Rowenna Davis

Because politics happens beyond Westminster

Labour needs to rediscover its conservatism

The party used to care more about family, high streets, order and community.

By Rowenna Davis Published 20 April 2012 14:24

Betting forms sit in a pile at a Coral betting shop. Photograph: Getty Images.

I hold my surgery on the Consort estate, Peckham. Traditionally Labour, some residents have turned Tory but many no longer vote. Housing matters most; benefits run high. The tenants' association is energetic. Grandparents play bingo in packed halls whilst kids do karate. Teenagers struggle to find work. There’s a nostalgia for a time when Rye Lane had a proper tool shop rather than a string of pay day loan companies. They feel hard done by the estate next door, anti-social neighbours and unresponsive services. They love family, honour and order. Community minutes are taken seriously. 

“The country is going down hill and politicians are pushing us down,” one tenant told me when I was first elected, “…all their changes make us worse.”

Politics is not left and right for them. It's about who is on their side. But for all the anger on the Consort, revolutionary change doesn’t appeal to them, and the radical left speaks over them. They’re more concerned with the preservation of something slipping. They’re not moved by votes on AV, or Lords reform, or gay marriage or windfarms or “changing the rules of the game” – no matter how important these issues are. They’re interested in family, hard work, honesty and security. It's not about the head, it's about the heart. It's about a warmth that liberal politics can leave cold.  

"The saddest thing", Ed Miliband said last week, was not when people on the doorstep said they weren’t voting Labour, but when they “weren’t voting for anyone”.   

Let’s be clear the Conservatives are also failing to appeal to this group. Tim Montgomerie criticised Cameron last week, lamenting that he had reduced them to “a party of white-collar liberalism rather than blue-collar conservatism.” This shift is pushed partly by the Liberal Democrats in coalition, and partly by an obsessive focus on liberal swing voters rather than the larger number of small c conservative voters who no longer come out on polling day. Labour makes the same mistake. We’re moving to a situation when the divide in this country isn't between left and right. It's between a liberal elite who runs the country and a small c conservative public that doesn’t. Abu Qatada is just the latest example. Whoever wins that ground takes all.  

Polls support this analysis. Ipsos MORI data shows that in 1998, one third of people agreed that they wanted Britain “to be like it used to be”. Ten years later that figure had risen to 61 per cent. The Campaign Company divides voters not by left and right, but by “settlers” who want stability and order and “pioneers” who want change. The former group now makes up a massive proportion of the electorate that is being ignored.

Of course there are trade-offs. A more conservative agenda might lose Labour some liberal support. But we must be careful not to over simplify. There is an increasing intellectual fascination with “post-Liberalism”. Demos, the left wing think tank, is drawn to the work of Jonathan Haidt, who believes that liberals overly focus on fairness at the expense of wider human concerns about sanctity and loyalty, as this blog eloquently explains. Oxford University and a tide of progressive academics are chattering. The tide is turning.

The left is worried about all of this. But it shouldn’t be. Labour used to care more about family, high streets, order and community. It used to take a stronger line on gambling and alcohol. It used to have a narrative about what it wanted to preserve as well as change. Look at the influence of co-operatives, mutuals and unions. This work is still carrying on in pockets. Stella Creasy’s work on payday loans; David Lammy on bookies. Jon Cruddas’s approach in Barking and Dagenham is part of a conservative tradition stemming back to George Lansbury. Blue Labour.

This is not hollow triangulation. There is a difference between being conservative and being Conservative. The former is prepared to take on the market, and its grounded in working people and institutions rather than big money. Whether Labour can rediscover this agenda remains open. Until we do, we are unlikely to earn the trust and respect to tempt many of the residents on the Consort back to the ballot box.

Rowenna Davis is a journalist and author of Tangled up in Blue: Blue Labour and the Struggle for Labour's Soul, published by Ruskin Publishing at £8.99. She is also a Labour councillor.

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54 comments

Tue, 2012-08-07 15:43 — Bernard Ready

“Housing matters most” you say Rowenna, but this is exactly where politicians are pushing are pushing your constituents down. I should be more honest and say ‘you and other politicians’… Houses are the building blocks of communities, yet Labour has not made a significant contribution to housing policy since 1951. On the contrary, we have coluded with the establishment of “social housing”, which replaced the open access of Bevan’s “rich tapestry”; his vision of mixed communities.

