This idea that it's the "working class" is utter nonsense. It's also insulting to the working class, in terms of their educational level. Isn't this just what Neil Kinnoch would have called "toy-town communism"?
It’s absolutely bonkers. Seems scientifically designed to piss off anyone who might vote Labour.
It’s perfectly possible to triangulate ‘not hating Britain’ and ‘tackling illegal immigration’ with being a globally-connected free-trade, stand-up-to-Putin modern global superpower.
‘The restoration of vocation’ means absolutely nothing. That’s gone.
The job of the left is to fight to protect the rights of workers in the new reality. And win the argument about the benefits of free trade. And stand up the actual fascists.
There is a touch of Mosleyite hankering after a patriarchal society in which hierarchies are rigidly enforced and everyone is supposedly happy to be in his or her "rightful" place.
A view of an ideal social order as daydreamed about on a 1970s Cambridge college quad
'The renewal of the Commonwealth' - okay, so Jamaica wants us to pay reparations, Canada doesn't think the end of globalisation is a good thing, Togo want an alternative way to exercise power co-operatively that doesn't run through France. What do you *mean*, Maurice?
Why is the 'collapse of globalisation' good for the people who make British cars, four of five of which are sold overseas? Should they retrain as an issuer of meaningless word salad in Westminster or something?
The 'actually the collapse of globalisation will allow us to reconnect with Our Base' is, ironically, Blue Labour connecting with Labour's roots. It's 'we think you shouldn't have ITV, how dare you buy your council flat' roots but it has convinced itself it has tapped into something worthwhile.
Also, I know this isn’t a new point but I really resent being lectured as a member of “the progressive ruling class” by a member of the House of Lords.
19th century Noble Savage fantasy nonsense on the left is observed the further you go up the social scale, I find, until you get to the top like Maurice has, when you can finally stop dealing with inconveniences like ‘reality’ entirely
That quote reads like a boomer trying to cope with the reality of their mortality by trying to change the country to be just like how they remembered it when they felt most comfortable. Understandable but flawed and unachievable.
The ITV thing is sooo key to understanding Labour and its decade out of power and I think it’s avoided being mentioned because everyone is so embarrassed it was ever a policy.
Alcohol, meat, English language television & laughing are bad, Christianity, celibacy, subtitled documentaries & vegetarianism are good.
You’re allowed 3 pairs of shoes: a pair of exercise shoes, a pair of smart shoes for canvassing & church & a pair of day to day shoes made from dessicated turnips
Even this is perilously close to implying a policy.
Blue Labour appear to have identical views to Corbynites on the decline of unionsation (in the economy and the party) - but unlike Corbynites they don't appear to want to do anything about it.
Blue Labour feels like what happens if you extract all the most objectionable parts of a policy wonk - the bit where they wang on about their feelings and who they are - without any of the juicy policy it's wrapped around.
I'm just impressed at the quality of mind that thinks you can have the "collapse of globalisation" at the same time as you have "the space of Brexit" and "the renewal of the Commonwealth." It's really difficult to get brains that smooth, you have to sand them quite hard.
I think what’s pretty clear is that he thinks it’s going to be bad for some people he doesn’t like and he doesn’t care if it’s also bad for everyone else
It's really not that much more deep than that - a number of African countries without a British empire link have joined the Commonwealth in order to exercise soft power and diplomacy through it, I just picked Togo as an example to indicate the breadth of what 'the Commonwealth' involves.
This reads like that ridiculous Ian Duncan Smith line about "To be out there buccaneering, trading, dominating the world again" but translated into Labour acceptable terminology
Surely one of the few things brexit has genuinely achieved us renewing of Commonwealth links, and isn't that one of the things Blue Labour keeps bitching and moaning about!?!
Blue Labour want us to have migration from the "White Commonwealth" exclusively and just trade with the rest of the Commonwealth from afar, because there's something about them they don't like.
Even a priest gets paid, but his primary motivation is not money.
I think he means the collapse of globalisation means people can connect with their British values, in a simpler way. A doctor is no longer a for-sale commodity.
(I'm not defending this, just trying to get at the meaning)
Fair. That explanation would fit with the 'electorally repellent, out of touch with what people in an industry think, straight out of Labour in the 1950s' vibe.
It can't be about non-financial motivation if it's also specifically about "the working class". They key aspect surely of the lives of the working class Labour appealed to in the past (more modern "hard-working families" I suppose) is that they need to work for a living. It has to be about money.
As long as this is remembered, okay. Good if we can have a sense of vocation, and pride in our work. But it is about money. "You're not in this for the money" is a phrase I've only ever heard (in the civil service in my case) as part of managerial justifications for my low pay rise.
Yes: my brother is a gas engineer, recently re-specialising in heat pump and refrigerant technology. Again, the kind of person Glasman claims to speak for. You will be shocked, shocked to learn the supply chains for that industry are not predominantly domestic.
It does I think prove one of the ways Glasman is right, which is that if Westminster had more diversity of background more people would go 'how is this actually relevant to the people you are speaking for?'
I know it is boringly Basic of me and I cannot aspire to the lofty heights of Glasman Thought, but I do struggle to take seriously anyone who can pen 70 words on ‘how Labour sees off Reform in 2029’, if they can’t make two of those words ‘public services’.
So, I will actually defend the Commonwealth here, in that Togo and Gabon aren't joining it for nothing, it's just not obvious what it is that means for Glasmanism.
