Fly those flags proudly – reflections on Blue Labour

By Matthew Zarb-Cousin / @mattzarb

At last. A political theory that isn’t just obsessed with where you’re going, but is also concerned with where you’re from. Rootedness and culture were, after all, the building blocks of the opposition to the commodification of labour. An acknowledgement that some people just want to stay where they are, live in the neighbourhood they’ve grown up in, and be where they feel secure in an increasingly hostile and unpredictable world, is long overdue.

This does not mean that we have to ditch liberalism. It’s more concerned with the approach. You can’t cure homophobia and racism with equality legislation, it takes time, and perhaps the mistake was insisting that legislation was the first step, when it should have been the final hurdle. Perhaps it was counter-productive, and caused resentment towards the people we were trying to empower. Liberal dictats from on high aren’t going to change people’s minds, even if we all know their content is sensible.

So the solution that Blue Labourites would purport surely entails engaging with culture, rather than dismissing it as something that isn’t relevant. By letting people be English – fly their flags proudly – and accepting that nationalism is a natural response to the insecurities of globalisation, we might adopt a Fabian gradualist approach to achieving liberal ends.

The Labour Party knows the importance of winning back the south. It’s an area I know very well having lived in Southend in Essex my entire life. Blue Labour would appeal to a lot of people here. People who see Southend as home, who don’t want to feel as though they ought to leave. In the South East, most towns are in commutable distance of London, and so there is usually no need to relocate for career purposes, let alone leave the country. The potential to build communities is there for all to see, especially amongst young people. In the age of social media, everyone knows everyone in Southend.

But here’s the Catch-22. Speaking from my experience as a 21 year old, most young people aren’t just liberal, they’re social libertarians. For example, there’s an ingrained drinking culture, homophobia is non-existent amongst my peers and no one is anti-immigration. Revoking something like the 24-hour drinking license and shutting nightclubs at 2am would not go down particularly well. Social conservatism just doesn’t resonate with my generation. So if Ed Miliband wants to appeal to both young and old in the south, then he’s got some reconciling to do. Young people will begin to listen to the Labour Party, but there is a risk of alienating them with conservative rhetoric.

I’m looking forward to reading the Purple Book. If it draws from Blue and New Labour then that should produce a winning formula, which I’d hope would entail keeping the rootedness part, embracing a degree of nationalism, but ditching the moralising.