Our history has proved that the UK housing market can easily support affordable housing by means of investment, but it cannot support it by means of a consumer service. Yet Conservative policy has constructed the expensive option of a Private Rented Consumer Service (PRCS) with high rents that require huge Housing Benefit subsidies to sustain them. Contrary to Conservative belief, the PRCS is the antithesis of homeownership, while the low cost rented sector that current policy has abolished was the stabilising alternative that provided us with stable low house prices.

Intimidated by the supposed popularity of the right-to-buy law Labour has not resisted the financial structures of the PRCS and has gone along with the twisted logic of blaming tenants for the excessive costs of the high rents and subsidies that entrap them.

05 February 2008. Labour's housing minister Caroline Flint said “Get a job or lose your house … people should look for work as a condition of their tenancy”

04 August 2010 Speaking in Birmingham, the Prime Minister said that he wanted to see fixed terms of as little as five years for all new council and housing association tenancies, to help increase social mobility.

Thu, 2012-07-05 10:40 — January (not verified)

Even without the parallel between the structure of the Phaedrus and the structure of Weaver's Ethics, in which the noble lover, like Milton, is the last to be considered, it is clear from his other writings that Weaver did not equate liberalism with evil. Rather, liberalism was for Weaver middle-of-the-roadism, a position he makes clear in two separate essays

Sat, 2012-05-19 22:13 — Goji (not verified)

Very very true..

Goji

Thu, 2012-05-17 11:42 — Antinob (not verified)

Perfidious Labour should sod off and die

Wed, 2012-05-02 20:13 — representingthemambo (not verified)

I've critiqued this article here by the way, in typically scintillating fashion:

http://representingthemambo.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/does-labour-really-...

Tue, 2012-05-01 08:56 — iany (not verified)

I'm not convince that an army of Methodist finger waggers outside the pub and bookies will be popular, but Rowenna Davies makes some valid points about polices toward family, high streets, order and community.

I would argue it is Labour's neo-liberal post Thatcher agenda that has produced discontent on these issues not any 'liberal' desire for more gay wind farms.

Some examples would be a market rent free for alls on the High Street driving traders out of business, making welfare claimants worse off for taking p/t and casual work, accepting Tory anti-trade union legislation and refusing to challenge the Tory's assault on the EU's social and workers rights agenda.

Tue, 2012-06-05 11:42 — andyg (not verified)

Strongly agree Iany

Fri, 2012-04-27 15:47 — reddeviljp

Only problem is you've misunderstood what they mean in Peckham. Having lived there for twenty-five years and watched it head downhill I can assure you that when people say 'they want it like it used to be' it's code for 'before the Africans arrived'.

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Sun, 2012-04-22 20:53 — Barry Ewart (not verified)

Yawn! Funny it is the labour of the working billions that creates the wealth and makes societies work and the surplus is expropriated by the rich and poweful. Gramsci was right people are hoodwinked by the media etc but Labour should not be passive - should talk to people and perhaps the ideas of Paulo freire could help as well as the music of John Lennon - need a grassroots, bottom up, peaceful, honest, democratic socialism (with a green tinge). M class elite groups like Blue Labour and Progress have nothing to offer and I argue as a w class socialist that for Progressive Labour we need more w class socialist Labour MPs. Labour could always win by appealing to the w class and progressive. M class. As someone wrote, "We need to seek the truth, the good and the beautiful."

Thu, 2012-05-31 07:21 — john p Reid (not verified)

Progress, came from a Crossland view of things, yet Blue labour was based on the German model of charity, and society beign able to fund threw bonds things like the NHS, i don't think blue laobur and progress are at all a like, and Blue labour is more working class than any old laobur idea that Tony benn and co. ever had as it was backed by Chuka Amura, david lammy and John cryer/Cruddas.

Thu, 2012-04-26 14:01 — John Jackson (not verified)

I couldn't agree more; and I would like to thank you for posting a comment that is free from self-aggrandising, psuedo-intellectual bo****ks !!

Sun, 2012-04-22 20:10 — Indu Pendent

Labour has chosen a clear path as the UK athiests party. Its rejected regious values of all kinds in favor of the cult of elitist socialism - we are all equal and owe a duty to propel the Labour elite to power.

If Labour won power what would they change?

Sun, 2012-04-22 19:43 — test-test (not verified)

Wait, you go on about how no-one is representing the blue-collar, small-c conservative working-class of this country, then you advocate Labour takes a stronger line on gambling and alcohol and praise David Lammy's work to stop bookies?

