Rumours of Blue Labour’s death have proved greatly exaggerated. Having been out in the political cold for the past decade, on 1 February it was reported that the label was being revived as a parliamentary caucus by four Labour MPs – Dan Carden, Jonathan Hinder, Jonathan Brash and David Smith. And on Monday (10 February), the political theorist, Labour peer and architect of Blue Labour, Maurice Glasman, told the New Statesman that Attorney General Richard Hermer KC was “the absolute archetype of an arrogant, progressive fool”, who needed to be removed from his position. His comments have dominated coverage of the party over the past few days. The fate of Hermer, a human rights lawyer and close friend of the Prime Minister, is now the subject of intense speculation. So what is the future of this resilient and apparently pugnacious political tendency – and what does Blue Labour truly stand for?
Glasman’s assertion that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, was “one of ours” would imply Blue Labour is close to the Starmer leadership. But it originally came to prominence in the early 2010s under Ed Miliband’s leadership, as an intellectual and political movement that fuses left-wing economic policy and social conservatism. Speaking to me for the New Statesman podcast, David Smith, the MP for North Northumberland who is openly Blue Labour, told me the “blue” is often mistaken to stand for conservative. “That’s nothing to do with it,” he said. “It’s a sense of malaise – feeling a bit blue about something,” he explained, reflecting the mood of politics in the country. But it’s also blue collar. “It’s about: who do we stand for as the Labour Party? And I would say, we stand for the whole country, but we are especially concerned about working people.”
Smith told the New Statesman that the group is far stronger than people think. “There’s significantly more than four now,” he said. When pushed, he put the number at about a dozen, though he was unwilling to share any further names. It does, he assured me, include women. How many parliamentary colleagues might be willing to align themselves with Blue Labour by the end of the year? “I don’t know… I know that there’s a lot of interest in it and I know that the number is growing,” Smith replied. “We don’t have a target. I’m having a lot of conversations with people.”
Smith is keen to play down any suggestion of a battle being played out within the Labour ranks for the soul of the party. “I just don’t think they’re that helpful,” he said, adding that all the conversations he’s had with colleagues in recent weeks have been “interesting and positive”. More awareness of Blue Labour, along with deeper thinking and exchanging of ideas, can only be seen as a good thing, he says: both for the party and the country as a whole. What, then, did he make of Blue Labour’s architect-in-chief openly calling for a government minister to be sacked? Did he agree with Glasman’s assessment of Richard Hermer? “No,” Smith answered immediately. “I respect Maurice, greatly,” Smith replied. “He’s a great guy. A deep thinker. But I don’t think that any kind of ad hominem attack is wise… And I’ve told Maurice that.”
The fact that Glasman’s pronouncement was seized upon by Kemi Badenoch at Prime Minister’s Questions didn’t help quell the idea of a division on Labour’s back benches. “When this discussion that’s going on at the moment [within Labour] is portrayed as a battle or a fight and when certain things are said about certain people, I don’t think that’s useful at all,” Smith told me. “I want to have an open discussion with colleagues about the broad direction of our politics, about what we stand for. I think that should be normal and natural within any political party at any time. But I was in the chamber when the leader of the opposition brought that up and obviously I don’t think that’s helpful.”
If Smith is right, it seems likely that we will hear far more from Blue Labour in the coming months and years, perhaps not from any spokesperson, but in the way this government pursues policy and power. The Labour leadership, said Andrew Marr on the New Statesman podcast, is “listening” to them, as well as to the ideologically aligned group of “Red Wall” Labour MPs. “As it becomes clearer that this is the way the government are going… frankly, careerism will kick in and lots of people will discover that they were Blue Labour… after all,” Marr said. This would make Blue Labour one of the most powerful parliamentary factions in the party, with years still left in this term. Whether Blue Labour can put aside its divisions over strategy and intellectually transform the party, however, remains to be seen.
[See also: The battle for Labour’s soul]
Listen to the New Statesman podcast
Content from our partners
Related
