has stoked fears about mass migration into richer member states.

III: What the EU looks like today

The four main components of the European Union today are the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.

The first two are the Council and the Parliament. The Council gathers the representatives of the elected governments of each member state, with equal representation - like to the United States Senate or the German Federal Bundesrat. The Parliament meanwhile houses MEPs, elected by proportional representation from regional constituencies all across the European Union.

Because the Council sets the policy direction, and the Council and Parliament must vote to pass legislation, fluctuations in which parties are enjoying popular support across Europe affects directly and indirectly the priorities and approach of the Union. With an particularly inward looking conservatives currently dominant in domestic politics in most European countries, conservatism controls politics at the European level as well.

The Commission is the Presidential executive branch that, based on the policy priorities set by the council, proposes legislation and takes responsibility for seeing it implemented across the EU. The Commission is headed by a President who is nominated by the European Parliament and the Council jointly and heads up a body of 27 Commissioners, one from each member country covering different policy areas, and an estimated 50,000 civil servants (compared to around 19,000 working fro Manchester City Council).

The Court of Justice (ECJ) is the highest court of European Law, responsible for interpreting the laws. It is to this organisation that member state courts refer questions of application of European Law.

Between these separate bodies have been created various agencies, carrying out various responsibilities including the European Regional Development fund - whose creation was pushed for originally by Britain and Italy. It invests EU common funds in poorer and less developed parts of Europe, on a regional rather than national basis, to encourage modernisation, create sustainable jobs and stimulating growth - including investing in transport links and telecommunications like broadband.

Yet these funds remain a source of tension, with exit campaigners complaining that too much leaves one national entity, particularly a rich one like the UK, to be spent in another. The reality is that the spending is redistributive, not from one country to another but from richer regions to poorer, with the aim of building up the poorer so that it can stand with less redistribution needed in the future.

IV: Progressive Europe after #ThisIsACoup

The referendum on whether Britain should continue to be a part of these institutions has pricked a sore progressive nerve. After the way senior and influential European figures were seen to have treated Greece, and its Radical Democrat governing party Syriza, during bailout negotiations, and the way the will expressed in Greece's elections and referendums was ignored - decried as an attempted coup against the government of Greece - influential figures on the left have begun to really consider an uncoupling, for fear of being unable to implement progressive change within the European system.

The trouble for progressives lies in the fact that, though stark lines have been drawn by the referendum question, they do not have a clear side to take. Conservatives are supporting the European status quo, that they currently dominate, and the far right are supporting exit - with no third position available.

While there is cynicism with regards to the EU's policy achievements, its process of compromise and alliance-building has seen policy developed and implemented on a much wider scale than might have otherwise been possible - ensuring that issues common to all the people's of Europe can be sorted out by them, mutually, on that same scale.

The value of that approach is seen in the efforts of others on the Left to build an alternative to the two options presented in Britain's upcoming referendum. At the least, it shows how it remains preferable to the possibility of a 'Brexit'.

Over the last few years, Yanis Varoufakis, an economics professor and former finance minister of Greece under Syriza, has consistently argued that there is danger for the Left in letting the mainstream establishment collapse. Rather than cheering the neoliberal implosion, he has sombrely called for progressives to help prevent it so as to avoid the catastrophic affect upon those most vulnerable and to buy time to build an alternative.

From Varoufakis viewpoint, only the Far Right has ever benefited from social and political breakdown, or economic crisis, while the Left has succeeded most from pushing for reform of the system - requiring most often to build up structures and ideas over time to acts as foundations and infrastructure on which to stand its achievements.

It makes sense then that Varoufakis has led the formation of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), as a cross party platform, to push the progressive case. That organisation has others like Another Europe alongside it, pursuing a different and more progressive form of European government. What unites them is the belief in the need to form pan-European parties and movements to push for a broad democratisation of those Europe institutions that remain aloof or too little accountable.

What do progressives want today?

Fearful of conservative domination of Europe, it isn't surprising that the Left wants out of what could easily look like a rigged game. Yet there are Varoufakis' warnings to consider, which contain a wider implication within, for those on the Left whose instincts lean towards exit.