Because, I suppose, it couldn't possibly be a "liberal middle-class elite" who want to stop working-class pleasures like a flutter on the gee-gees (see campaigns against betting shops and now, after last week's Grand National, against horse-racing full stop); it couldn't possibly a "liberal middle-class elite" who want to up the price of a cheap can of beer while the wine and the poncy flat Mittel-european designer lager they drink would be unaffected; it couldn't possibly a "liberal middle-class elite" who never go into pubs (how beastly!) who want to stop the working-class who did from having a fag while they're in there.

If it you'd omitted your penultimate paragraph you might have been excused, as it is it's clearly a schizophrenic piece, given you are a middle-class London Labour activist, arguing blue-collar workers should rule the Labour Party when you have no desire whatsoever for anything of the sort. Perhaps a blue-collar Labour Party with working-class interests truly at heart would stop you occupying social housing when you're a well-paid journalist with a pretty handy councillor's allowance coming in too.

Sun, 2012-04-29 05:47 — STEVE LOCKETT (not verified)

Too right mate, I don't know why we bother reading this mag any more!

Sun, 2012-04-22 21:49 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

As it took shape, Labour adapted itself both to Radical Liberalism and to populist Toryism, depending on the pre-existing culture at least of its target electorate. Labour was never the party of anything like the whole of the working classes, nor did those classes ever provide anything like all of its support.

Britain has neither a proletariat nor a bourgeoisie in the Marxist or Continental sense, but several working classes and several middle classes. There was never any incongruity about the presence of middle or upper-class people in the Labour Party, and not least among Labour MPs. Nor about their having come from, and far from cast off, either Liberal or Tory backgrounds. Especially in Labour’s early years, those backgrounds routinely included activism, and indeed parliamentary service, on behalf of either of those parties.

Both Radical Liberalism and populist Toryism were very open to central and local government action in the service of their communities. They were therefore open to many aspects of the never-dominant Socialist strand in Labour as surely as they acted as checks and balances on that tendency.

Deeply rooted in the chapels, the Radicals had a pronounced streak of moral and social conservatism, especially where intoxication and gambling were concerned. Toryism, properly so called, upholds the organic Constitution, believes in carefully controlled importation and immigration, and advocates a realist foreign policy which includes a strong defence capability used only most sparingly and to strictly defensive ends. And so on.

The movement that drank deeply from both of these wells did in fact deliver social democracy in this country, a good both in itself and in its prevention of a Communist revolution. That movement was destroyed by those who had always been its bitterest enemies, the sectarian Hard Left, which had moved from economic to moral, social, cultural and constitutional means.

Although the better brother won, a Miliband versus Miliband Labour Leadership Election perfectly encapsulated the takeover of the Labour Party, well within 20 years, by a subculture defined by its vitriolic hatred of the Labour Movement, by an almost complete ignorance of it, and by an utter incomprehension of, combined with a pathological distaste for, most of its Fabian and all of its non-Fabian roots: Radical Liberal, Tory populist, trade union, co-operative, Christian Socialist, Social Catholic and Distributist, and so on.

“The progressive Centre Left” means something else entirely, and refers to where the wealthy anti-Labour faction of Leftist political apparatchiki and their media retainers has ended up. Will everyone else finally get the message? Aided if possible by electoral reform, but even in such reform’s absence, it is time to start again.

Sun, 2012-04-22 22:09 — test-test (not verified)

For once, I won't necessarily disagree with you. Although things have changed so much in the last 100 years that the influence of being 'chapel' on the upper echelons of the Labour Party is not really relevant. Perhaps it was relevant under Foot, but I'm not convinced Kinnock was imbued with that sort of tradition. Brown was of course 'manse' rather than 'chapel', and it's a very different thing.

The point I was trying to make is that it's somewhat ludicrous for someone educated at Hampstead School (which is a comp, but like Holland Park, it's a comp for the very well-to-do left-wing middle-class to send their kids to; they don't seem to send them to Bash Street Comp, I note) and Balliol College, Oxford, who is now a journalist, author and councillor, taking much-needed social housing from the working-class when she could easily afford private rent, lecturing us on how Labour needs Blue Labour values to win back the working-class, and then defining Blue Labour to be what a bunch of well-educated middle-class authoritarian types might allow the proles to do. They wouldn't be allowed to do anything bad for them, obviously. And they wouldn't be allowed to do anything that middle-class women called Rowenna wouldn't themselves do, of course. They might go off the straight and narrow if they were allowed to drink, smoke and gamble of their own accord, and we can't have that.

Isn't that the whole bloody point that Glasman et al make about where Labour went wrong in alienating the working-class in the first place?

