Conservative Queen's Speech offers some relief to Human Rights campaigners, but also holds new threats to civil liberties

The State Opening of Parliament took place in Westminster today, amongst all of the usual pomp and circumstance. At centre stage of the whole event was, as usual, the Queen's Speech - aka the Speech from the Throne. Accompanied by the government's full 103-page list of bills and notes - and through the traditional though slightly odd process of having a monarch read out the government's plans, largely in their words, like a celebrity giving an advertising endorsement - the Queen announced the Cameron ministry's 26 main legislative objectives for the coming Parliamentary session (Sparrow, 2015).

Alongside some of the expected promises, like an EU Referendum and a more conservative approach to addressing immigration and extremism - along with harsher rules for trade union strike action - there is also some fairly positive news and some news that is less so for those concerned about changes to the Human Rights Act, and to our civil rights and liberties (The Guardian, 2015).

The most notable absence from the speech was a firm commitment to scrapping the Human Rights Act (Wintour & Mason, 2015). In the speech, the commitment has been watered down to bringing forward proposals - meaning that there is likely to be, at the least, a consultation period lasting some years before any legislation is produced.

If so, that would mark a huge first success for the opposition to David Cameron's government. Campaigners for the Human Right Act have been very vocal from the day that Cameron took office and it looks like the message has gotten through.

However, human rights campaigners will have a new task on their hands with the return of the snooper's charter - long resisted by the rights and liberties protecting efforts of the Liberal Democrats (Wintour, 2015). Progressives will be hoping for an extension of the campaign to protect human rights to also cover civil liberties, as the proposed Investigatory powers bill - allow the tracking of communications data - returns to the table greatly expanded (Travis, 2015).

There is hope that progressives can succeed. The pressure they have brought to bear so far, in only a short time in opposition, may well have successfully delayed attempts to tamper with the Human Rights Act for years. Now that the campaign to protect our guaranteed rights has made a significant breakthrough, the next big effort will be to protect our civil liberties.

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

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

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

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

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

The Historic Centre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shifting Centre

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

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

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

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

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

A Decision to Make

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Building a new progressive opposition will require solidarity and activism, inside and outside of Parliament

The first ten days of David Cameron's new government look like a preview of what we can expect over the next five years. From the moment he resumed his premiership there have been protests against austerity and against his party. The protest group People's Assembly Against Austerity has already scheduled a major protest for June, expected to draw at least 50,000 people, in a show of popular opposition ahead of George Osborne's July budget (Elliott, 2015).

With both of the main, traditional, opposition parties partially incapacitated - through depletion and from finding themselves bereft of leadership - these protests can be seen as an acknowledgement that opposition to the policies of the Conservative's governing majority will have to come through new voices via new means. Even though the Conservative majority is only slim, Tory rebels are most numerous on Far Right issues - which is unhelpful to progressives. That means that the little fights are going to matter all the more (D'Arcy, 2015).

Protests will be one route to challenging the government, though some would disagree. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative MP for North East Somerset - and one man window to the Parliament of the Nineteenth Century - criticised marchers at a protest in Bristol as anti-democratic (Bristol Post, 2015).

"It's not a protest against government policy, its a protest against the election result, so it is tainted by a lack of acceptance of democracy. I think they may have missed the General Election that took place last week, where the country endorsed the Conservative manifesto. I am all in favour of people's right to protest, I think its a very important right, but people have just voted. A decision has been taken which supported continued austerity."

The trouble is, Rees-Mogg himself is missing an important point. The endorsement of the Conservative manifesto is based on only 37% of voters. 37% is itself a poor enough mandate for a majority, even if it wasn't achieved on a two-thirds turnout. That means less than a quarter of eligible voters chose to 'endorse' the Conservative manifesto.

With Parliamentary opposition weak, protesting the iniquities of the electoral system, and demanding that they be taken into account, is all the more important at this moment. So is trying to make other views heard, like those of the 75% who have been disregarded.

Even if the government mandate and majority had been strong, opposition still plays a tremendously important role in the majoritarian system, scrutinising the government and holding it to account. When majorities are this slim, it takes a lot of power away from central government and gives it to Parliament - which means more power to constituents through their MPs. In that case, protesting would still be a viable and useful means of applying pressure.

The pressure being applied by protesters on the street looks likely to be assisted by resistance to the Conservative cuts from within their own party. The Tory-led Local Government Association (LGA) has cross-party agreement against further cuts, warning of the devastating impact that more budget cuts for local government could have local services and communities (Helm, 2015).

Led by Cllr David Sparks, the LGA has claimed that local government has cutback as much as it can with the reduction in funding of 40% since 2010 (Sparks, 2015). Sparks, as Chair of the LGA which represents 375 councils in England and Wales, added to that warning with a call for more power to devolved away from Westminster.

Back at Westminster, the SNP are claiming that they will be the main opposition to Conservative government during the next parliament, on the basis that they offered something significantly different - unlike Labour (The Guardian; 2015). It is important, however, that they have at least noted opposition is something that they cannot do alone. Angus Robertson, leader of the SNP MPs at Westminster, mentions that they will be prepared to reach out across party lines.

While the Liberal Democrats have previously shown how small parties can lead a strong opposition - particularly under Charles Kennedy's leadership when they opposed entry into the Iraq War (BBC, 2004) - they could only bring principled resistance and offer backing to popular pressure. They could not stop or change government decisions alone.

Labour, traditionally the voice of the workers, and the Lib Dems, the traditional voice for civil liberties, are at this moment both weak and rudderless. The absence of a strong liberal voice in Parliament is already being missed by some (The Guardian; 2015{2}).

If they, the SNP and other Parliamentary progressives are going to maintain an effective opposition to the Conservative agenda, they will have to pull together. They will have to reach out, not just across party lines, but also to local government and to the public to build a strong and co-ordinated activism.

They will need to oppose the government with protest and public opinion, build strong arguments to tackle the methods and underlying reasoning of the Conservative policies, and construct a compelling alternative progressive narrative. Against a majority government, all of these elements will have to come together to put pressure on where it will be most effective. That cannot be achieved without solidarity between progressives.