Out of Europe there awaits only nationalism, seen in the continued rise of the Far Right which so nearly won the Presidencies of France and Austria, given yet more license to drive more wedges between more people - arresting social progress to a narrowly sectarian view of the world.

Exit also stands it contrast to citizens movements, governing cities and provinces on the principles of municipalism, that offers the most hope for progressives right now. It would be easy to take the lessons of the municipal movement as license for the Left to withdraw and focus on the local.

Yet those pursuing the municipal cause have a more outward view, looking to build alliances between municipalities, between cities, across the entire continent to bring democracy closer to the people and to bring those citizens together in solidarity.

For progressives, the future, the path to their aims - for justice, liberty, equality, progress - still runs the international road. In Europe, that still means looking outward, looking at politics on a continental scale. To that end, the European Union remains the infrastructure that we have.

Exiting one continental system without another to join, when so much for the Left depends on international cooperation, is reckless and wasteful. Between voting to remain and voting to exit, voting to remain is the only option that chimes the broad vision. But it shouldn't be a vote cast lightly.

Remaining is not an "end all" solution, but a first step. The next step for progressives should be to get involved with the movements to reform Europe, to democratise Europe, to beat back austere conservatism and discredited neoliberalism, all in favour of a more compassionate alternative.

This is Part 1 of  a multi-part series, "The Alternative Guide to the EU Referendum" - click here to go to the introductory hub

Crisis in the neoliberal economic system may not be a guaranteed springboard for a radical new economy, but it does signal the need to prepare a coherent alternative

With the world economy in seemingly constant crisis, progressives need to have a credible alternative ready. Photograph: Euro Bank Notes from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Yesterday brought some gloomy economic news. The global economy is struggling, markets everywhere are slumping, and to all intents and purposes the great recession appears to be heading on into its eighth year (BBC, 2016). Not even a new low for unemployment in the UK could bring much cheer, as wages continue to stagnate (BBC, 2016{2}).

With 20% of Europe's young people unemployed (European Parliament, 2016) - as many as 50% in some cases and trapped by nearly a decade of slim to no opportunities - and with austerity cutting away at social security (Gaffney, 2013; Nielsen, 2014), it wouldn't be surprising for some on the Left to at least take in hope in the idea that the lack of return for all of the precariousness and the sacrifices might be a crisis in the making for the neoliberal order.

And yet, as Yanis Varoufakis has warned, a crisis is not so easily exploited by progressives (Varoufakis, 2015). In fact, they often play out at the expense of the Left. With the aims of the Left so often dependent upon the building of a social institutions - something taking time and public support - progressives can find themselves in the unenviable position of defending the establishment in the face more extreme populist positions.

So, building an alternative economy is not going to be accomplished overnight. Neoliberalism certainly wasn't (Ridley, 2016). It took decades, around a half century, of work and preparation for the neoliberal theorists to promote their cause to the mainstream.

That doesn't mean, however, that some of the work has not already been done. For the Left, the construction a new path has been bubbling away since at least the beginning of the great recession - almost a decade ago - and breakthroughs have been made.

In the past year, Syriza won two elections and a referendum as an opponent of the prevailing system (Mason & Skarlatos, 2015) - and even as they have been strangled and forced to concede endless ground their leader Alexis Tsipras continues to argue for the room to build something more inclusive and sustainable (Tsipras, 2016). Yanis Varoufakis, now the former Finance Minister of Greece, has become a figurehead for the European Left for the way in which he stood against the austerian establishment.

In Spain, the 15M Indignados movement has taken just two years to launch the Podemos party and become a real presence of the national scene (Jones, 2015). In the last year it has won control of some major cities with its municipalist ideas, becoming an inspiration for movements across Europe (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016).

Also of note is that in Utrecht (Perry, 2015), in the Netherlands, and in Finland (Unkuri, 2015), trials are being rolled out to test the merits of the Basic Income. An idea that could erase poverty and bring some salve to those suffering caused by the precariousness of the times, the Basic Income is an important idea whose time has come.

