First, fear, as expressed by one "Unrepentant Blairite" in a comment on today's earlier post about Labour and the EU:
The narrative runs like this:
- Labour grew out of popular Liberalism and popular Toryism, themselves based on that old time religion, especially the Methodist and Catholic varieties;
- Labour became a party of left-wing, big government economics only in the service of those concerns;
- Labour was therefore always a party of devoutly religious, monarchist, Unionist and Eurosceptical people who supported the Welfare State, nationalisation, trade union power, grammar schools and old Empire ties while opposing liberal interventionism, mass immigration, free trade and these days also action on climate change;
- But all of this was ruined by people who read Marxist literature at university in the 60s and 70s, followed some highly conjectural shift in Marxism from economics to the culture wars, and took over the Labour Party, turning it into New Labour on that basis;
- This had a certain amount of electoral success, but that would have happened anyway and once the real nature of New Labour was rumbled so few people voted Labour that the party lost office;
- So to return to office, Labour has to "go back" to being the party of devoutly religious, monarchist, Unionist and Eurosceptical people who support the Welfare State, nationalisation, trade union power, grammar schools and old Empire ties while opposing liberal interventionism, mass immigration, free trade and action on climate change.
Lindsay truly believes this. Glasman sort of believes it. Lindsay has the ear of Glasman. Glasman has the ear of Miliband. Milband leads the party that is ahead in the polls and likely to remain so because of the cuts, all the way up to the 2015 Election. Be afraid. Be very, very, very afraid.
And now, hope, in my own words:
Were it not for the local problems over transport, and possibly also over housing about which there is a public meeting later this evening, and were it not for the fact that the word “Independent” was next to my name on the ballot paper when I was re-elected to Lanchester Parish Council with a massively increased vote, then I would in many ways like to rejoin the Labour Party of Ed Miliband and of his mentor, my friend Lord Glasman’s Blue Labour. The question is whether Labour has truly become that party, the party that it used to be.
I want to belong to a party in which everyone is united by a common position of absolute commitment to the Welfare State, workers’ rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement and wider mutualism, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, public ownership, proper local government, and a powerful Parliament.
And I want to belong to a party in which that common position is recognised as fully compatible with a no less absolute commitment to any, all or none of the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, civil liberties, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, traditional structures and methods of education, traditional moral and social values, economic patriotism, balanced migration, a realist foreign policy, an unhysterical approach to climate change, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.
That common position requires a truly national party. In the service of that common position, a truly national party would respect and take account of all of the other commitments set out above, though without requiring any of them. A truly national party would be profoundly sensitive to the interests, insights and aspirations of agriculture and manufacturing, small and medium-sized businesses, each and all of the English ceremonial counties, each and all of the Scottish lieutenancy areas, each and all of the Welsh preserved counties, each and all of the traditional Northern Irish counties, each and all of the London Boroughs, and each and all of the Metropolitan Boroughs.
A truly national party would be profoundly sensitive to the interests, insights and aspirations of the countryside, local government, the trade unions, mutual enterprises, voluntary organisations, and social and cultural conservatives. A truly national party would be profoundly sensitive to the interests, insights and aspirations of people who cherished ties throughout the world, most especially within these Islands and the Commonwealth, but also to the Arab world and Iran, the Slavic and Confucian worlds, Latin America, and elsewhere, in principle including any country on earth, and ideally including all of them.
None of the above would be to the exclusion of the interests, insights and aspirations of financial services, the presently favoured parts of the country, the towns and cities, social and cultural liberals, or those who cherished ties to Continental Europe, the United States of America, and the State of Israel. But it would exclude any new Cold War against Russia, China, Iran, or anywhere else. A truly national party would always give priority in international affairs to the ties within the Commonwealth and within these Islands, and could have no truck with any idea of the American Republic coercively imposing utopianism. It would reject that idea’s rewritten Marxism in which the bourgeoisie is the victorious class, because it would reject all class-based politics in favour of what Aneurin Bevan called “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon”.
A truly national party would fight every seat as if it were a knife-edge marginal.
And a truly national party as a vehicle for the common position set out above would draw deeply on a heritage variously trade unionist, co-operative and mutual, Radical Liberal, Tory populist, Christian Socialist, Social Catholic and Distributist, and so on. Integral to that heritage is a valiant history of opposition to all of Stalinism, Maoism, the Trotskyist distinction without a difference, Nazism, Fascism, and the Far Right regimes in Southern Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. Those who have never recanted their former Stalinism, Maoism or Trotskyism, or their former support for those Far Right regimes, admitting that that stance had been wrong at the time, can have no part in a truly national party.
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Did you read David Goodhart's article on Blue Labour, Red Tory and postliberal politics in the last edition of Prospect? You are very much of the times, your enemies are very much behind the times, and their bitterness indicates that they know it.
ReplyDeleteDavid is a great encourager of my work. He, too, thinks that I should rejoin Labour now that it is Blue Labour, not New Labour. If and when I am convinced that it is, then I might, indeed I almost certainly will.
ReplyDeleteProvided that I am not needed to carry the flag at the 2013 County Election for the restoration of the buses to Lanchester, to Burnhope and to Saint Bede's. Now that is proper politics.
Yes it is, but someone else could do it. We need, I mean we really need, you, David Lindsay as a PPC in 2015 and an MP in the Parliament after that, the first term of an Ed Miliband Government. That will not happen if you do not rejoin until after having contested the 2013 local elections as an Independent.
