If the idea of blue labour is to represent working class voters, shouldn’t they be trying to be nationalist and Islamophobic? I don’t understand what it means for them to be socially conservative and yet not want to preserve Englishness/Britishness. Isn’t that the whole point of conservatism?
What is the point of Blue Labor if it doesn’t reflect the actual, non-politically correct views of Britain’s working class. We could argue all day about liberalism and Britishness (conservatism was also invented in Britain, and whether Britishness should only encompass liberalism or be understood more expansively is something that has been politically contested for over a century). However, what is the point of a bunch of Laborites saying that they are taking the views of working class voters seriously without changing their views on the issue that working class voters care most deeply about, which is immigration and British identity? I am not asking a question about morals, but rather about the practice of winning votes. Is there a serious, non-delusional, evidence based case for what Blue Labor is trying to accomplish politically? Or is this a case of “the purpose of the system is what it does”, and the talk about working class voters is window dressing and the actual result is just a factional fight within the left coalition?
“ Younger people and people with university degrees tend to express more positive attitudes towards immigration than older people and people with lower levels of education.”
If 50% of the British public wants to reduce immigration, and professional managerial class Brits are more positive about immigration, it seems incredibly likely that a majority of working class Brits want to reduce immigration. And it seems to me highly unlikely that attitudes would be as negative as they are if all of the immigrants to the UK were Australian. This isn’t to say that the average working class Brit thinks of themselves as Islamophobic or as necessarily nationalist, just that they are viewed as those things by the left precisely because they do care about immigration and preservation of British identity, while for many on the left that is the definition of “nationalist” and “Islamophobic”.
Viewing working class voters in Britain as Islamophobic is incorrect and snobby. Pandering to patronising charicatures is out of touch and will fail, or is failing.
I love your occasional typos, all part of your humanity, however, you may want to correct this one (although it made me chuckle):
"Turkey rising from its Ottoman asses was untenable.".
Thanks for another thoughtful piece of writing. I don't know the details of party political factions, but I am appalled at the Government's inaction towards the brutality with which Israel treats Palestinians.
I think you are the followers who have commented have missed the point.... so you win all these working class/English votes but.... change nothing... you simply want the title of beating the tories and the differing factions within your 'socialist' movement... so carry on arguing in the graveyard... the world is hammering on... Oh! and also do it all quietly as we Scots are leaving ....and we are fed up by the hand wringing non action...
“When you use anti-semitism to shut down uncomfortable criticism of Israel, the average non-partisan person cringes. Maybe they can’t articulate why exactly they find this uncomfortable, but they get a deeper sense of someone trying to manipulate them.”
When you use facism to shut down uncomfortable discussion of immigration policy the average non partisan cringes … they get a deep sense of somebody trying to manipulate them.
I could keep repeating over most of the progressive left’s shibboleths.
That sense of cringe impacts many more voters than the conflation of anti Zionism with antisemitism. Your writing shows an admirable willingness to acknowledge those wider concerns.
While you correctly identify a fault in Blue Labour’s underlying philosophy on this issue, it remains primarily an interest of the harder left still angered by the way antisemitism was exaggerated to lever Corbyn out.
It feels like this essay is talking to those people. It isn’t talking to the many political homeless ex Tory voters like me. People like Paul Embery and Lord Glasman are attempting to do so and, at least for me, with some success.
Is the hard left with us in the room right now mate? Are you telling me Labour, with Shabana Mahmood as Home Secretary constantly banging on about immigration, is not talking about immigration? What you are saying is that there is no fascists using the immigration debate as an excuse for their racism, which there obviously are, as there always were, people who literally self identify as such. The equivalent would be me saying there are no anti-Semitic pro-Palestine activists.
Are we violently agreeing? You complimented Shabana Mahmood in your piece. I agree with you. I don’t know enough about the machinations of the Labour Party to know whether she is blue Labour but what she is saying is resonating with many voters.
I agree there were some hardline racists in the recent march but there were many more who aren’t. Waving a union flag is just a plea to be noticed, to your credit you acknowledge that, but that didn’t stop the ‘hard right’ rhetoric from many quarters on the left.
We agree many pro Palestine marchers are anti Zionist or just appalled at a horrible war. We agree there is also an element that is viciously antisemitic.
We disagree on the need to take the hard left out of the Labour Party. I don’t think a truly hard left agenda, will ever be electable. Its presence in the Labour Party is a form of entryism and will always concern normie voters. Even there, you reference Orwell. I presume you are referencing the quote about elements of the left being happier to be caught stealing from the poor box than standing for the anthem. Again we agree.