There has also, of course, been the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum within the Labour Party (Mason, 2015). Corbyn is faced with plenty of struggles with his own parliamentarians and with the mainstream media. Yet his ideas have led to a huge upsurge of engagement with the Labour Party that represents - regardless of whether it is enough to win a national majority - the emergence of a significant voter base for radical democrats in the UK.

As elsewhere in the world, much like how Spain's Podemos was born from the Indignados, this base of voters has been brewing and coalescing in the UK since the Occupy movement launched its protests around the world in 2011. Occupy saw individuals and groups coming together, organising themselves, in a massive show of civil disobedience.

All of these elements carry with them ideas and theories about how the world might alternatively be constructed. Yet so far they have been, not to sound disparaging, just protests or singular parties, isolated in the mainstream.

The next step is overdue. A part of it is coming from Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, in a move that seems like something New Labour's masters of spin should have come up with a decade ago. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell is taking his rockstar economists, assembled in October as an anti-austerity economics advisory body, on the road to debate and promote the building of a new economy.

Another part will come from in the not too far future with the launch of Varoufakis' movement for rebuilding democracy in Europe in February (Wingard, 2016). As he has been keen to stress, the next step has to include the building of a broad movement, bringing together many ideas, across the whole of Europe (Varoufakis, 2016; Varoufakis & Sakalis, 2015) - on the same scale as globalised neoliberalism also functions.

To topple a broken and unequal system in a time of crisis may not be more than a romantic Left-wing notion. But the stumbling of neoliberalism, from crisis to crisis, makes it essential to put together the various threads of thought into a coherent proposal that is ready to step up when neoliberal thinking finally runs of credibility.

From the basic income to the reduction of full time hours, a living wage to a living rent, municipalism to community energy, there are many elements that could fit together and complement each other. The job ahead is to construct that bigger picture and start showing it to the world.

Can Guy Verhofstadt's four steps to reforming the state help bring together progressives of all stripes?

In July, Guy Verhofstadt outlined to Alexis Tsipras the steps he believed where necessary to reform the state. Photograph: Press Conference from ALDE Communication (License) (Cropped)

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Liberal caucus in the European Parliament, was amongst those to congratulate Justin Trudeau on his party's victory in the Canadian general election. The former Prime Minister of Belgium praised the inspiring example set by the Liberal Party of Canada's positive campaign (Verhofstadt, 2015).

Trudeau's team sought to rise above their opponents' negative campaigning and pledged investment in much needed infrastructure - with the promised benefit of stimulating the economy - and to pursue progressive policies like a positive climate change policy, taking the pro-choice side of the abortion debate, and seeking to heal the wounds from internal conflict over indigenous rights (Hays, 2015; Phipps, 2015).

It is unsurprising that Europe's liberals would be looking for the lessons they can learn from the success of their counterparts in North America. In the European Union, liberals govern in only 7 countries, their European Parliament group holds only 9% of seats, and in countries like Germany and the UK the long established liberal parties have faced electoral wipeouts over the last five years.

Yet the elections in Canada - as well as elections in Argentina, Poland and elsewhere over the past week - confirm one thing very clearly. Overcoming the Conservative establishment and fending off the efforts of Right-wing populists to assume control, isn't something that one progressive faction alone can accomplish.

Relying on the distorting effect of electoral systems that force voters into unrepresentative concentrations, or hitching the party wagon to a popular carthorse, cannot be considered lasting strategies. In what is clearly a pluralistic and divided political arena, the alternative has to be the building of alliances - and that means finding common cause between liberals and democrats, socialists and radicals, that can hash out what it means to be progressive in opposition to conservatism.

Back in July, Guy Verhofstadt used a visit by Prime Minister of Greece Alexis Tsipras to the European Parliament to challenge the Syriza leader on the need for political reform in Greece (ALDE Group, 2015) - a confrontation that was at least softened with support for finding a solution to the government of Greece's need for serious debt relief.

In his speech, Verhofstadt laid out a series of reforms Tsipras would be required to take if Greece was going to get the support it needs. Condensed into four steps, they were:

• Bring an end to clientelism & establishment privileges,
• Downsize the public sector,
• Privatise public banks, and
• Open up employment to give young people access.