ReplyDeleteI'll say it again, you benefit from the fact that Harry's Place and Nick Cohen and Oliver Kamm and so on think you are a joke. But you are not, or if you are then you are an example of very black humour. Ed Miliband means Blue Labour, Blue Labour means you, Neil Clark and that gang, and you, Neil Clark and that gang mean the views you express between the lines of this post and the people who come with those views. With Labour comfortably ahead in the polls, Britain stands on the brink of a coup by the big government, union power, pseudo-Left wing of the High Table Far Right:
ReplyDelete“the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, civil liberties, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, traditional structures and methods of education, traditional moral and social values, economic patriotism, balanced migration, a realist foreign policy, an unhysterical approach to climate change, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State”
“most especially within these Islands and the Commonwealth, but also to the Arab world and Iran, the Slavic and Confucian worlds”
“agriculture and manufacturing, small and medium-sized businesses, each and all of the English ceremonial counties, each and all of the Scottish lieutenancy areas, each and all of the Welsh preserved counties, each and all of the traditional Northern Irish counties”
“the interests, insights and aspirations of the countryside”
“social and cultural conservatives”
“it would exclude any new Cold War against Russia, China, Iran, or anywhere else. A truly national party would always give priority in international affairs to the ties within the Commonwealth and within these Islands, and could have no truck with any idea of the American Republic coercively imposing utopianism”
“a heritage variously trade unionist, co-operative and mutual, Radical Liberal [not what it sounds like], Tory populist, Christian Socialist, Social Catholic and Distributist, and so on”
We all know what these things mean.
I was going to ask if you had read Martin Pugh’s Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labour Party, until I realised that I first read it after you had recommended it on here. But I hope that all your readers will familiarise themselves with it.
ReplyDeleteAs do I.
ReplyDeleteIt is one of the many volumes to be reviewed in my third monograph.
Who would oppose a return to these kinds of policies? I cannot speak for Great Britain, but I imagine that it is a combination of:
ReplyDelete(1) Left-wingers who are more concerned with social liberalism than with economics and are willing to sacrifice workers in order to secure their cultural victories of the last several decades (or think they can "have their cake and eat it too");
(2) Right-wingers who are more concerned with their pocketbook (or what they perceive to be their pocketbook) and are willing to sacrifice traditional values in order to secure their economic victories of the last several decades (or think they can "have their cake and eat it too");
(3) People who are socially liberal but economically liberal (in the classical sense of the word), that is, libertarians by and large. I disagree with them, but they arguably hold the most consistent opinions.
If you listen to the media, these are the only three options available, but I have a hunch that there is a great Silent Majority out there that wants a return to something like Old Labour.
What John said, including about the consistency of libertarians of the non-randroid sort.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that the buses are a significant enough issue in Lanchester to swing votes far enough to elect you considering only sixty people bothered to come to the meeting. Also one councillor has not got the authority to reinstate budgets in one area and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise to your devoted followers.
ReplyDeletePlus Castleside people couldn't care less so your campaign is limited in appeal to around sixty voters.
Also it is questionable whether, given your hideous exit, you would be ratified to rejoin Blue Labour anyway.
However, I imagine your path to the House of Commons cannot be denied, it is a matter of when not if. You possess too much intellect, quality and talent to be out of it much longer.
You were also on fine form at last night's packed meeting about the housing. You are on a roll. That county seat would be yours if you wanted it. It would up to Labour whether they wanted to keep it by letting you back in, especially since several of your books would have published by then and you would be a fairly high profile figure among the few people who vote at local elections.
ReplyDeleteI love Fleming Kamm's New Labour disdain for public transport and the sort of people who use it. But he must know that CLPs no longer have to ratify membership applications. He must know that the prime movers behind your departure have both left the area and one of them seems to have retired from public life. He must know that it is the Lanchester Labour party that desperately wants you back.
He won't yet know, but will when your edited book is out and the book in response to your next one, that you long ago ceased to be the sort of person who needed the approval of a local party. He might know who you were. He obviously doesn't know who you are. The Lanchester-based MP and the man who runs Lanchester Labour party do. That is why they want you back, because people higher up want you for greater things. Fleming Kamm, a Blairite supporter of the losing Miliband, is no longer in the loop.
Fleming Kamm would be in no position to stop you. But he has nothing left to lose by trying. You killed his political career a long time ago, hardly noticing that you were doing it. Some people have just got it, other people just haven't.
You have always been an exception to the rule about a prophet without honour in his own country. Not true of you at Durham, not true of you in Lanchester. No wonder a moderately intelligent and undeniably diligent man but with absolutely no star quality hates you so much.
He must know that the prime movers behind your departure have both left the area and one of them seems to have retired from public life.
ReplyDeleteAnd Fleming Kamm is the other one. At least he has learned to spell since he stopped both break dancing and blaspheming.
He does not even seem to know the level of name recognition and good will you could expect in Burnhope, possibly enough to put you in on its own, certainly enough when combined with the votes you would have got in Lanchester anyway. This is not the old district ward that you contested to keep your parish seat the night he nearly lost his. This is the county ward.
You still stand more chance of a parliamentary seat than he is does, which is absolutely hilarious. Before they had to break their own rules and allow a Catholic on a women-only shortlist so as to stop you putting up as an Independent, they had to impose one in the first place to stop him putting up for Labour. Hence all the anger, because nobody of any "intellect, quality and talent" would have considered him for a second, whatever he might have told people in London.
Anyway, is that the House that best suits your suits? There is nothing Common about them, or about anything else to do with you.
Fleming and Kamm should both be invited to write for a collection of essays in response to Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory. Not the one already in the pipeline. A much more critical one. What are they afraid of?
ReplyDelete