‘Maurice Glasman rails at progressives – why keep treating him as one of us?’

The last month has seen a return to public prominence of Maurice Glasman – Labour peer, erstwhile guru to Ed Miliband, and the original founder of ‘Blue Labour’.

Reportedly soon to be hosting a weekly GB News show where he debates Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, Glasman went to America last month, as the only Labour parliamentarian invited to attend Donald Trump’s second inauguration. On his return, he caused a splash in an interview with the New Statesman’s George Eaton, accusing Chancellor Rachel Reeves of being “just a drone for the Treasury”, and railing against Attorney General Richard Hermer as an “arrogant, progressive fool”.

Glasman’s comments have been interpreted as strident salvos within an internal Labour debate. Eaton writes of a “battle for Labour’s soul” between Blue Labour and the “progressive left”;  in the same publication, Andrew Marr presents Glasman’s remarks as part of a “reformation” within Labour, as the party re-orients itself to take on the threat of Reform.

However, the significance of Glasman’s interventions take on a different dimension when seen in the light of his wider public commentary. To our view, his statements about Labour and those he dubs progressives must be taken in this context.

In December, Glasman appeared at the “2024 Postliberalism Conference” in Cambridge. After discussing the threat posed by “progressive authoritarians” and “oppressive authoritarian liberalism”, he celebrated Donald Trump’s “world historical” November win as the victory of a “multi-ethnic, interfaith, working-class coalition against progressives – that’s the enormity of what we’re talking about. Kamala Harris was for they/them, President Trump is for you. That’s all you really need to know about the American election”.

In further discussion, he noted that “above all the biggest determinant of whether you voted for Donald Trump is whether you went to university or not”, and suggested that “we must question the value of universities, if the meaning of going to university is you think that Kamala Harris was an intelligent, good candidate… it’s pathetic. It’s really a pathetic, degraded outcome”. Going on to decry the state of contemporary academia more broadly, Glasman called for a “decimation of the institutions”.

‘You are what you do and say’

Glasman hit similar beats in a January appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, (apparently facilitated by the good offices of Nigel Farage). There, Glasman expressed his long time interest in “MAGA” as “a strategy of coalition building in which workers can again have a voice”, given “the humiliation and degradation of the working class under the rule of the progressives”.

For the Labour peer, “progressives” are “the enemy … they are the enemy because they actually despise faith, they despise family, they despise love, and they don’t even want you to enjoy sexual intercourse with your wife”. Agreeing with Bannon’s comment that progressives work to “sow disunion between the races”, Glasman said that they do this “all the time”, before adding, “it’s a relentless separation of people, victim status, microaggressions, power relationships, they are single-handedly destroying the labour movement”.

As Midge Decter famously said, at a certain point you have to join the side that you are on. It’s a good maxim for political analysis, either of yourself or of others. Man cannot live on caveats alone: you are what you do and say and you support who you profess support for.

READ MORE: Blue Labour ads, Blue Labour ideas: Inside the fightback against Reform

When it comes to Glasman, it is hard to draw any conclusion from his statements other than that he is supportive of Donald Trump and happy that he won the US election. What you can draw from Glasman’s comment that he wants to “show respect” to Steve Bannon “publicly”, is that Glasman respects Steve Bannon, and wants to say so, publicly.

This is a fundamental political choice, and it should be treated as such. Just as we should take Donald Trump and Steve Bannon at their words (inciting violence, misogyny, and racism) and actions (betraying Ukraine, attempting to overthrow democracy, and now handing over much of the federal government to tech oligarchs), we should take Glasman at his word when he expresses enthusiasm for their successes. In a world in which democracy is threatened across the globe by an unholy alliance of oligarchy and ethnonationalism (whether in the guise of MAGA, other right-wing populisms, Putin’s Russia, or Xi’s China), Glasman has picked his side.

There are plenty of points on which communitarian social democrats like ourselves might agree with some of the critiques Glasman has offered, or with what Blue Labour more broadly professes to stand for.