The one valid point Glasman comes vaguely close to here is that Labour's values and policies do clash with its self-conception as a working class movement.
That conception is an anachronism - what does a 'working class movement' even *mean* in the 2020s? - but Labour does need to have the debate.
A trope which runs through a lot of online discourse. I have a theory that The Guardian exists to make its wholly middle-class readership feel guilt for lack of authenticity.
It's not just phenomenally defeatist of Glasman to say that the only response to Reform attacking Labour's principles and values is to agree, but also a complete betrayal of those same ideas.
Not to mention that it takes those Labour voters who do like what they stand for very much for granted.
Labour *have* moved into the space vacated by the Tories already. And occupying that space, in that way, destroyed them... beginning to think he hasn't though this through and is actually following the Trumpy vibe of some issue he has the existing world order?
Such a weaselly word, too: vocation means your pay can be rubbish; you are expected to put up with working poor conditions. And of course, vocation is for other people and their children, so class boundaries and privileges can be policed.
There's always been a strong element of the Labour party which seems to be about maintaining class divides and simply playing their role in the capitalist system. The rose tinted view of an "honest day's work", getting paid fuck all and dying at 45 from a work related illness.
leading Labour figures pivoting to talking coarsely as standard in comms (regularly boldly using expressions that either sound like slurs or feel like they're dancing as close to being slurs as possible); preferably several figures who are publicly proud alcoholics/smokers/domestic abusers
we all know it has absolutely fuck all to do with policy and is just a grasping after a vibe where it feels like manual/skilled workers have had some economic barriers erected to their protection, and where Alf Garnett culture can live proudly and unashamedly again
I can tell you Stephen, Maurice Glasman is considered a joke by most in the party. Frankly he should sod off and join Fuherage. It really annoys me he's Baron of Stokey.
I question any Labour party member whose position is "the Tory party is dead, we must move into the space they vacated". If they're dead then there's a reason why - and its probably to do with the space in the political landscape that they occupied.
I think, genuinely, what he means is that the government should be performatively destructive in a manner akin to Trump, which would be popular… somehow
If Labour is going to embrace Brexit then, and I say this a member who has campaigned in the last local, mayoral and general elections for Labour, they can fuck right off.
Blue Labour is, by this admission, a militant movement aiming to shift Labour into a centre right party just as much as Militant was trying to shift it to the far Left in the 80s.
I'm so confused as to why he wouldn't simply *be a conservative* instead of being Labour but wanting them to be conservatives. Like, what exactly is the motivation?
Emotional attachment to Labour combined with the arrogance that it should be *for* him (and things he likes) rather than an attempt to glue together the maximal amount of people to reach some shared goals?
It should never be forgotten that Marx regarded the working classes with absolute horror and loathing, much preferring to deal with them as an abstract than people. I see Maurice in this tradition
Once chatted to a former CPGB member, who said the tankies from '56 had essentially morphed into standard-issue right-wing old men, but remained Communists because they didn't know who they were without the party. I know he's been going on like this for a while, but I suspect similar here.
If you look at all his own narratives of the founding of Blue Labour it's all about how when his sick working class Labour voting mum was dying he got very angry about New Labour and was going to represent her values blah blah blah so I think this is basically the essence of his identity.
125 years ago the Labour party was founded for just this moment, to move into the political space vacated by the Conservative party. Yep I'm confused too.
Comments
It’s perfectly possible to triangulate ‘not hating Britain’ and ‘tackling illegal immigration’ with being a globally-connected free-trade, stand-up-to-Putin modern global superpower.
The job of the left is to fight to protect the rights of workers in the new reality. And win the argument about the benefits of free trade. And stand up the actual fascists.
A view of an ideal social order as daydreamed about on a 1970s Cambridge college quad
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bbM6B4qFz3Q
You’re allowed 3 pairs of shoes: a pair of exercise shoes, a pair of smart shoes for canvassing & church & a pair of day to day shoes made from dessicated turnips
Even this is perilously close to implying a policy.
Blue Labour appear to have identical views to Corbynites on the decline of unionsation (in the economy and the party) - but unlike Corbynites they don't appear to want to do anything about it.
Blue Labour killed Tasha Yar.
But it provocative
As in a doctor or teacher or nurse or carer or social worker etc.
I think he means the collapse of globalisation means people can connect with their British values, in a simpler way. A doctor is no longer a for-sale commodity.
(I'm not defending this, just trying to get at the meaning)
That conception is an anachronism - what does a 'working class movement' even *mean* in the 2020s? - but Labour does need to have the debate.
A trope which runs through a lot of online discourse. I have a theory that The Guardian exists to make its wholly middle-class readership feel guilt for lack of authenticity.
How exactly is a sitting government supposed to lead an insurrection? Against what? Itself?
Not to mention that it takes those Labour voters who do like what they stand for very much for granted.
(But somehow doesn’t apply to ‘CEO’s of multi-academy trusts or Vice-Chancellors of Universities. Or anyone in Finance, of course)
What this means in policy terms is an exodus of people who actually do stuff.
Are we *quite* sure the guy’s not being bankrolled by Tice?
Do that, and lose the many anti-Tory voters to Liberal Democrats and Greens.
Fucking weird that of all the dinosaurs of the Labour Party's wilderness years it's Glasman that gets reanimated from time to time.
It implies nationalisation, heavy industry, apprenticeships rather than college degrees, and nativism.
I think that's it, isn't it?
Lol lmao rofl