Blue Light?

At the How The Light Gets In festival in Hampstead today, Maurice Glasman and Sohrab Ahmari were in conversation, and I shall upload the video as soon as I have it. Sohrab has come a long way since 10 October 2014, when he seconded Kevan Jones in a debate against me at Durham. We had a grand time at the drinks afterwards. As a convert myself, I knew then that he would become a Catholic and a Postliberal, although of course I was too polite to say it. He is now doing sterling work. God is good. Mind you, in his new capacity as Lord Beamish, even Kevan is socking it to the unaccountability of the intelligence and security agencies. More joy in Heaven. Sohrab is now at UnHerd, which all the worst people dislike because it gives a platform to, among many other people, the socially conservative Left. We all read it. Only I seem to comment regularly, but we all read it.

Sadly, though, apart from Maurice himself, almost no one who, for example, used to go to the Nottingham conferences any longer seems to have anything to do with Blue Labour. I have no memory of Shabana Mahmood, Jonathan Brash, Dan Carden, Jonathan Hinder, Connor Naismith or David Smith in those days. None of them voted to lift the two-child benefit cap, and all of them except Carden voted to keep it. Brash, Hinder and Naismith voted for assisted suicide. It has indeed been 13 years since Professor John Milbank wrote: "Before Red Tory and Blue Labour there was David Lindsay. He was arguably the first to announce a postliberal politics of paradox, and to delve into the deep, unwritten British past in order to craft, theoretically, an alternative British and international future. It is high time that the singular and yet wholly pertinent writings of this County Durham Catholic Labour prophet receive a wider circulation." Watch this space.

After all, what else is there to watch? Zarah Sultana? There is no Corbynism without Corbyn. Without Jeremy Corbyn as its Leader, Your Party would not take one per cent of the vote. Yet, having been elected as a Labour MP, Sultana thought that she could set up a party that had no meaningful difference with the Greens except that, as she thought would be the clicher, it would be led by her. We were all young once. Well, off to the Greens she presumably now goes, if they would have her. They have contested Coventry South at the last five General Elections. The first time, they came sixth out of six. On each of the subsequent four occasions, they have come fifth, just as Reform UK came fourth at East Wiltshire. To Danny Kruger and to Sultana alike, the very best of luck. They are both going to need it.