Perhaps it’s a question of definition. For me the current iteration of the hard left stands for all the harms of religiously applied identity politics, denigration of British history, and unthinking embrace of globalisation. You often seem to be against those things.
I keep trying to understand people on ‘the other side’ without descending into tribal insults. What would be the top 5 things you would do if made prime minister tomorrow? Maybe I’d agree with them.
This is very good but I wonder if Blue Labour really exists, if exemplified by McSweeney, due to there not being much in the way of genuine left economics to go with the communitarian signalling.
This is excellent and it feels reassuring to hear these type of heterodox views expressed. I hope that you can get a version of this in the New Statesman
Is that your pathetic response? ‘You’re a Nazi’? All nations are built around a core ethnic identity, Greek girl. There is no Japan without ethnic Japanese or Sweden without Swedes. You really should be ashamed of yourself and engage in some self-reflection before posting such puerile nonsense and ranting.
You lost me with centrist liberal dismissal of identity politics. We are permanently in the age of identity politics thanks to insane immigration and asylum policies of the past several decades. Most nations have a foundational ethnic or cultural identity, including Britain and its constituent nations.
Wrong. There has never been mass immigration and rapid demographic transformation on such a scale. The current migration is the result of economic and foreign policies designed to encourage such migration. What we need is remigration not more immigration. Loony leftists like yourself are in bed with neoliberal capitalism.
Immigration policy has been flawed, and yes mass migration has been used to suppress wages/labour conditions by big corporations. But to say that the solution is to now uproot millions of innocent people who did nothing wrong, and to ignore the historic significance of what you are saying. You are radicalised and unaware of it.
Labour, like the Tories, has no priority other than The War On Russia, and specifically, getting the Americans to fight that war for them.
Again.
To that end, nobody in H.M. Government or H.M. loyal opposition is going to do anything that might piss the Americans off or convince them that the uk are bad slaves who don't deserve favour. Which, as a practical matter means that, whatever Israel wants, Israel gets.
really really good
thank you :)
If the idea of blue labour is to represent working class voters, shouldn’t they be trying to be nationalist and Islamophobic? I don’t understand what it means for them to be socially conservative and yet not want to preserve Englishness/Britishness. Isn’t that the whole point of conservatism?
hatred of others is not necessary, nor is it compatible with liberalism
Which itself is a concept invented in Britain
What is the point of Blue Labor if it doesn’t reflect the actual, non-politically correct views of Britain’s working class. We could argue all day about liberalism and Britishness (conservatism was also invented in Britain, and whether Britishness should only encompass liberalism or be understood more expansively is something that has been politically contested for over a century). However, what is the point of a bunch of Laborites saying that they are taking the views of working class voters seriously without changing their views on the issue that working class voters care most deeply about, which is immigration and British identity? I am not asking a question about morals, but rather about the practice of winning votes. Is there a serious, non-delusional, evidence based case for what Blue Labor is trying to accomplish politically? Or is this a case of “the purpose of the system is what it does”, and the talk about working class voters is window dressing and the actual result is just a factional fight within the left coalition?
The average British working-class person does not think they are nationalists or Islamophobic. You simply have no evidence of that. Look at polling.
“ Younger people and people with university degrees tend to express more positive attitudes towards immigration than older people and people with lower levels of education.”
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/
If 50% of the British public wants to reduce immigration, and professional managerial class Brits are more positive about immigration, it seems incredibly likely that a majority of working class Brits want to reduce immigration. And it seems to me highly unlikely that attitudes would be as negative as they are if all of the immigrants to the UK were Australian. This isn’t to say that the average working class Brit thinks of themselves as Islamophobic or as necessarily nationalist, just that they are viewed as those things by the left precisely because they do care about immigration and preservation of British identity, while for many on the left that is the definition of “nationalist” and “Islamophobic”.
So you have no evidence that working class people are racists. Stop using those words then.
Viewing working class voters in Britain as Islamophobic is incorrect and snobby. Pandering to patronising charicatures is out of touch and will fail, or is failing.
I love your occasional typos, all part of your humanity, however, you may want to correct this one (although it made me chuckle):
"Turkey rising from its Ottoman asses was untenable.".
Thanks for another thoughtful piece of writing. I don't know the details of party political factions, but I am appalled at the Government's inaction towards the brutality with which Israel treats Palestinians.
I think you are the followers who have commented have missed the point.... so you win all these working class/English votes but.... change nothing... you simply want the title of beating the tories and the differing factions within your 'socialist' movement... so carry on arguing in the graveyard... the world is hammering on... Oh! and also do it all quietly as we Scots are leaving ....and we are fed up by the hand wringing non action...