If these four steps can be taken to represent a condensed version of the reforming aims of modern liberalism, how do they match up with the aims of other progressives?

In Greece, Tsipras and the Radical Left Syriza party have been struggling under stringent fiscal and economic conditions to press on with reforms (Hope, 2015). Tsipras choice to accept Eurozone terms for a further 'memorandum' bailout, to get access to the funds to continue reforms, even caused a split in his party that saw first Yanis Varoufakis and then later the Left faction of his party leave (Farrer, Rankin & Traynor, 2015; Henley & Traynor, 2015).

In his efforts to find a solution to the recurring crises, Alexis Tsipras' pragmatic radicalism has seen the Prime Minister of Greece drifting into the same political territory as that occupied by Prime Minister of Italy, and Partito Democratico leader, Matteo Renzi.

In Italy, Renzi has faced many of the same problems as Tsipras: unemployment, particularly amongst young people; clientelism and corruption; and a public and private sector heavily intertwined (Kramer, 2015). His approach has been to try to work within neoliberal models and play by its rules - a big centrist democrat legacy of Tony Blair (Day, 2014). That has required the pursuit of "competitiveness", including making labour more "flexible" - meaning making the cost of business cheaper, by making the cost and permanency of labour cheaper and weaker (EurActiv, 2014).

In the run-up to the UK general election in May, BBC Economics Editor Robert Peston described Ed Miliband as in the mould of Margaret Thatcher in his attempt to react to the times, and the debts held by the state, to tried to find solutions that did not involve the state being in control or ownership (Peston, 2015). In seeking decentralised solutions, Miliband was crossing into traditional liberal territory, but he struggled to sell them or inspire support with them

With Jeremy Corbyn taking over the helm of the Labour Party there have been fears of a sharp shift towards state ownership. Yet the ideas of the his economic advisory council are fundamentally mainstream and his 'renationalisation' plans have been more about co-operative public ownership than state control (Cortes, 2015).

In Greece, Italy and the UK, economic conditions are forcing parties of the Left to look for solutions that would certainly fall within two of Verhofstadt's recommendations: to downsize the public sector and privatise public banks. The question then becomes whether progressive parties can find an economic approach broadly acceptable to all sides.

As for political reforms, the situation looks trickier. In the UK, support for electoral reform towards something more proportional and bringing an end to an unelected Lords is growing, but is far from certain. In Italy, proposed political and constitutional reforms remain controversial in their attempts to strengthen the executive over the legislative (Politi, 2015), while Italy, and Greece, remain in an ongoing struggle to tackle corruption.

With regards to youth unemployment, in both Italy and Greece, tackling that specific problem seems a long way away as both countries grapple with the broader crisis (Totaro & Vasarri, 2015; Howden & Baboulias, 2015). In the UK, the Conservative government is pursuing apprenticeships as its go to measure, a pledge matched by the Labour Party during the election campaign (Wintour, 2015).

The need to find broad agreement across the Centre and Left is hastened by the dangerous rise of populism in the hands of deeply sectarian factions and moved along by popular nationalism and popular traditionalism (Roubini, 2015). Critics of conservative populism call for a Keynesian response that boosts aggregate demand with job creation and economic growth, that reduces income inequality and increases opportunities for the young.

To achieve these goals, a way has to be found to overcome the problem of social democratic/liberal positions having become toxic and to embrace the fact that people want something more. There is a general progressive hope, expressed through protests and activism, for a grander vision that focusses less on ambition and wealth, and more on cooperation and on what kind of life, and what kind of opportunities, there can be.

Elements of Guy Verhofstadt's proposed reforms being found in the work of other government's of the Left across Europe, even under huge fiscal burdens, certainly shows that some sort of bridge can be built between the positions of moderate and radical progressives, whether democrats or liberals, to offer a positive progressive alternative to conservatism, nationalism and populism.