Contemporary liberalism is indeed individualist, atomising and anti-civic; it neither presents (nor is interested in presenting) a critique of capitalist commodification, nor a positive vision of the common good; socialists and social democrats have their own distinct traditions, from which they need to reclaim political and ethical inspiration.

READ MORE: ‘The PM’s speech is welcome. Too often activists want to sidestep immigration’

Equally, it is understandable that faced with the threat of Reform, Labour politicians might look to a political tendency that claims to speak for the needs and interests of voters who might be tempted by far-right populism. Blue Labour has proven to be a capacious label, extending far beyond any one individual.

It has at various points been adopted by or applied to a wide range of political figures and intellectual approaches within the party. As numerous contributions to this journal attest, the initial Blue Labour interventions continue to spark useful and productive conversations.

‘A clear-sighted assessment of his political choices’

However, Glasman himself cannot simply be treated as a synecdoche for a worthwhile cloud of G.D.H. Cole and R.H. Tawney inspired communitarianism, nor for ‘rooting Labour politics in working-class communities’, being ‘tough on immigration’, going ‘left on economics, right on culture’, or whatever else the increasingly empty signifier that is the term ‘Blue Labour’ gets thrown around to imply. Glasman is a political actor taking substantive political positions in the world today – positions that should give us pause before treating him as constructive interlocutor within the Labour Party.

We are not interested in cancellation or language-policing, but in a clear-sighted assessment of his political choices. You cannot paint a faithful picture of someone’s politics by cherry picking only their most palatable views, or by examining them at a favourable, smudgey distance. Rather, you need to understand the context, import and stakes of their interventions; above all, you must identify what side they are taking in the political conflicts that define our age.

READ MORE: Interview: Ian Murray on the latest polls, pat leave and Labour ‘not aping Reform’

There is a world of difference between criticising the left because you want to help it be better able to beat the right, and criticising the left to explain and justify why you are glad that the right has triumphed. For those engaging with Glasman, it is important to understand that when he pejoratively says the Attorney General is a “progressive”, it means he thinks that Hermer is in a category of people who, among other things, “don’t even want you to enjoy sexual intercourse with your wife”.

We believe that MAGA and the wider global forces aligned with it pose a mortal threat to social democracy, and today represent our primary political antagonist. While we might not share the precise politics of all who oppose it, we must be willing to make common cause with them in the emerging struggle between democracy and nationalist oligarchies. Going by his statements, it seems clear that Glasman holds an entirely different view, being more troubled by progressives – “progressivism is a sickness to me, it’s a palsy”, he told Bannon – and by liberals. Per his talk in Cambridge, the “contestations” which he thinks matter are those “within Trumpism”, and “the great advantage of it is that you don’t need to talk to liberals anymore”.

There is much truth in the Schmittian cliché that politics is ultimately about friends and enemies; when Glasman declares before a public audience that “the only place to build a house now is on the left side of MAGA square”, we need to understand that he has left our house – that of democratic socialists and social democrats – and crossed the street to build a new one amongst our enemies. So be it. We will stay to guard the old house.

This article was first published on website of the journal Renewal and has been republished on LabourList.

For more from LabourList, subscribe to our daily newsletter roundup of all things Labour – and follow us on  Bluesky, WhatsApp, Threads, X or Facebook .

• SHARE: If you have anything to share that we should be looking into or publishing about this story – or any other topic involving Labour– contact us (strictly anonymously if you wish) at [email protected].
• SUBSCRIBE: Sign up to LabourList’s morning email here for the best briefing on everything Labour, every weekday morning.
• DONATE: If you value our work, please chip in a few pounds a week and become one of our supporters, helping sustain and expand our coverage.
• PARTNER: If you or your organisation might be interested in partnering with us on sponsored events or projects, email [email protected].
• ADVERTISE: If your organisation would like to advertise or run sponsored pieces on LabourList‘s daily newsletter or website, contact our exclusive ad partners Total Politics at [email protected].