Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good
By Maurice Glasman
Polity £16.99

In 2009, with the world reeling in the aftermath of the financial crash, it was clear to Maurice Glasman that Labour was in trouble.

Launched that year, his Blue Labour project, with its emphasis on blue-collar values with a conservative bent, was an attempt to renew the party’s historic solidarity with the working-class base poised to abandon it in droves.

However, only this September has the political theorist, ennobled by Ed Miliband in 2010, finally got round to distilling his vision into a single slim volume, Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good.

It probes how successive Labour and Conservative administrations have preserved the existing neoliberal framework, and why social democracy is a better option.

Key to Glasman’s thinking is a more democratically accountable immigration system, in order to avoid what he dubs “ugly and aggressive nationalism”.

For the 61-year-old peer, these concerns must be addressed through democratic means, with elected politicians implementing pledges to lower net migration.

Many within and outside Labour who are keen to reject any criticism of immigration levels will inevitably find this uncomfortable, yet with almost 80 per cent of Britons currently believing that the government is handling immigration badly, the book is sensible to address the issue.

Naturally Glasman offers a pretty grim diagnosis of the lockdown era. He’s no lockdown sceptic a la Laurence Fox and Toby Young, but he’s unafraid to show how the pandemic laid bare the weakness of globalised supply chains and elite inertia.

And while he agrees that lockdown proved the usefulness of technology when it comes to creating new ways of working and communicating, he also argues that a digitally-dominated future is fundamentally at odds with human desire.

He also, unsurprisingly, takes issue with Tony Blair. Blair and Bush’s war(s) on terror are subtly lamented without being explicitly namechecked, as is the frenzied isolationism of the far left. Instead, Glasman urges an internationalism rooted in mutually beneficial alliances, as opposed to blocs like the EU.

He even theorises about a coalition between island nations including the UK, Taiwan, and New Zealand, as a bulwark against China.

Furthermore, he frames Blairism as a continuation of Thatcherite liberalism, while also rejecting the toxic extremes of the Corbyn era. For Glasman, the coronavirus and Brexit dilemmas have proved more than ever that Labour continues to champion “an outdated form of modernism”.

Invoking his debt to Jewish history, he proclaims that “we are all in exile” and powerfully argues for the restoration of the bonds offered by faith, patriotism, community and family aided by a guaranteed basic standard of living, and the elevation of workers’ dignity above the pursuit of profit.

Yet his lean towards the right could never be confused for Conservatism. He consistently employs a class-based analysis of power while vigorously celebrating trade unionism, the NHS and the expanded Welfare State.

He also offers a slew of policy suggestions, from replacing half of the UK’s universities with apprenticeship schemes, and a decentralised banking system promoting regional investment, to the restoration of the House of Lords’ judicial functions.

That said, the proposals lack detail, possibly because there is no realistic hope of them being executed.

From the Tudor enclosure laws to the London dock strikes, Glasman consciously roots his thoughts in Britain’s history of political strife. And his book is broadly accessible to the interested common reader, while its vision will prove palatable to many.

What’s less clear is whether Labour’s incumbent leadership would entertain its social conservatism and repudiation of identity politics, rebalance the liberal economy, or genuinely understand its euroscepticism.

Yet the Blue Labour project illustrates the fundamental mismatch between voters and elites which seem well-placed to turn British politics on its head.

This book hints at how a Dalston-dwelling don might help decide its future.