Blue Labour won the argument but it remains misunderstood!
Since its short-lived ascent to influence under Ed Miliband in 2011, Blue Labour has come under strong attacks from both the left and the right of the Labour Party, ranging from Diane Abbot to Peter Mandleson. Perhaps opposition to Blue Labour is the only thing Momentum and Progress supporters have in common. Yet much of their hostility is grounded on either sincere misunderstanding or cynical mischaracterisations. If you dare to express sympathy towards it, you’d either be called a Blairite or a Fascist.
Though as it happens, Blue Labour thinkers have shown themselves to have their finger on the pulse of public opinion and a good grasp of the big structural socio-economic shifts and ideas on how the left should respond to them. In fact, its co-founder, Maurice Glasman, who now sits in the House of Lords, predicted Labour’s 1930 style wipeout from as far back as 2016 almost word for word. So you’d think they’d be heard more by their own party instead of being so repeatedly silenced or smeared by their ‘own side’.
Abbot from early on dismissed Blue Labour’s ‘reverence for the past and tradition’ as a call for ‘social regression’. As though being sceptical about the consequences of ‘Double-Dose Liberalism’ i.e atomisation of society and a culture of private self-interest above commitment to the community and the common good, is equivalent to reversing the necessary social reforms of the 1960s. Or as if not being cheerleaders of globalisation and capital mobility somehow makes one an ‘Ethno-nationalist’.
Don’t we live in an upside-down world where the good things lost in the race towards modernisation (human bonds based on love rather than cold contractual relationships) are dismissed as ‘regressive’ and ‘old-fashioned’, whereas the cold, unsettled, hyper-individualised lives we now find ourselves leading are rationalised as ‘progress’? Yet that’s where the problem lies. The view that things can only get better. The Whiggish optimism that forward we must move. The false assumption often made by the ‘progressive left’ is that progress is cumulative and that it is always gained and never lost. Great things, habits, cultural practices, sense of solidarity and neighbourliness have been lost and must be recovered. Yet those of us lamenting their loss are condemned as ‘nostalgic reactionaries’ as the Guardian columnists have become the guardians of acceptability.
If you don’t know much about political theory or history in general, it would be incredibly easy to scream ‘Fascism’ and end the conversation. In the same way that the Labour Party is said to owe more to Methodism than Marxism, Blue Labour owes more to Catholic Social Teaching, Christian Democracy and Aristotle’s virtue ethics than to any other continental strand of thought. Blue Labour’s emphasis on the ‘politics of virtue’ is closer to Aristotle than to Nietzsche ( fascism’s favourite philosopher) who famously dismissed all ethical systems to be ‘a sham’ and argued that individuals must pursue their own self-interest. The Artistoltian pursuit of ‘the good life within a community’ couldn’t be more different from Nietzsche’s fetishisation of the individual ‘Übermensch’ and the pursuit of Common Good is by definition the opposite of narrow self-interest.
It is much easier to not engage in a grown-up conversation about why the Left in the post-industrial west has lost the affection of the occupational working classes. Whether the French Socialists, the Italian Democratic Party, the German SPD, the US Democrats or the British Labour Party, the signs are clear. We don’t win anymore like we used to do, to misquote that song by Charlie Puth. Maybe Working-class and low-income voters have ghosted us. If the relationship metaphor can be milked further.
Consequently, we’ve lost ground to Right-wing populism which speaks the language of ‘nation-state’ and ‘standing up for the little guy against the Davos Elite’ but when the push comes to shove, they deliver tax cuts for the millionaires and deregulation. The British manifestation of those global trends is yet to be seen. But if Boris Johnson’s February 3rd speech is anything to go by, the signs point towards a ‘defiant defence of free trade’ and the neoliberal international order. Johnson and Co may sound One Nation and interventionist as they have grasped what academics like Matthew Goodwin have been saying for ages. That leaning left on the economy and slightly right on culture is the winning formula. But when the push comes to shove, Johnson’s instincts are liberal. As it could be seen through his fatal reluctance to introduce the potentially life-saving lockdown measures in March. When it comes to tackling obesity, Johnson is more of an Asquithian Liberal encouraging or nudging people to make choices voluntarily than a luxury taxing Lloyd George Liberal.
By refusing to engage with the big questions, the Left has allowed the right to hijack the public dissatisfaction with globalisation and translate their anger from a milder and more regulatory internationalist form of neoliberalism to ‘Neoliberalism in One Country’ free from the piecemeal constraints of multilateral treaties, like the Paris Climate accord.
Yet (in our view) only the left with its heritage and history of struggle, with its tradition of radicalism, with its networks of common association (even as weakened as they are after Thatcherism) to resist the exploitative excesses of global capitalism, make a passionate defence of the community and the common good and try to repair the social fabric. But we can only do so if we read the writing on the wall rather than losing sleep over the unimpeded movement of capital and labour or Just-In-Time Delivery. We can only pick ourselves back up after our heavy defeat six months ago if we distinguish between being internationalists and being cheerleaders of globalisation. If we fail to make that important distinction, we’d do so at our own peril.
As Ed Miliband vaguely understood in 2011, Blue Labour recognises that British Socialism has more in common with One Nation Conservativism than it does with Utilitarian Liberals who seek to liberalise the economy and atomise our society. Blue Labour thinkers remind us that as we resist the neoliberal assault on our high streets, local hospital closures and reckless environmental damage by the corporations, we may be able to draw more inspiration, resonance and meaning from Edmund Burke and Disraeli than we can from Gladstone or Ayn Rand. What we often fail to appreciate is that in some aspects, the Left is more conservative than the Right. We sought to resist the threat of further Americanisation as we warned of a US trade deal at the last election.
We must also ensure that patriotism and a sense of interest in the past don’t remain the monopoly of the right. We mustn’t carry on confusing our internationalism and cross border solidarity with an unprincipled defence of globalisation and blindly defend the unimpeded movement of Capital and Labour. Neither should we confuse narrow nationalism with a quite passive and civic sense of attachment to place and community. Patriotism should never become the byword for bigotry or chauvinism. To unknowingly enter into a tacit coalition with Woke Capitalism, the left risks being damned to irrelevance and simply becoming shut out of the conversation.