But these are only the broad strokes and far more progressive things can be achieved. The next step has to be to embrace movements like Yanis Varoufakis' "very simple, but radical, idea" to build a cross-party EU democracy movement (Varoufakis & Sakalis, 2015). In such movements there is a chance to find common ground in pursuit of reform for the common good.

Tsipras' repeat use of popular votes raises questions about radical democracy and his approach of 'pragmatic radicalism'

Alexis Tsipras' radical united social front faces a challenge as breakaways found Popular Unity party ahead of September election. Photograph: Ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ-ΕΚΜ για την παραγωγική ανασυγκρότηση της Θράκης by Joanna (License) (Cropped)

Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece, has resigned. Having succeeded in steering a new bailout agreement through the Eurozone and then through the Greek Parliament, Tsipras has taken the decision to resign and submit his work to the electorate for their judgement (Henley, 2015).

The decision has been seen as either a canny political gamble (Smith, 2015), albeit one with good odds of paying off, or as the latest in a line of dangerous political games that exploit the system (Patrikarakos, 2015). There is, however, an alternative explanation.

From very early on, Alexis Tsipras has been clear as to what he thought was meant by being 'radical' (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."

By that barometer, what Tsipras has done is entirely consistent. His radical democratic vision is a difference of method. Compete at elections and win power, of course. But to then reform and change that power, or through the party give access to that power, to the wider public - rather than allowing them to be alienated from it by their own representatives (Gourgouris, 2013).

Radical democracy of this kind requires action. It requires a radical to engage with political games and try to win. To that end, Tsipras and Syriza did something quite remarkable: they brought together in a single party - at first a coalition, an electoral alliance - for however short a time, a broad progressive group that included communists, socialists, radicals, social democrats and even centrists.

While for many, radicalism has been epitomised best by Yanis Varoufakis' symbolic opposition to austerity and the European austerian establishment order, Tsipras' radicalism is not about the particular policies that come out of the process. The Syriza leader's version is a radicalism of methods not necessarily of ends - an assessment that has led to the unsurprising detachment of Syriza's Left-wing in advance of the autumn elections (Henley et al, 2015).

This has been particularly obvious in how Tsipras and Syriza has often had to be pragmatic about the kind of changes they can actually make (White, 2015) and begrudging, even defiant, in their compliance when forced to accept the implementation of policies with which they do not agree (Gourgouris, 2015).

The idea of radical leaders who take moderate positions and try to reform from within the system, accepting to an extent its challenges and constraints, is not a unique situation (Frankel, 2015) - Lula in Brazil, Mitterand in France, and others, have all made such attempts. But Tsipras' version brings the people along as an active participant.

In that light, Tsipras' surprise use of a referendum during bailout negotiations (Traynor, 2015), maybe should not have been so surprising. Its seemingly confusing message might then be seen as asking the people for a judgement on him and for their endorsement of his approach: a show of dissent in the act of compliance. With this coming election, Tsipras again turns to the people according to his method of keeping them engaged with the business of government.

Tsipras' version of radical democracy could in fact be called 'pragmatic radicalism'. It aims to end the alienation of the people from the business of government, not just to achieve this or that policy. Doing so requires pragmatic leaders, willing to wade into public affairs on behalf of the people, who can be realistic and accept the practical limitations of what can be achieved in that sphere - relying instead on what might be achieved in the future by having the people as an active and vigilant partner.

This alternative viewpoint comes, however, with a few words of caution.

A leader falling prey to their own popularity, or of seeing the opportunity to exploit it, is always a risk. Yanis Varoufakis, Tsipras' former right-hand, has already suggested that Tsipras is turning into a figure like France's former President Mitterand (Anthony, 2015), who led Parti Socialiste to power on a Left-wing Keynesian platform, only to, ultimately, conform to the pressures of the European economic order (Birch, 2015). There is also a fine line in democratic politics between involving the people in the form of popular rule, and in using their support, ostensibly for a personality, to strong arm the political system.

Understanding the difference will have become a crucial issue by the time Yanis Varoufakis and Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos, meet for a conversation hosted by The Guardian in October. By then, Tsipras will have presumably won a resounding endorsement for Syriza from the people of Greece, Jeremy Corbyn will have been elected to the Labour party leadership, and Iglesias will be on the verge of leading Podemos into December's Spanish general election.