Sun, 2012-04-22 22:23 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

If “there is no such thing as society” (and yes, Margaret Thatcher really did say that), then there can be no such thing as the society that is the family, or the society that is the nation. There cannot be a “free” market generally but not in drugs, prostitution or pornography. There cannot be unrestricted global movement of goods, services or capital but not of labour. American domination is no more acceptable that European federalism. The economic decadence of the 1980s is no more acceptable that the social decadence of the 1960s.

Or vice versa, in each case.

If you concede the (historically, extremely un-Labour) case for unregulated drinking or gambling, or for the legalisation of drugs or prostitution, then you have conceded the case for the “free” market. But if you make the case for strict State control of drinking and gambling, and for outright State intolerance of drugs and prostitution, then you have made the case for State intervention in and against the market in the service of the greater social, cultural and political good.

We cannot deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we know how many people there are in this country, unless we control immigration properly, and unless we insist that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level.

Climate change must not be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.

If we believe in the social, cultural and political need for a large and thriving middle class, then we have to support and deliver the very extensive central and local government action without which such a class cannot exist.

And there is no private sector, at least not as that term is ordinarily employed. Not in any advanced country, and not since the War at the latest. Take out bailouts or the permanent promise of them, take out central and local government contracts, take out planning deals and other sweeteners, and take out the guarantee of customer bases by means of public sector pay and the benefits system, and what is there left? They are all as dependent on public money as any teacher, nurse or road sweeper. Everyone is. Well, with public money come public responsibilities, including public accountability for how those responsibilities are or are not being met.

Sun, 2012-04-22 13:21 — William 1989 (not verified)

Fantastic article! Never have I seen an article I agreed with so entirely. I have been a Labour supporter all my life and it was for reasons of preserving working class communities and a belief that hard work pays off, I don't want benefits given to me I want a job which enables me to flourish based upon my own hard graft.

It feels like Labour have created a new 'under class' which people often mistake the working class as being and so demonize the working class. People are working class because they are workers, hard workers too, they may not be the most glamorous jobs, but they are the jobs that keep this nation functioning. And these people feel cheapened because Labour doled out so many benefits to people too lazy to work and pretended they were doing this to help working people.

The benefits system is a fantastic thing and should provide a comfortable standard of living for those who fall on hard times but it should never be a way of life. And working people often look upon these people as scroungers and wonder why they are paying for laziness?

I recently read a book promoted on this website called 'Chavs: The demonisation of the working class' and that book seemed to me to encapsulated in it's title all that Labour got wrong. Chav, isn't a word used to bully the working class, whenever I've heard it used it's by working class people, it refers to the violent, thuggish, people who live in their council houses, take their benefits, make their communities unsafe and unpleasent. And working people are sick of people thinking they are like these people.

Fri, 2012-04-27 15:54 — reddeviljp

Problem is, there are no jobs and benefits pays to not take a job. When the Coalition changes go through even more people will give up work 'cos they'll be better off on benefits.

It's not even a Labour problem as unemployment was at its lowest under New Labour since the 70s. It was Thatcher who began the chase to the bottom of low waged and unemployment when her policies destroyed many nationalised industries.

It appears that these are just your own prejudices stoked by a Coalition prolonging the recession for its own ideological satisfaction.

Sun, 2012-04-22 08:52 — rain (not verified)

Why should the English working class vote for a political party that undermines and destroys their communities: denies them jobs and allocate scarce social housing to newly arrived immigrants? We don’t need a weather man to tell us which way the wind is blowing; trendy cosmopolitans which invest the Labour party may hold lofty high-flown ideals of equality and fidelity; we simply believe in addressing our problems and issues, and attempting to find solutions to our many problems, problem made worse after 13 years of New Labour, millions of workers who aren’t beholden to the state, look-on in total amusement at Labour’s attempt at reinvention: our Scottish brothers and sisters are embracing nationalism, it will not be long before the English working class do likewise. The economic and political chasm between state and privately employed workers is a point of antagonism, why should one worker work longer for less and retire in relative poverty than another, why should one worker hold special status, and demand privileges others don’t enjoy: all this came about under a Labour Government: is this what Labour’s trendy cosmopolitans meant by equality. Many now feel more comfortable with the nasty party, than an old friend they no longer understand or even care about. Can Labour mend bridges, bridge an ever-widening chasm or say sorry: probably not? We simply don’t care. Labour is in terminal decline. Old Labour is dead; it’s just not yet buried.

Sun, 2012-04-22 02:53 — Marcyd (not verified)

Oh yeah, and what values does Blue Labour support that will lose you some liberals?

