What the internal response to Blue Labour can teach us as a party

By Matt Zarb-Cousin / @mattzarb

Colin Challen was the latest to jump on the “bash Blue Labour” bandwagon today, but like all critiques thus far it was ill-informed and lacked any articulation of an alternative, after the electorate’s monumental rejection of New Labour last May.

No, Blue Labour is not New Labour. It’s actually the opposite. If we imagine the two pillars of political theory are economic and social policy, whereas New Labour was economically right and socially left, Blue Labour is economically egalitarian and socially conservative. Glasman, the political theorist at the centre of Blue Labour, wants to see the party move away from putting all of our eggs in the social mobility basket and accept that we might not be able to overcome inequality of opportunity, and focus on wage inequality instead.

Tied in with this is the idea that mass immigration had two effects, both of which hit the lowest paid. Firstly, the self-employed often found that they were undercut by cheaper Eastern European labour, and secondly mass immigration increased the supply of labour, keeping demand for workers low, and driving wages down. The lowest paid in Britain haven’t had a real terms increase in their wages since 1979. You might wish to hold up the minimum wage as a Labour achievement, but it was introduced more out of necessity than virtue.

I’m by no means a Blue Labour cheerleader, but unlike some, my criticisms are based on the actual reading of words on a page rather than blown up perceptions based on a response to fairly poor public relations. Challen is right to say “Blue Labour” is an awful name, as it connotes a movement even further to the right than New Labour. This is, however, not the case. I’m not entirely comfortable with the social conservatism, but what Glasman implies is that we can’t be economically egalitarian whilst supporting an open doors policy to immigration. We have to bear in mind some realities.

That said, a degree of social conservatism is fine, as long as we seek to achieve liberal ends eventually. A kind of Fabian gradualist approach that will take people with us rather than alienate people or cause resentment towards the people we were trying to empower with legislation.

Finally, Challen is simply wrong about ideology not being important. In the current context, I get where he’s coming from. We have elections coming up and we’ve all been canvassing, but not every minute of every day. Besides, anyone who thinks ideology isn’t important, who thinks it’s unimportant to have a vision of what we want our society to look like, should speak to their youngest activists. It’s one of the reasons people get into politics, and also one of the reasons why so many people relinquished their membership.

We lacked any sort of vision, and were reactionary in government. I’d urge a less reactionary approach in future, unless you’ve got any better ideas?