Why Compass, Blue Labour, and Red Tory all miss the mainstream

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

Labour’s thinkers and agitators are deflecting the party away from the political mainstream. On the left, there is Compass and its ‘good society’ pluralism. On the right, there is blue Labour with its emphasis on ‘virtue’, tradition, and reciprocity. Both have limited mainstream appeal.

The blue Labour thing is contagious. On Monday, its latest advocate wrote:

“[Ed Miliband] has the chance to redefine Labour as a national, patriotic, un-doctrinaire party, of law and order and public decency, intent on widening opportunity and fairness rather than imposing equality.”

As generalisations go, this quote is not a bad description of the blue Labour creed at all. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce the latest blue Labour recruit: Norman Tebbit. And it makes complete sense.

To understand why it makes such sense, it is necessary to understand red Toryism and its connection to blue Labourism. They are in fact two sides of the same ideological coin but with an appeal to two different constituencies. Red Toryism is an updated version of Shire Toryism. It’s why David Cameron was so seduced by it: he has a Shire Tory heart.

Shire Toryism is paternal, patriotic, desires law, order and cultural integration, but, nonetheless, has a complex relationship with capitalism. It is grounded in a set of established social relations that the free market can tear up and that is deeply disconcerting to the Shire Tory. However, market discipline is a deeply moralising force. Markets ensure each individual makes a contribution; indeed, they have to. It is localist and suspicious of disruptive change. Together these values can come together to resist the free market – just take Lymington in Hampshire where both Argos and Wetherspoon’s were like corporate barbarians turned away at the town gates. So it tends towards a ‘free market for others, established social relations for the village’ mentality.

Blue Labour shares some traditionalist conservative elements of Shire Toryism. It has a more fundamental critique of the commodification of labour that results from global capitalism. Shire Toryism despairs of the harm that capitalism does to the social order while applauding it as a moralising force. Blue Labourism sees global capital as destructive of horizontal ties of mutual respect and reciprocity. Shire Toryism sees capitalism as destructive of vertical ties of mutual obligation (Lord, squire and peasant.)

Norman Tebbit understands the crossover between Shire Toryism and urban labourism. He himself is neither Shire nor Red Tory. However, he likes social order. He is a patriot. He is a get on your bike (moralising force of the free market…), stay-at-home mom kind of big society guy. It is these ‘traditional social relations’, including that of the family, that have sparked an egalitarian and feminist critique of blue Labour.

Helen Goodman MP is rather unfair in her ‘sexism’ criticism in my view. The politics of paradox- the blue Labour manual – describes rather than advocates a ‘patriarchal social order’ in an analysis of historical social change. Some of ‘working-class dad’ v ‘middle-class mom’ narrative sails rather close to the wind but I’d be genuinely surprised – having been in most of the seminars that led to the Politics of Paradox and contributing what Paul Cotterill has described as an ‘off-beat’ chapter to the book – if blue Labourites are Tebbitite stay-at-home traditionalists.

Nonetheless, there were a number of attacks on blue Labour at the Compass conference last Saturday that placed it in that sort of territory – philosophically at least. It was the liberal egalitarian attack that was the most relentless. Francesca Klug asserted in a challenge to blue Labour that the left’s case for ‘liberty, equality, and solidarity’ must be reasserted. Neal Lawson, said that while he did do ‘family’, he didn’t do ‘faith or flag.’ Given that faith, flag and family have become blue Labour shorthand, it was clear at whom his assertion was aimed.

Blue Labour and Compass both share a love of Aristotelian ‘virtue’ but disagree what this means in practice. Personally, I find this sort of morally superior ‘virtue’ stuff rather off-putting and so will much of mainstream Britain. When Francesca Klug asserted, “we must turn OUR values, into policies, which build a good society,” things were really starting to go awry. What if people don’t care much for ‘our’ values or our policies and find out talk of ‘a good society’ just plain bossy? To put it another way, when do the people get a say?

This is the fundamental issue with both blue Labour and Compass. They miss the mainstream, substituting a notion of ‘virtue’ that is theirs rather than one that is meaningfully shared.

Searchlight’s Fear and Hope report identified six ‘tribes’ of personal, political, and cultural attitude and outlook from the mutliculturalist left to the right which was in active enmity (where BNP support largely resides.) In the middle are the ‘identity ambivalents’ who are economically insecure, culturally concerned, and politically mistrustful though not in a hostile territory. If we were to plot Compass, blue Labourism, and Red Toryism on a chart of those ‘tribes’ it might look something like this:

Compass touches the mainstream to the left; Blue Labour only grazes the non-Tory mainstream to the right. My point is very simple: whatever their merits or otherwise Compass, blue Labour, and Red Toryism all have limited mainstream appeal. The reason the Big Society is of such limited political use to David Cameron is that it leaves him where he is in terms of appeal- in the Shire Tory space which is found largely in the purple section of the chart above (the ‘cultural integrationists’) and tends to vote Conservative anyway. Blue Labour touches the ‘identity ambivalents’ but no more than that- it is not some modern expression of urban labourism that they are seeking in the main. Compass is anchored in the liberal left – almost exactly where ‘yes to AV’ was to be found.

Of course, blue Labour, Compass and Red Toryism are not sold on the basis of their mass appeal. They are designed to shift the centre of political gravity. Could some sort of amalgam of the ideas provide a way forward though? There is crossover in a language of ‘relationships’ and responsibility. However, there are mutual exclusivities between them. You can’t be a metropolitan progressive, urban labourite, and shire Tory at the same time (other than on single issues such as saving the forests.) They have very different views of culture and capitalism.

So what will be left is a new language of politics: relational, community-sensitive, and reciprocal. That’s good. However, the ‘identity ambivalents; will still be left economically anxious, politically distrustful, with a degree of cultural angst. So this diverts Labour from the real focus- what is needed to engage, convince and meet the needs of the ‘identity ambivalents’? That is the political question at hand. Let’s listen to the metropolitan progressive, urban labourite and even the Shire Tory (they like us on the forests!) But that’s not where Labour’s mainstream will be. Better to meet people where they are, rather than where you think they may or should be.

Anthony Painter is writing in a personal capacity