Let me guess, we are supposed to hate immigrants, right? That's what's going to "win you the election"? Pandering to people's basest prejudices, ones carefully engendered by the right wing press and the last Labour administration, funnily enough. Glasman is just another bigot as far as I can see. Why don't you actually try standing up for what is right, rather than vilifying the most vulnerable people in society, who only end up here because of two expensive destructive wars pursued by Labour?

You really have lost the plot. Labour truly is dead. Good riddance if this is your idea of renewal. Where are the policies on tax evasion? And on cuts? And young people, women etc? Why aren't you supporting the Tobin tax?

Conservatism is the best you can do. Disgraceful.

Sun, 2012-04-22 20:03 — test-test (not verified)

I didn't realise people came here from the Indian sub-continent because of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Indeed I rather thought they'd been arriving here in good number well before that.

Sun, 2012-04-22 10:08 — nsmres (not verified)

Calling everyone bigot, makes you what?

I am an immigrant but a pragmatist and therefore a conservative. What makes Britain great is its cultural values and they need preservation and not annihilation.

My challenge to every single so called Liberals "Publish Cartoons" and prove me wrong.

Proof of pudding and all that....

Sun, 2012-04-22 02:53 — Marcyd (not verified)

Oh yeah, and what values does Blue Labour support that will lose you some liberals?

Conservatism is the best you can do. Disgraceful.

Sat, 2012-04-21 21:57 — nsmres (not verified)

Very good piece. Very touchy. We all long for days when politics was based on heartfelt common sense. Now it is all year spins by actors, one of which claims allegiance to the left and the other to the right. They only are good enough to serve themselves.

The whole world has been hijacked by the selfish genes. (pun intented)

Sat, 2012-04-21 21:04 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

I think that it is a bit of a shame that Maurice Glasman never took up that offer of a column on the Sun on Sunday. Someone at least broadly Blue Labour ought to have a regular spot on a mass circulation paper. Rowenna Davis, perhaps?

Sat, 2012-04-21 18:28 — hugh markey (not verified)

Most of the Labour vote has always been conservative with a small 'c'.
Racial prejudice, hanging and flogging and the British Empire were deeply ingrained in the British political constitution.
The benefits of the French Revolution were restricted to the French population - just look at how Napoleon and his coterie thrived whilst France expanded. Same goes for the United States. Ask any Native American or black slave.
It is always with great reluctance that the British working class majority vote the Tories out. Usually after the Tories have made such a mess of things pandering to their own class. A Labour government is then given short shrift when they do not make everyone millionaires - instantly.
John Major, little John Ordinary, obtained the largest universal vote ever. Grammar school boy made good. The Tory High Command could not countenance another state school tyke but had to bite the bullet and go along with Bill Hague and Mike Howard.
Hyphenated Iain Duncan-Smythe not exactly public school and something of a basket did not measure up.
Stop making excuses for the British working class and the celeb underclass. Event, dear boy, events will sort 'em out.

Rank Labour

Sat, 2012-04-21 16:24 — adrian nicholas (not verified)

Certainly supported much of what Maurice Glasman's propositions, (strange he is'nt cited in article?), and think that the 'blue labour' tag actually put a lot of people off what he was writing. Since 'blue collar' has never meant conservative, and the progressive community Prof. Glasman was on about was rather more radical, progressive and egalitarian by actual consequence than unsurprisingly much of the media and some residual 'new labour' elements, managed sadly succesfully to distort and misrepresent, much as they back in the early 1990's rejected the positive egalitarianism of even Rawls 70's ' 'original position' before revision following similar liberalist and globalist aligned criticism to allow the cartel corporate capitalism and a two tier financial system with deregularization and small state via privitisation and outsorcing of public services. This monetarist liberalism eschews personal responsibility r duty of care for its financial consequences in social economic inequitous terms and statistics to the community. The metaphysical imbalance between the private and public political is causing visible harm to the same within the individual self by its distortion of avaristic values and short term juvenile behavior that then permeates via consumerism to behaviour and replacement of reason by irrationalism at community level and disadvantage to genuine equality and reason extended by responsibility based on relationships and political dialogue interaction with citizens.

Be nice if N/S could do a follow up article with the respected Glasman in near future ?

Sat, 2012-04-21 21:39 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

This, the Lanchester Declaration, was published on 3rd February:

1. Our common position is one 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.

2. That is 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.

3. Our common position as set out in 1 above 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 commitments set out in 2 above, though without requiring any of them.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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”.