“When you use anti-semitism to shut down uncomfortable criticism of Israel, the average non-partisan person cringes. Maybe they can’t articulate why exactly they find this uncomfortable, but they get a deeper sense of someone trying to manipulate them.”
When you use facism to shut down uncomfortable discussion of immigration policy the average non partisan cringes … they get a deep sense of somebody trying to manipulate them.
I could keep repeating over most of the progressive left’s shibboleths.
That sense of cringe impacts many more voters than the conflation of anti Zionism with antisemitism. Your writing shows an admirable willingness to acknowledge those wider concerns.
While you correctly identify a fault in Blue Labour’s underlying philosophy on this issue, it remains primarily an interest of the harder left still angered by the way antisemitism was exaggerated to lever Corbyn out.
It feels like this essay is talking to those people. It isn’t talking to the many political homeless ex Tory voters like me. People like Paul Embery and Lord Glasman are attempting to do so and, at least for me, with some success.
Is the hard left with us in the room right now mate? Are you telling me Labour, with Shabana Mahmood as Home Secretary constantly banging on about immigration, is not talking about immigration? What you are saying is that there is no fascists using the immigration debate as an excuse for their racism, which there obviously are, as there always were, people who literally self identify as such. The equivalent would be me saying there are no anti-Semitic pro-Palestine activists.
Are we violently agreeing? You complimented Shabana Mahmood in your piece. I agree with you. I don’t know enough about the machinations of the Labour Party to know whether she is blue Labour but what she is saying is resonating with many voters.
I agree there were some hardline racists in the recent march but there were many more who aren’t. Waving a union flag is just a plea to be noticed, to your credit you acknowledge that, but that didn’t stop the ‘hard right’ rhetoric from many quarters on the left.
We agree many pro Palestine marchers are anti Zionist or just appalled at a horrible war. We agree there is also an element that is viciously antisemitic.
We disagree on the need to take the hard left out of the Labour Party. I don’t think a truly hard left agenda, will ever be electable. Its presence in the Labour Party is a form of entryism and will always concern normie voters. Even there, you reference Orwell. I presume you are referencing the quote about elements of the left being happier to be caught stealing from the poor box than standing for the anthem. Again we agree.
Perhaps it’s a question of definition. For me the current iteration of the hard left stands for all the harms of religiously applied identity politics, denigration of British history, and unthinking embrace of globalisation. You often seem to be against those things.
I keep trying to understand people on ‘the other side’ without descending into tribal insults. What would be the top 5 things you would do if made prime minister tomorrow? Maybe I’d agree with them.
This is very good but I wonder if Blue Labour really exists, if exemplified by McSweeney, due to there not being much in the way of genuine left economics to go with the communitarian signalling.
Re-industrialisation is the main economic policy
This is excellent and it feels reassuring to hear these type of heterodox views expressed. I hope that you can get a version of this in the New Statesman
Thank you Will, I may do!
This rhymes with much of what has happened in America.
Yeah, and to what end really. Are Jewish people safer? No.
I’m goin to write a post about our likely new mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
We need blatant white identity politics more than ever with no apologies to wet Tories on the right or civic nationalists on the left.
No we don’t need racism of any kind, you are a Nazi.
Is that your pathetic response? ‘You’re a Nazi’? All nations are built around a core ethnic identity, Greek girl. There is no Japan without ethnic Japanese or Sweden without Swedes. You really should be ashamed of yourself and engage in some self-reflection before posting such puerile nonsense and ranting.
You lost me with centrist liberal dismissal of identity politics. We are permanently in the age of identity politics thanks to insane immigration and asylum policies of the past several decades. Most nations have a foundational ethnic or cultural identity, including Britain and its constituent nations.
Migration is a fact of life and always has been, and that is what nations have always been built on
Wrong. There has never been mass immigration and rapid demographic transformation on such a scale. The current migration is the result of economic and foreign policies designed to encourage such migration. What we need is remigration not more immigration. Loony leftists like yourself are in bed with neoliberal capitalism.
Immigration policy has been flawed, and yes mass migration has been used to suppress wages/labour conditions by big corporations. But to say that the solution is to now uproot millions of innocent people who did nothing wrong, and to ignore the historic significance of what you are saying. You are radicalised and unaware of it.
Labour, like the Tories, has no priority other than The War On Russia, and specifically, getting the Americans to fight that war for them.
Again.
To that end, nobody in H.M. Government or H.M. loyal opposition is going to do anything that might piss the Americans off or convince them that the uk are bad slaves who don't deserve favour. Which, as a practical matter means that, whatever Israel wants, Israel gets.