Certainly blue Labour is a distance from where New Labour ended up. It is more critical of the idea that society can be changed from Whitehall than New Labour was; it is far more challenging to neoliberal economics than New Labour was willing to be. But I wonder if Tony, and those who identify with his politics, should be so nervous. Progress does a service to the party reminding us that elections are fought on the centre ground – our leaders must be able to speak to (and for) both party and country, as we did in 1997. But this law of political gravity applies to the New Labour project itself. And Labour’s electoral appeal got narrower as our political platform did. An examination of early New Labour reveals some strands of thinking that got lost, the longer we spent in government. As a recent Progress editorial put it:
Labour’s continuing attachment to Whitehall as the means to deliver change blinded it to the other possibilities which might have emerged from a greater attempt to spread and redistribute power to local communities, to users of public services and to employees in their workplaces. In so doing, it could have drawn upon the rich tradition of collective self-help, mutualism, and the cooperative and trade union movements which animated its early years.
This insight is vital. I remember a young Tony Blair rising to prominence, as shadow home secretary, speaking a language of mutual responsibility. He spoke for large parts of the nation when he described the tragic, horrifying Jamie Bulger case as ‘a hammer blow against the sleeping conscience of the nation, an ugly manifestation of a society no longer worthy of the name’. In doing so he was pointing to something important: our relationships with one another. Early New Labour was comfortable on the terrain of family and community life; its vision of society was much richer than where we were by 2010.
On the economy, there are differences between ‘New’ and ‘blue’ to be sure. When Tony warns that ‘The way the Labour party wins, is if it’s at the cutting edge of the future, is if it’s modernising’ he is talking, at least in part, about globalisation. In one respect of course he is right. Globalisation is a fact of modern life: Britain’s future lies as an open, trading nation. But this still leaves much up for grabs. Early New Labour had an ambitious vision of a stakeholder society, which had real radical potential.
The stakeholding idea is not so far away from some of the measures proposed by blue Labour, including worker representation on company boards for example. Likewise, in our first term in government Tony didn’t just ask Frank Field to think the unthinkable on welfare reform, he also took issue with wealth that was not properly earned at the top. We won in 1997 criticising fat cats in the privatised utilities. Tony should not be so worried: while there are differences there is also overlap with some of his own early insights.
Others in the party are also unconvinced. Last week my fellow MP Helen Goodman wrote a forceful response to the blue Labour eBook The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox. Her paper, which was circulated around the parliamentary Labour party, acknowledges that the blue Labour emphasis on mutual responsibility ‘strikes a real note of relevance, because many people feel their lives are insecure and that social ties and obligations have been undermined by globalisation’. But Helen, like many others, has important concerns. She worries that the ‘Blue’ part of the Blue Labour concept implies a rowing back on Labour’s historic commitments to race, gender and sexual equality. And she fears that the emphasis on our relationships, one to another, risks detracting from the universalism of the welfare state.
This debate, if we continue it in the right spirit, is a healthy and positive thing for the party. Blue Labour does not have all the answers and needs to be interrogated. But the reason I contributed to the original eBook is that I think it reminds us of some important parts of our tradition that got lost in government. Labour stands not just for liberty and equality but also fraternity. Our relationships with friends, families, neighbours, colleagues and strangers matter. They shape our lives for better or for worse – and a politics detached from them will ultimately fail. The central, ethical position is that no one should be used simply as a means to an end. People should not be exploited in markets or pushed around by government. These are fundamental Labour insights that should take their place alongside a robust defence of minority rights and the modern welfare state.
David, Though it is important to recall that Tony Blair still advocates the idea of modernisation and an open approach to politcs, indeed he recently highlighted with verve the reasons why a policy intention can become ground down to very little when exposed to the filtering process associated with political parties, Westminster, vested interests and lobby groups, media etc. The irony for me is that whenever we approach these ideas “Blue labour2, “New labour” we advocate a particular posiitive and attractive idea whilst unwittingly closing down others, which in time becomes a dogmatic assumption. The weakness for Blue Labour has been in recognising where the State actually gets things right, it was not always a failure, in addition new Labour as you highlight David became obsessed with the State and with a blind worship rather than a down to earth understanding of markets, in terms of what we can expect from them during good time and bad times and lost completely when referring to the economies and service provision people perceive in their every day life. There are dangers with mutuals and though they are an attractive option like all ideas its best one understand them, the pros, the cons and most importantly of all the applicability. You can end up with a mutual body, which like any organisation can end up, oveer time being unreachable to people from poor backgrounds once it has been established. So you need to think about the long term as well as the short term impacts. The narrative partiially feeds from Tony Blair and the New Labour idea though. I am fully aware of the negatives and rightly so that resulted from power as they affect all people and parties over time and the failings, but nonetheless the “openness” aspect of New Labour and the idea of finding the best possible solution to a given problem without reference to the arguments of the State, the Private sector or Partnership platforms associated with either or both, is the legacy of New Labour andone which will outlive all of us. Its the professioanl area of pragmatism and the true position of the central ground and the practical expectations of the public. So we have to be very weary of of any belief/ideas platform such as Blue Labour because as we learntwith the New Labour project it can go from being something exciting and refreshing and benefitting the UK to being a tired dogmatic narrow ideology designed to satisfy the establishment and keep the same tried and norrow people in positions of authority and who the public are genuinly tired of seeing on their TV screens as they have nothing to say that marries with the real world, the economy, society, or individual attitudes and can only become a follower of trends and the media, as opposed to challnging the status quo and leading as it ought to. It would be far wiser to take Blue Labour and strip it down as I have done with New Labour, take out the parts which one knows wins elections against the tide as we did here in Barking by wiping out ALL opposition, and applying it tou your own socio-geographical and poliitical context. If we want to win General Elections again we need a broad narrative that is inclusive and we do not need dogma or stygmatisation of any group as it will come back to haunt us later (as occured with the disabled).
‘Blue Labour’ is useful in challenging us to review a lot of our sacred cows – and to ask ourselves why so many of our ‘traditional’ voters have deserted us. Its emphsis on place and identity are particularly useful – it’s time we re-visted regionalism alongside localism – the two should go together.
I personally think its pathetic to use such a divisive term. The party needs to shift big time but using such terminology only gives fodder to the dinosaurs against change.