9. A truly national party would fight every seat as if it were a knife-edge marginal.

10. A truly national party as a vehicle for our common position 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.

David Lindsay, Parish Councillor, Lanchester, County Durham; Tutor, Collingwood College, Durham; http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com
Rachel Banner, True Wales
Adam Bartlett, Labour Party member, Slough
Patrick Carr, Dipton, County Durham; http://twitter.com/littlehuan
Tim Collard, Edinburgh; Retired British Diplomat (Germany and China); http://timcollard.blogspot.com
Ann Farmer, Woodford Green, Essex; Writer and Researcher; http://www.annfarmer.co.uk
Peter Kilfoyle, Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, 1991-2010; Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science, 1997-1998; Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, 1998-1999; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence, 1999-2000
Mark McNally, Tutor, Collingwood College, Durham
Dr Martin Meenagh, Tutor, Lecturer and Barrister, London; http://martinmeenagh.blogspot.com
Margaret Pattison, Councillor, Lancaster City Council
Robert Pelik, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham
Richard Robinson, Councillor, Broxtowe Borough Council

Affiliations are given for identification purposes only. Party officials have actively prevented at least one Labour Peer from signing. A rising Labour student activist has felt obliged to withdraw his signature. The Guardian has refused to print it.

Sun, 2012-04-22 20:19 — test-test (not verified)

WIBBLE! WIBBLE!

Sun, 2012-04-22 20:19 — test-test (not verified)

WIBBLE! WIBBLE!

Sun, 2012-04-22 21:45 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

Not aimed at the likes of you, luv. You'd be happier on popbitch.

Sun, 2012-04-22 21:56 — test-test (not verified)

Oh, dear, they're clearly not keeping you occupied at Collingwood, that you have to sit night after night hunched over your computer, with the curtains drawn, furiously typing out your response to a Staggers comment thread.

Sat, 2012-04-21 12:54 — Tesco Shelf Stacker (not verified)

Bob169 "If the party adopted the Blue Labour platform, they would sweep the next election."

You make some very good points Bob, but sadly whatever trust politicians once had has now been completely lost - I don't think there are many ex-Labour voters out there who would trust Labour to keep to their pre-election promises once they got into power. The self-serving ruling political class will find a way to worm their way out of their manifesto pledges and quite frankly voters are waking up to the fact that we have a bunch of two-faced lying self-serving hypocritical scumbags running Westminster.

Sat, 2012-04-21 12:53 — Tesco Shelf Stacker (not verified)

"We’re moving to a situation when the divide in this country isn't between left and right. It's between a liberal elite who runs the country and a small c conservative public that doesn’t. "

HOORAY.... finally the penny has dropped.

Well almost, because the fact is we're not actually moving into this situation anymore - we are already there.

You hear it everywhere now - people speaking in terms of 'them and us' - 'them' the out-of-touch ruling political class at Westminster and 'us' the poor f*ckers who have to put up with their hypocritical self-serving cra@p.

Btw: Revolutionary change may not appeal to those in Labour Peckham - but where I live in conservative territory - anger is reaching boiling point.

Don't come here waving an EU flag - you could end up leaving with it stuffed up your ar$$. lol :-)

Sat, 2012-04-21 08:35 — rain (not verified)

After 13 years of Labour, the working class went from being the salt of the earth to the scum of the earth, the lefty cosmopolitans which now control the Labour party were totally indifferent, or simply didn't care about the genuine concerns of the working class: such has housing and job opportunities. Many considered the working class to be bigoted and racist and beyond redemption. That’s all well and good until these trendy cosmopolitans need their votes; the fundamental problem for Labour is many of these bigoted racists now see Labour for what it truly is: a cosmopolitan gang of multiculturalist fruitcakes, with no vision and no understanding where wealth is actually created, and the other problem for Labour is, Labour needs these bigoted racists more than these decent hardworking and welcoming people need Labour.

Sat, 2012-04-21 00:09 — FDR (not verified)

One could argue that Scottish Labour has been flying the flag for Blue Labour for some time now. A small "c" conservative agenda that doesn't want any reform but to preserve the country largely in its current form while tinkering around the edges. It hasn't worked. Even fewer people turn out to vote in Scotland and the party that is most radical (even when you discount the constitution as an issue) is the SNP. That's the thing lefties don't down south don't get about the SNP, they're the Scottish answer to New Labour. They court the Scottish centre ground (which naturally is to the left of the UK position) and win elections because of it.

Sat, 2012-04-21 00:52 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

Pull the other one! There used to be two big parties in Scotland, Labour and the Tories. There are now two big parties in Scotland, Labour and the SNP. Basic arithmetic is all that is needed to understand what has happened.