A new Left-wing politics will be taking its first steps into the sun. When it does, it needs to be in possession of positive lessons derived from serious critique of popular radical democracy. That means understanding what keeps people engaged with the decision making that affects their lives, and, how radical parties can reform the system to empower these people in their day to day lives. But it also means being aware of the danger of potentially falling into simplistic, even personal, popularity contests.

Greece's creditors are playing with fire - Grexit would be bad for Greece, but could ultimately be worse for the Eurozone

With their creditors circling and the IMF in particular apparently tired of negotiating (Inman et al, 2015), it does appear as if Greece is being bullied towards a Eurozone exit due to its unwillingness to sacrifice the country's dignity by slashing pensions (BBC, 2015).

Yet as bad as fears are that a 'Grexit' would be bad for Greece, and so might act as an incentive for it to agree to the terms of conservative austerity laid out by its creditors, their exit could be a lot worse for the Eurozone and those with a vested interest in its success (Garton Ash, 2015).

With debts due, and passed due, Greece has been scrambling to scrape together the funds needed to make repayments (Kirby, 2015). Without the repayments, Greece will not qualify for the bailout funds it needs to afford continued debt payments and to run the country.

Alexis Tsipras, the Prime Minister of Greece from the Radical Left Syriza party, has remained determined to resist the pressure from creditors for conservative economic reforms in exchange for the bailout (BBC, 2015). Tsipras has been attempting to negotiate the terms of the bailouts and the repayments, in opposition to the deep public sector cuts expected by creditors. Europe's rivals are already circling. China has a major interest in Greece, via its stake in the port at Piraeus (Smith, 2015), and, in what has been seen as a negotiation tactic, Greece has even held talks with the Russian government (Christides, 2015).

But on top of the demands of creditors, there have been warnings to Greece of the dangers and consequences of defaulting on its debt and leaving the Eurozone (Khan 2015). There are fears that a newly introduced currency would plummet in value quickly against the value of the Euro, and that this could result an effective pay cut for ordinary citizens of as much as 50% (The Hamilton Spectator, 2012).

Between being bludgeoned with creditor demands and being warned of the danger of default and withdrawal from the Eurozone, the present situation has the feeling of a deliberate strategy designed to diminish the negotiating power of Greece, and back the country into a corner. By bullying Greece into a corner, it would certainly be a lot easier to force the country to reform in a particular way - notably conservative and austerian (Jones, 2015).

That situation is being compounded by the pressure that Alexis Tsipras faces from his own supporters at home over electoral promises to reinstate the public sector's role and to protect pensions (Morris, 2015).

However, the determination to force Greece into playing by the conservative rules or face a damaging exit looks like a dangerous game for those with an interest in the Eurozone to be playing. It has been noted that, rather than talk of solidarity with the Greek people in their time of need, the attitude of negotiators has been of cold "matter-of-fact talks that take place when a big indebted business gets into trouble" (Peston, 2015).

If that attitude were allowed to force Greece out, then something very stark will have been stated about the Eurozone: that it is only for the 'economic convenience' of certain members, and that it is not necessarily for everyone - something that would surely undermine the future of the Euro.

With the Euro's future undermined, the Eurozone project itself could be undermined (Garton Ash, 2015). If one debt ridden nation might default and withdraw to pay off its debts with a new devalued currency, are creditors to other economically weak European countries with substantial debts going to refrain from increasing their demands - thus increasing pressures across Europe.

For what its worth, the attitude of Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister of Greece, has been that Greece should not leave, instead seeking to reform the old system (J. Luis Martin, 2015). Varoufakis has talked at length about the need to work within the old system to arrest the dangerous social impact of the conservative austerity agenda and the crises that result, from which progressives do not benefit (Varoufakis, 2015). That means supporting a 'modest agenda for stabilising a system that I criticise', in order to 'minimise the unnecessary human toll from this crisis'.

