Rainbow celebration needs to fuel fresh momentum in the long struggle to create societies that take consent seriously

Photograph: Rainbow American via photopin (license) (cropped)

In two terms, mired in partisan politics bitterly divided between Liberals and Conservatives, US President Barack Obama has struggled to give his administration a definitive identity. A pair of Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rulings from the past week have certainly helped make that task a little easier.

The first Supreme Court ruling ensured the continued existence of Obama's flagship healthcare reforms, for the near future at least (Roberts & Jacobs, 2015). The ruling decided that the Federal government could deliver its affordable health insurance plan in all fifty states.

The second ruling confirmed equal marriage as a constitutional right (Roberts & Siddiqui, 2015). That means that in all fifty states same-sex couples will have the right to marry, and that marriages from other states have to be recognised.

These rulings, lauded as successes by Obama (Jacobs, 2015), have been heralded as a triumph for liberalism and individual freedoms, over the conservatism of the established social order. Along with having earlier overseen the end of the ban on openly gay military service (McVeigh & Harris, 2011), these rulings have made civic equality into a major theme of the Obama administration.

Although there clearly is still resistance, some of which has been aggressively intolerant (Butterworth, 2015), people will adapt. But that doesn't mean that the work is over. Combined, these steps have established a new social plateau, which represents a renewed acknowledgement of the rights of consenting adults to live on equal terms with their peers. Yet, those who have won equal marriage will still face discrimination and legal hurdles (Roberts and Siddiqui, 2015; Buncombe, 2015).

Though by themselves these rulings are huge victories for human rights, civil rights and individual liberty, they also represent smaller parts of a broader human struggle, towards the attainment of respect for consent as a central human value.

The ideal of a representative democracy is based around consent. Government by the consent of the governed, laws created with the consent of those who have to abide by them, economics with the consent of the community, and social interactions with the consent of the participants.

Without the removal of coercion and fear, whether from economic conditions in which you cannot afford to get ill or from social conditions where you cannot openly define your own identity due to discrimination, there can be no civic participation on the basis of consent. Without liberty from coercion and fear, there can be no free choices.

To get there, the Supreme Court rulings need now to be the inspiration for the next step (Thrasher, 2015). They are breakthroughs in their own right and just cause for celebration, but that energy and solidarity needs to be poured into renewed motivation to keep moving forward.

For Cameron and the Conservatives, austerity is the long term economic plan

Anti-austerity protesters out in large number on Saturday 20th June. Photograph: #EndAusterityNow March in London via photopin (license) (cropped).

If it wasn't already clear, David Cameron made sure of it at Prime Minister's Questions today: the Conservatives have no intention of austerity being just a corrective interim measure (Eaton, 2015).

Last week Cameron laid out that his intention to turn the UK from a "low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society" (Mason, 2015). For those who feel this deviates from the Conservative message of prioritising debt and deficit reduction as the purpose of austerity, they're missing the bigger picture.

Tackling debt and deficits was only ever the first phase. For the Conservatives, austerity is the long term economic plan. As Cameron stressed at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in 2013:

"We are sticking to the task. But that doesn't just mean making difficult decisions on public spending. It also means something more profound. It means building a leaner, more efficient state. We need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently."

This reaffirmation of the Conservative agenda comes in advance of the announcement of, what will likely be, enormous cuts to public sector spending by the Chancellor in July. If the Conservatives are likely to get anywhere near their stated 'spending reduction' targets, there are going to be some very painful budget cuts.

While Cameron was being challenged at the dispatch box during PMQs by Harriet Harman, Acting Labour leader, over the impact of cuts to tax credits on the poor, Parliament was invaded by protesters who were campaigning to protect welfare spending on disability allowances (BBC, 2015) - both likely Conservative targets.

Along with the anti-austerity protests of last weekend, these outbursts seem more in tune with what the data tells us. Even as of last year, the UK public stated their willingness to pay higher taxes if that was what it took to have fully funded public services (Campbell, 2015).

So why is the talk of high wages with lower taxes and little welfare, when it could be of high wages with higher taxes to fund better welfare? The answer is that the Conservatives are pursuing a long term, ideologically driven plan, to redraw the UK according to the austerian agenda.

The disparity between the Conservative majority government and the rest of the UK over austerity, with the governments mandate coming from less than a quarter of the UK, presents an opportunity - but only if Progressives can come up with a compelling alternative. At the 2015 UK general election the Liberal Democrats and the Greens both offered Tax rises, while Labour and the SNP both offered to slow cuts to allow economic growth to lessen the burden over time. They now have to find a way to bring their themes - of liberty, sustainability, justice and local self-determination - together into a coherent opposition narrative.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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