The SNP has simply taken over the (manifestly, therefore, still very large) Tory bloc in Scotland: posh, wannabe posh, shortbread tin Scottish, mildly Keynesian while also mildly socially conservative in that Church of Scotland way, but also with elements psychotically hostile to municipal Labour and to the trade unions, and with elements of white Protestant supremacism.

Thus were the Scottish Tories until, and in many places well into, the 1980s. To a tee. And thus is the SNP today. To a tee. "Left of centre", indeed! Scotland has, in the form of the SNP, the Tory government that England does not have, and would not have even without the rest of the United Kingdom.

Sat, 2012-04-21 11:33 — FDR (not verified)

Basic Arithmetic! Such a simple analysis can be applied to any election. What matters is the underlying cause of the trends.

The Tory vote began to erode in Scotland before Devolution because under Thatcher and Major the party became the party of England in eyes of most Scottish voters (including a lot of the shire Tory vote in Scotland which went to the LDs and the SNP, or stopped turning out). The Tories have never really made a serious attempt to get these voters back which was partly behind them not getting an overall majority in 2010.

Devolution changed everything and it is 1999 were it all started. Labour took 56 of the seats with 38.8% of the constituency vote and 33.8% of the list vote.While the SNP took 35 of the seats with 28.7% of the constituency vote and 27.5% of the list vote.

Labour then embarked on a programme of doing very little, contrasted with a UK Labour government post 2001 that was trying to push through some very radical reforms. The Scottish Labour response was as small "c" conservative as you can get.

At the next election in 2003 Labour bled support (much more than in '07 or '11 in fact) but only lost 6 seats because the lost voters scattered all over the place to the SSP and the Greens amongst others, and turnout also dropped 10%.

It was following this Alex Salmond became leader of the SNP again, and they started to stop talking about independence and started to put forward some very radical centrist policies. Local income tax to replace council tax (very popular but they've shelved it now in favour of a council tax freeze), cutting class sizes, free tuition fees (which probably hurt the LDs more than Labour), cutting business rates for small business to zero. The list goes on. Meanwhile contrast that with Labour, who largely conserved everything apart from a ban on smoking which the SNP backed anyway.

Salmond won, and when Labour continued to bring the same tired arguments in '11 he won again and this time much bigger. Scottish Labour still has large support amongst blue collar workers, its pensioners and white collar workers the party needs to win. In short, they need to win the centre ground.

Sat, 2012-04-21 15:48 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

Scottish Labour still has large support amongst blue collar workers, its pensioners and white collar workers the party needs to win. In short, they need to win the centre ground.

In short, they need to win the Tories.

My point is proved out of your own mouth.

Fri, 2012-04-20 21:21 — Paul Danon (not verified)

But socialism must surely bring about societal and familial collapse to bring about the ideal state.

Fri, 2012-04-20 18:41 — Bob169 (not verified)

If the party adopted the Blue Labour platform, they would sweep the next election. The British public are crying out for a party based on common sense, that speaks for ordinary people, not the metropolitan liberal elite of Islington.

Let's have a party that practises economic protectionism, putting British businesses first and stopping them being swallowed up by foreign companies, which then offshore factories to low wage economies, producing shoddy goods that we then have to import. Where's the economic logic in that?

On immigration, we need a party that is rational on immigration, and realises that mass immigration badly hurts the working class; by undercutting wages and leading to unemployment and poverty. It's not racist to say this, it's simple economics. This has nothing to do with where the immigrants come from, so a cap on immigration at 5,000 a year should be implemented, with no favours afforded to any country.

We should protect the welfare state, but realise that there should be a contributory principle applied to it. So, migrants should not have access to free healthcare, housing, benefits until they have contributed in tax for at least a period of time. Otherwise, you're going to end up with benefit tourism putting immense pressure on our public services.

On social matters, the vast majority of the British public do believe in small c conservative values that none of the other parties espouse. We need to be tough on crime, putting victims ahead of criminals, and promote communitarian values ahead of cosmopolitanism, which erodes traditional family values that we hold so dear.

Moreover, we should renationalise the railways, and prevent the creeping privatisation of the NHS. Our tax system should be reformed to give British industry the edge. There should be tax breaks to companies that don't offshore IT jobs and factories and keep the work in this country, rather than sell the youth of today short. We shouldn't be fearful of protecting industry to allow us to develop an industrial base, this is the infant industry argument that served the East Asian Tiger Economies so well when they were industrialising. The Free Trade argument has damaged industry, leading to the loss of highly skilled jobs the third world, and has badly affected our farmers as we're forced to import food from developing countries.