Though Tsipras and Varoufakis have been unwilling to give ground on issues like pensions, tied to the welfare of a currently struggling people and key party election promises, they have shown a willingness to negotiate. Considering that while leaving the Eurozone is clearly not ideal for Greece, and reforms to the system would be preferable, an exit would at least mean more freedom over its own economic affairs - though it would purchase that freedom at a very high cost for to its citizens - their unwillingness to leave, has at least been a show of a constructive attitude.

For the Eurozone, however, there would be less of a sunny side. A Greek exit would undermine the Eurozone itself, severely weakening what has become one of the most recognisable cornerstones of European project by cast doubts upon other debt-beleaguered Eurozone nations. For now, the conservative austerians remain in charge and it is they who will continue to dictate the narrative of negotiations in Greece according to their own ideological terms.

Yet saving the Eurozone will need Greece's creditors to show some reciprocal goodwill. Through cooperation and reciprocity, there remains an alternative and progressive way out of the present crisis, where the common good can be placed at the heart of economic action.

Election 2015: Economics - Austerity, Austerity Lite or an Alternative

The big question facing voters on 7th May is how should the UK's fiscal policy and public debt be managed over the next five years. That is to say: how much tax should be raised, and from who? And, how much of the deficit and debt should be paid off, and when?

As of April, the deficit - the amount of government spending in excess of revenue from taxation - was at around £90bn. Over the last five years the deficit has been reduced from £154bn. However, because there is still a deficit, the overall debt has continued to climb - from around £1 trillion up to around £1.5 trillion (Ashworth-Hayes, 2015).

Those are, admittedly, pretty scary numbers. But what is the reality behind them?

What are the parties offering?

There are two main groups of parties taking opposing positions: the Conservatives and UKIP on one side (BBC, 2015), Labour and the SNP on the other (Phelps, 2015). While the Conservative side is focussing heavily on bringing down the deficit and the debt substantially through further cuts to public spending, the Labour side has focussed instead on much shallower cuts, ostensibly to protect the economy from the shock of further public sector cuts (Peston, 2015).

In order to achieve their deficit reduction, the Conservatives will have to make massive cuts to public services (Robinson, 2015). They will need to cut as much as a third from the budget of each of the unprotected areas of public spending, plus £12bn from non-pensions welfare spending - of which jobseekers allowance only makes up £3bn of £74bn, with housing benefit taking up £18bn (Elliott & Wintour, 2015).

All of these Conservative efforts are aimed squarely at tackling, and eliminating, sovereign debt. By contrast, Labour believe that the way to cut the deficit is to improve the economy - encouraging growth and so increasing government revenues (Robinson, 2015).

With two potentially viable means to achieve the same end, the judgement as to who is right would seem to depend on outside factors (Peston, 2015{2}).

"...your judgement about who is right depends on your assessment of how big you want the public sector to be, and how likely you think it is that there is another economic crisis around the corner - because the more imminent such a shock may be, the more haste is appropriate for debt reduction."

That brings us to the question: how much of a risk is sovereign debt?

Keynes and cyclically balanced budgets

To answer that question it is worth revisiting the work of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was an Eton and Cambridge educated economist and member of the old Liberal Party. He had worked for the treasury, but his experiences during negotiations over German reparations at the end of the First World War led to his resignation.

He then wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which roundly criticised, on economic grounds, the process by which the German people were being punished with reparations for the actions of the German State and warned of the dangers inherent to that course. The work established his credentials as an economist.

In later works - such as the The Means to Prosperity and The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - Keynes' ideas went on to focus on the important economic role played by demand. Economics, of all stripes, is centred on the relationship between supply and demand. In a change from classical economic attitudes, Keynes saw demand as the one that drives the other - and so saw it as necessary for something to be done about making up for the slump in demand that occurred during contraction periods in the economic cycle.

The means to achieving that would be government debt and deficit spending. By borrowing and sending more on public services and public works, the government could keep people employed, thus keeping money in their pockets and so keep demand at a level that can support supply until the economy recovers. In a failure to do this, Keynes saw potentially catastrophic problems caused by the collapse of demand, as unemployment led to recession which led to more unemployment (The Independent Report, 2012).

