{"id":3013,"date":"2019-11-26T11:12:26","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T11:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3013"},"modified":"2019-11-26T11:48:02","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T11:48:02","slug":"toxic-friends-a-critique-of-blue-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3013","title":{"rendered":"Toxic friends? A critique of Blue Labour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article presents a critique of Blue Labour in four key areas \u2013 class, economy, family and race. It sets out alternative ways forward to forge rather than disrupt alliances between the working class and new social movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the Brexit vote, the followers of Blue Labour \u2013 an advocacy group associated with the Labour Party that promotes conservative ideas\u00a0\u2013 have accepted much of the far right\u2019s analysis. Advanced by the likes of Paul Embery and Adrian Pabst, they have adopted the far rights\u2019 language and terminology at an alarming rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, followers of Blue Labour\u00a0have also bought into a binary divide: the choice is either neoliberal hyper?globalisation or a patriotic nationalism. The possibility of any different types of globalisation has been denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The financial crash and\nthe rise of nationalism<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The financial crisis of\n2007-8 showed that Labour and its third way European followers had got both the\neconomics and sustainability of modern capitalism wrong. Their wholehearted embrace\nof neoliberal globalisation was cast into doubt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, the\nnationalist right has dominated, shaping politics around issues of nation,\nculture and identity against unfettered globalisation. Think Donald Trump,\nNigel Farage, Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Marine Le Pen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is surprising is that\nsome on the left have shaped their critiques within this nationalist framework.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The birth of Blue Labour<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

After 2010, the Blue\nLabour movement pioneered by Maurice Glasman asserted that traditional working\nclass communities had been ignored by New Labour\u2019s trendy cosmopolitanism,\nwhich had paid too much attention to feminism, multiculturalism and sexual\npolitics, and had ridden roughshod over the assumed conservative cultural\nsensitivities of the traditional working class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initial flurry of\ninterest within Labour waned. However, the Brexit debate, with its focus on\nnational sovereignty, has given Blue Labour renewed appeal well beyond the Labour\nparty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, David\nGoodhart, who is highly critical of immigration, published his 2017 book The\nRoad to Somewhere. The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics,<\/a><\/em> which provides the\nbedrock of Blue Labour thinking post?Brexit.<\/a>  He has written that the\nlack of jobs for the white working class and the decline of a shared sense of\ncommunity is caused by immigration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Matthew\nGoodwin<\/a> is an initial critic of the UKIP right who has now gone native. And\nEric\nKaufmann<\/a> gives it more intellectual heft with his demographic and cultural\narguments that justify immigration policies based on racial criteria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this critique of Blue Labour focuses on four of its key flaws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Blue Labour and class<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A\ncentral thrust of all Blue Labour adherents is a visceral venom directed at\n\u2018the metropolitan elite\u2019. For Goodhart, the world is basically divided between\nthe \u2018Anywheres\u2019, \u2018the upper professional class\u2019 with their global world outlook\nand the \u2018Somewheres\u2019, with their preference for place, stability and nation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is an\nartificial divide. It suggests that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the\nprofessional classes and the traditional working class. In truth, the\nunbridgeable gulf which Goodhart, like Collier, Goodwin and Embery, ignore is\nbetween all these working people and Goodhart\u2019s \u201cglobal villagers, the 3 per\ncent who are society\u2019s \u2018movers and shakers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Blue Labour and the\neconomy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Anti?European\nLabour MP Kate Hoey has declared that she wants \u201cto get back to our parliament\nthe right to have complete control of our economy, to decide everything that relates\nto our own country\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nBlue Labour ignores or diminishes the realities of a globalising world \u2013 in ecology\nand climate change, terrorism and security, the digital revolution and\neconomics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nis no way that manufacturing and services are going to be forced back into\ntheir national boxes. The days of a set of independently?owned, British car\ncompanies trading primarily within a domestic market have gone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway,\nthe central economic issue here is not about trade \u00ad\u2013 which Conservatives and\nthe media focus on \u2013 but rather integrated production flows. Serious European\npoliticians and policy makers know that all the main production processes in\nEurope rely on integrated supply chains operating across borders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As my\ncritique of Blue Labour makes clear, attempts to resurrect a stand?alone\neconomic strategy within one country will be suicidal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Blue Labour, sex and the family<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Blue\nLabour supporters such as Embery and Goodwin assert that there is an unchanging\nbedrock of common sense and patriotic values at the core of the working class,\nwhich \u2018Anywheres\u2019 do not understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 It\nis a false assertion. The reality is that vast swathes of the population have\nshifted their attitudes over the last half?century and that the key determinant\nhas been age. And the Blue Labour story that there is a gulf in social\nattitudes between the big cities and the socially conservative, working class\nindustrial towns is a myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goodhart writes\nregretfully, \u201cthe arrival of the pill and easier abortion further separated sex\nfrom association with family and long?term commitment\u201d. But the social gains of\nthe last half century cannot, and should not, be rolled back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Blue Labour, race and migration<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Blue Labour supporters have been cautious in this arena, but their direction of travel is increasingly clear. Certainly, they are in very dangerous territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe post?Enoch Powell era, the UK has evolved a broad, cross?party consensus\nthat maintains that British citizenship and identity is not defined ethnically.\nBut Blue Labourite Paul\nCollier writes<\/a> that London will soon become a majority\/minority city\nbecause he does not consider second or third generation migrants as \u2018indigenous\nBritons\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nincreasingly strident tones of Matthew\nGoodwin arguing<\/a> that the Labour vote in working class Britain is collapsing\nbecause people feel \u201clike strangers in their own country\u201d, is heading in that\ndirection too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\ngo to car plants, hospitals and fast?food joints and you will find a mixed\nworking class, not a purely white English one. So progressives should argue for\ntight regulation of the labour market, for a high minimum wage which is legally\nenforced; stronger rights for trade union organisation, and so on. Furthermore,\nto address the social pressures on institutions, national government should\ninstitute a \u2018migration impact fund\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progressives should not\ncollude with those who simply do not like foreigners. Instead, they should\noffer a positive vision on migration. The successes of the German Greens in the\nmore testing situation in Germany should give confidence that racist populism\ncan be challenged successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, a movement founded on the values of liberty, equality and solidarity cannot cave into those who believe that some citizens are more equal than others, or that some people aren\u2019t citizens at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critique of Blue Labour: Towards\na\nrenewed social democratic alliance<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Labour\u2019s\nsuccesses in 1945, 1964 and 1997 came through linking together the labour\nmovement, the public sector and middle class intellectuals<\/a>. Alliances will\nnot necessarily return in the \u2018old\u2019 form, but they need to be constructed. The\nfirst step is to articulate alternative models of globalisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progressives need an economic\npolicy promoting a new relationship with nature and a thorough green industrial\nstrategy that addresses the economic and social concerns of those who globalisation\nhas passed by. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progressives should also seek to create a sense of interconnectedness. Blue Labourites find it hard to conceive that a person can approve of European integration and yet still retain a national and local identity. The modern world is interconnected and overlaps. For instance, the wings for an Airbus are made in North Wales and Bristol, but the aircraft as a whole is put together in Toulouse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To sum up, as the Green movement expresses it, \u2018think global, act local\u2019. There is no gulf between the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longer version of this\narticle appears in the <\/em>Political\nQuarterly<\/a> journal. <\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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