None of these policies are radical, they are basic common sense. Globalism, Metropolitan Liberalism and Industrialism has damaged this country, with the focus always on the price of everything and the value of nothing, which is why we've lost industry to the developing world. Let's bump up tariffs and taxes on imports, subsidise British producers and incentivise people so that they "buy British". We used to be the workshop of the world, now we're reduced to an economic basketcase that can't pay it's way in the world.

If any party adopted the common sense proposals I've outlined, they'd get my vote. The Blue Labour ideology looks refreshingly like a break from the Liberal Metropolitan Elite groupthink that has dominated the media for the last 20 years.

Fri, 2012-04-20 15:54 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

Ahem, if I may:

“David Lindsay has generated a brilliant reconciliation of the conflicting strains of the Labour Tradition and is worthy of the closest attention.” Dr Maurice Glasman, Lord Glasman of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill; Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Director of the Faith and Citizenship Programme, London Metropolitan University; founder of Blue Labour.

“This book is well researched, is full of facts and deals with contemporary and historical political and social issues. It comes from the left but it should also appeal to those who are concerned with and interested in the great issues and how they are dealt with by our political and other institutions. It is well worth reading.” David Stoddart, Lord Stoddart of Swindon; Labour MP for Swindon, 1970-1983; Government Whip, 1975-1978.

“Current orthodoxy – both in economic policy and right across the board – has so manifestly failed us that we desperately need some fresh thinking and a different way of looking at our problems. That is precisely what David Lindsay provides in this stimulating book.” Professor Bryan Gould, Labour MP for Southampton Test, 1974-1979; Labour MP for Dagenham, 1983-1994; Shadow Cabinet Member, 1986-1994; Leadership Candidate, 1992.

“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.” Professor John Milbank, Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham.

“Parliamentary democracy was not invented in 1689. Banking was established by the Venetians, not the Dutch. Much in our history and development owes much to complex ideas and traditions, especially to Jacobitism. David Lindsay’s highly original book explains why and how.” Dr Eveline Cruickshanks, Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London; Chairman of the Jacobite Studies Trust.

“David Lindsay has written a provocative, informed, and idiosyncratic work that will intrigue those interested in the intersection of Christian social thought, populism, and Anglo-American politics.” Mark Stricherz, author of Why the Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party.

“An excellent College Tutor here at Collingwood.” Professor Joe Elliott AcSS, Principal of Collingwood College, Durham.

Buy the book http://www.lulu.com/shop/david-lindsay/confessions-of-an-old-labour-high... ">here

Fri, 2012-04-20 15:45 — Davidaslindsay (not verified)

Spot on.

Fri, 2012-04-20 15:45 — Charlie Mansell (not verified)

Nick Pecorelli writing on the Shifting Grounds Blog has also written about the need for Labour to go beyond promoting the need for aspiration and fairness to appeal to those who are concerned about, safety, security and sustenance in tough times and are thus cautious and therefore naturally conservative with a small 'c': http://shiftinggrounds.org/2012/04/aspiration-plus-fairness-is-not-enough/

Fri, 2012-04-20 15:44 — Liz Pollard (not verified)

I have to agree with Matt Cousin there.

Fri, 2012-04-20 15:43 — Kevin Finnerty (not verified)

These politicians only care about real issues when they want us to vote them back in.

I don't trust the Labour party, but I admire the author of this article who is at least attempting to tell it how it is.

Fri, 2012-04-20 15:34 — Matt Zarb-Cousin (not verified)

Post-liberalism is an interesting notion, with the Labour Party in a present state of flux. There are certain factions who, in my view, need a reality check. This isn't 1995 any more. We're in a post-financial crisis world; the use of neoliberal semantics isn't going to get the party where it needs to be to win an election.

When Daily Mail readers are fed up with bankers' bonuses, it's not an "aspiration" agenda that's going to win the support of middle England, but one of fairness. Away from the economy, the party should focus on areas of life the market seems to have eroded.

This is where Rowenna makes an excellent reference to Courouble's work on sanctity and loyalty. We don't hear politicians talking about these concepts enough.

Fri, 2012-04-20 15:30 — carlr (not verified)

I believe George Lansbury would be appalled by the lack of internationalism within Blue Labour and would probably regard most Blue Labour people in the same way he regarded 'National Liberals.' Most of all, the l to ack of a positive prospect of municipal OWNERSHIP would be obvious to him - any responsibility for actions are therefore divorced from empowerment.