However, the role that sovereign debt and deficit spending played was only intended by Keynes to be part of a more comprehensive fiscal strategy of cyclically balanced budgets - with surpluses created during the good times to allow for the deficit spending needed during the slumps.

Yet public debts have, over the past seven years, gone a long way beyond that. Sovereign debt has piled up thanks to governments taking private capitalist debts into their own hands to save the private business, and particularly banks, from catastrophe (Filger, 2010) - although the IMF estimates that only 40% of the total debt is the result of stimulus efforts and bail-outs, with 60% coming simply from lower tax revenues due to higher unemployment and lower profits (The Economist, 2013).

Further, the IMF has suggested that while public debt isn't helpful - compounding problems by questioning solvency, so driving up interest rates which makes borrowing and repayments more expensive, and undermining the freedom for governments to spend to stimulate the economy - austerity cuts aimed at tackling the debt have actually hindered growth (The Economist, 2013).

What may seem a fairly cavalier attitude towards public debt seem to be justified by analysis. Historically, it appears, sovereign default - where a country is unable to meet its debts and so is forced to restructure repayments - does not come with the risks generally associated with it. The effects on economic growth of default are a drop of around 2.5% in the short term, but are quickly overcome and recovering is relatively fast (Panizza & Borensztein, 2010).

The real dangers appear to be the political effects.

Back during Great War reparations negotiations, Keynes had argued that there was a limit to the capacity of a state to manage its debts. To pressure a state into pursuing repayments it could not afford could have dangerous ramifications (Miller & Skidelsky, 2012). Policies by creditor countries regarding debts would have to be handled in a way sensitive to both economic and political outcomes. The failure to do so would be expressed in the rise of extremism - as people turn to simplistic and drastic solutions in the face of the powerlessness of the centre.

So how does all of this answer our key questions: how much tax should be raised and from who? How much of the deficit and debt should be paid off, and when? How much of a risk is sovereign debt?

Conclusions with reservations

For Keynes, the moment for austerity cuts was during the good times, not during the bad. If debts became unmanageable, then it would eventually be better simply to cancel those debts and have everyone benefit from the renewed growth. However, debts and deficit spendings should be purposeful, with deliberate productive outcomes that will ultimately help balance out spending when the economy returns to expansion.

Taking all of these things into account, it should not be a huge surprise that Keynes would be unlikely to agree outright with either the Labour or Conservative side of the argument, but rather with the Liberal Democrats - the heirs of the old Liberal Party of which he was a member.

Of the mainstream parties, the Lib Dems are the most openly committed to what they call a middle course - to cyclically balanced budgets, tax rises rather than increasingly deep cuts to tackle the deficit more immediately than Labour and then keeping spending increases in line with revenue increases to spend more than the Conservatives (Crawford et al, 2014).

However, all of this analysis presumes the continued validity of the mainstream economic system - something about which questions have been raised in the last five years. Therein lies deeper questions of values that are much harder to answer: does the mainstream system still reflect what we expect from our lives? And, is anyone actually offering a real alternative system?

Anti-austerity parties, from the more mainstream Greens to more fringe groups like Socialist Labour, offer alternatives consisting of higher taxes and more public spending. But they not do not offer a comprehensively different system (Whale, 2015; BBC, 2015{2}).

There is the choice. Do we look now to the alternatives, that may not be ready or fully realised, or do we try to make the best of the present system, with as much fairness as possible, according to our best understanding of how it functions?

Yanis Varoufakis, Greek radical left economist and Finance Minister under the Syriza government, addressed that choice by stressing the need for progressives to be pragmatic during these times of crisis (Varoufakis, 2015). From his perspective the Revolutionary Marxists were wrong - crisis would not benefit the Left, but rather the Right. For Varoufakis, the priority is a 'modest agenda for stabilising a system that I criticise', in order to 'minimise the unnecessary human toll from this crisis'.

The rising cost of servicing debt, along with austerity applied during tough times, can damage the general wellbeing and lead to rising extremism. Progressives need to decide on which course they believe to be best able to protect the common good in the present, and will set us up for moving towards greater prosperity in the future.