Blue Labour has won the argument
Reality is finally beginning to bite inside the Labour party – as events in Liverpool last week proved
Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray
I have attended several Labour party annual conferences in my time. The few days that delegates and activists from all over the country spend together at a party conference are usually a good barometer of the degree to which the organisation is in tune with the wider public.
I have witnessed Labour conference at its most delusional, such as in 2018 when it adopted its suicidal second EU referendum policy, believing – absurdly – that it would help propel the party to power at the next election. I think I was one of the few people inside the hall who realised that we had, in fact, just handed P45s to a whole clutch of our MPs in the north and Midlands.
But in Liverpool last week, there was no delusion – just troubled realisation. Labour knows it is out of step with the very people it was created to represent and is heading for an electoral good hiding.
The spectre of Nigel Farage haunted the conference, his name a constant feature of conversations and debate. Labour officials and activists know full well that Reform UK has parked its tanks firmly on their lawn. In the 98 seats in which Reform came second at the last election, 89 were won by Labour, and 60 of those were in the north of England. And with Labour now struggling badly in the polls while Reform surges, there is a growing acknowledgement that something drastic must happen if Farage is to be prevented from securing the keys to Downing Street.
As a Labour member who supported Brexit, believes in strong borders, rejects state-sponsored multiculturalism and opposes the woke dogma, I have occasionally felt about as welcome as a hedgehog in a nudist colony at party conferences.
And the Blue Labour pressure group of which I have long been a supporter, and which stands for what some describe as the ‘faith, family and flag’ agenda, has similarly been regarded as beyond the pale, seen by many in the party as ‘reactionary’ and ‘hateful’.
But things are changing. Neither I nor Blue Labour are quite the pariahs we once were. Instead, some have begun to recognise that we called it right over many years – foreseeing the rupture with the working class caused by the party’s embrace of radical progressive ideology – and are now, perhaps, worth listening to.
At the Liverpool conference, three MPs spoke on a Blue Labour panel. This was remarkable, for there was a time when no MP, save the odd hardy soul, would wish to be associated with the group in any way. It was standing room only at the event, with many young members in attendance.
Meanwhile, I interviewed Blue Labour founder Maurice Glasman at a fringe meeting. After the discussion, we opened the meeting to the floor for questions and contributions. There wasn’t a single critical comment.
Blue Labour and Glasman are currently the talk of the town. And rightly so. Because if the party is to stand any chance at all of holding on to power next time around, it will do so only by adopting a Blue Labour programme – or something closely resembling it.
That means delivering economic justice, for sure, but also understanding the patriotic and small ‘c’ conservative impulses of working-class people in the provincial parts of our country. Securing growth and raising living standards, not least through reinvigorating our long-neglected domestic industrial base – but also championing national sovereignty, resisting the excesses of capitalism, reducing immigration sharply, and recognising the desire of millions of voters for belonging and cultural attachment.
Gone are the days when a Labour leader – indeed, any major party leader – could stand before his or her annual conference and tell delegates, as Tony Blair did famously in 2005, that to even debate globalisation would be as absurd as debating ‘whether autumn should follow summer’. Globalisation was not only irresistible but ‘replete with opportunities’, argued Blair.
Well, guess what. Over the years that followed, those opportunities passed millions by. For these people, the new global market meant only grinding deindustrialisation, acute demographic change and rapid cultural transformation.
And, unsurprisingly, they didn’t much like any of it. Because, in the end, you cannot violate so flagrantly the things that matter to people and expect no blowback.
The gospel which the Labour party has been preaching for the past three decades has little resonance across today’s Britain, particularly those parts of it beyond our fashionable cities and university towns. Globalisation and radical progressivism may have brought financial and spiritual enrichment to a lucky few – but they have failed the masses. That’s a truth that parts of the party are finally beginning to acknowledge.
Understanding it is one thing, though. Doing something about it is the tricky bit. Whether the Labour party has the courage to enact the radical change necessary to win back millions of lost working-class voters remains to be seen.
I am sceptical. After all, old habits – and prejudices – die hard.
A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery
An edited version of the above piece first appeared behind the paywall on the GB News website.
Absolutely excellent analysis as always. I am not a Labour voter but have long admired and agreed with Lord Glasman - and you, Paul!
The current Labour Party in government has drifted so far away from the majority of voters I can’t see a way back for it, unless a new Leader and PM with a new Cabinet drawn from Blue Labour supporters was able to take a completely different direction. This, however, looks very unlikely, so I imagine we will just bump along with people feeling more and more disenfranchised and demoralised until the Government is finally put out of its misery.
Since Blair took us into an illegal war in Iraq killing our troops, thousands of Iraqi's and setting the scene for the mess we are in now Labour have not been a party for the 'workers'. I doubt they have even been for Britain!
For the whole of Sunak's time in No10 not a single credible alternative has left the lips of any Labour Minrster in way of policy. The last 18months have seen them flounderoing like fish out of water from one blunder to the next all the while proclaiming 'its part of the long plan'. They haven't a clue! The sheer venom coming from labour when in opposition during PM's Q's to Cameron and Sunak was disgusting, remember the 'You're all scum' coming from the arch blagger herself Rayner? Pot calling kettle I'd say.
Lack of any action STILL when told to conduct a fully public enquiry into the rape gangs. Never going to get goiung when that elitist Cooper was Home Secretary now a myth under the Islamist Mahmood, no way will that specimen rat out her bretheren. That disgusting individual alone has been party to and part of the drive to anti Jewish hate in this country the second she Aboot and other Labour Minsiers attended any one of the weekly anti Jew hate protests.
All endorsed by a dispicable racist Lammy and Starmer utterly weak (non) Leadership resulting in recognising that Jihad training ground Palistine as a state and the accepting of Pali students on uni grants. You must be kidding me, may aswell turn Buckinham Palace into an asylum hotel and set up a terror recruitment program there.
Sorry Paul but Labour are disgusting, they have done absolutely nothing to reduce the rising anti jewish hate in this country, promote British patriotism, keep the rise of Islam in this our Christian contry down, have not listened to ordinary people raging about the fear of their daughters and wives etc from rape by undocumented mostly muslin illegals. On top of that they have done NOTHING to stop the boats which is pretty easy to do.
Nah! What they've done is to brand everyone who does not agree with their globalist Fabian drive as racist far rightist and as such subkect to the most ridiculous of censorship, arrest, punishment and jail time.
Latest, 700 odd arrests at yet another Anti Jew Protest in London. Wheres your man Starmer, Lammy or Mahmood's public statement threatening the fastest and harshest of punishments!