Blue Labour

Peter Hitchens writes:

I thought this phrase referred to David Cameron's eviscerated Tory Party. But I learned last night on BBC Radio 4 that it is also applies now to a group of Labour Party thinkers who want their movement to stop ignoring the British working class on such subjects as mass immigration and sexual politics - concentrating instead on the conditions of the working poor.

This was discussed at length by David Goodhart on the Analysis programme, which I think is available on iPlayer (as is my appearance last Friday with David Aaronovitch on the TV programme The Daily Politics, which some of you may enjoy). If such a tendency took off, it could revolutionise the political battle in this country, putting Labour on the side of social conservatism and leaving all the green and pink stuff to the Tories.

Set it alongside an interesting article by Martin Ivens in yesterday's Sunday Times, in which Mr Ivens argues that in many ways the Coalition is now to the left of Labour. (He mentions taxation, inflation, forced egalitarianism in the universities, law and order and foreign aid). Commenting on the moment when Nicholas Clegg admitted he had no disagreements with Mr Cameron any more, Mr Ivens says: 'It actually implies that the Prime Minister has so diluted core Conservatve beliefs that he is acceptable to the Lib Dem leader'. And he says (correctly) that 'Fleet Street's hounds are led off the scent by the privileged background of the government's leaders.'

I wonder if the things I explained in my book The Cameron Delusion last year are at last beginning to penetrate the world of conventional commentary. I do hope so.