Glasman: Catholics should trust Labour

In an interview with the Catholic Hearld, Labour peer Maurice Glasman has argued that Catholics should put their trust in the Labour Party.

Known for making controversial comments, Glasman begin by recognising the ways in which he feels Labour have potentially alienated Catholic voters and “all faithful people” – by failing to appreciate the family. He says that this is because “Labour has been captured by a kind of aggressive public sector morality which is concerned with the individual and the collective but doesn’t understand relationships.”  

While offering up this criticism of Labour, he goes on to defend the progress that the party has made:

“All I would say is that we’ve come quite far, quite fast.  It’s a very complex internal battle. I’m very conscious I haven’t done everything right and I don’t want to demonise the other side. But these are huge forces in Western society – the market on one side, with the maximisation of profit, and the state on the other side, with collectivisation and bureaucracy. These are the dominant forces. And what’s astonishing in a way is that Catholic Social Teaching is the basis of the new politics, of the new consensus.”

He goes on to lay out the positive aspects of Labour’s current policy framework, which he thinks should engage voters at the polls:

“It’s pro-business, pro-worker. With equal weight.  It’s about workers on boards. Being very serious about decentralisation – to city governments – because place really matters. It’s about access to capital, and we’ve made a very strong case for regional banks, because there’s a lack of enterprise and vitality in the regions. And it’s about tackling what I call ‘mentalism’” [addressing the overemphasis on academic learning].”