I read with interest the article in these esteemed pages by Jasper Ostle on the rise of Blue Labour. It’s been a long time in the political wilderness for those of us on the cultural right and economic left, so it’s almost heartening that we’ve achieved the high honour of being attacked as a menace to society. As a movement that bestrides the political spectrum, it feels fitting that only a few weeks after the Morning Star denounced Blue Labour for abandoning leftwing economics, a member of the Adam Smith Institute is berating the movement for its “messianic statism” and “socialism”. If Blue Labour can bring together Owen Jones, the Morning Star and the ASI in a single chorus of condemnation, imagine what other miracles it could achieve, given the chance.
One thing that I think gets up people’s noses is that Blue Labour is shamelessly old-fashioned and romantic. Its politics are an unapologetic love letter to Britain’s traditional history, culture and religious life. This puts it profoundly out of step with a political and media class that worships novelty and the superficial gloss of modernity. There is a common shibboleth amongst Blue Labour’s critics about the idea that history has a direction and a trajectory that should not be slowed or resisted.
Blue Labour has been ahead of almost every other element of British politics
Yet this item of faith, which unites Thatcherites and Corbynites alike, has been called into question by recent history. From the catastrophe of Afghanistan to the chaos of contemporary mass migration, those who have ignored human nature, culture and geography have been undone by their hubris. It’s nice to know that the ASI has had a Damascene conversion to seeing immigration restrictionism as something that Labour “must clearly do”, but this has not by and large been the message of free marketeers for the past two decades. Ten years ago, Sam Bowman, the director of research at the ASI, was calling for higher levels of migration and blithely assuring us that this would in turn produce higher wages for native workers. Sam got his millions of migrants, but the result has been 14 years of wage and productivity stagnation.
By contrast, Blue Labour has been ahead of almost every other element of British politics on this issue, with Lord Glasman calling for a halt to mass migration, and for Britain to opt out of EU freedom of movement, back in 2011. At the time, he was attacked and isolated for this position — now it’s the reason he’s being courted by Keir Starmer and his team.
Glasman was prophetic on this question not just because he’s a keen intellect, but because he is rooted in community organising, and an interpersonal, rooted politics. This ground-up approach characterises Blue Labour’s approach, which contrary to how Ostle presents it, is strikingly undogmatic. A range of opinion exists in the still emerging movement, but one thing that has always characterised it is an emphasis on local decision making and economic democracy — not the top down Whitehall model.
Ostle’s article makes continual mention of Blue Labour advocating for “centralised, statist economics”. One thing I have always noticed about free market arguments is the tendency to conflate the defence of the effectiveness of private corporations with a rather sentimental story about individual human freedom and genius. Amazon may be an extraordinarily efficient organisation that produces considerable convenience for consumers, but it is also an example of economic centralisation par excellence, not some plucky anarchist commune. Indeed, the reality of modern capitalism is all too often the administrative state allying with the administrative corporation to crush the individual. If resisting this unholy alliance is “socialism”, then sign me up.
There is of course a role for a small but strong central state, especially in areas like energy policy, defence and strategic and industrial planning. This latter may be a dirty word for some, but it is hard to escape the feeling that here, too, current events are bearing out Blue Labour’s analysis. As I currently write, a state-owned Spanish firm has purchased Harland and Wolff, a Chinese steel firm run by a former communist official is closing down our last remaining steel foundry, and our nuclear power plants are run by the French government. In a world in which state subsidised and owned firms regularly outcompete and acquire British firms, doctrinaire opposition to economic planning looks dangerously naive.
Britain has paid a heavy price for its stubbornly laissez faire approach to industrial policy. It’s all very well celebrating the success of the service economy, or pointing to the failures of the 70s, but none of that ultimately does anything to change the fact that deindustrialisation has left festering socioeconomic wounds that are soaking up public resources. Nor has the present model delivered productivity gains and high levels of innovation. What is needed now is not economic dogmatism, but an economic realism directed towards protecting our culture and common life. Movements like Blue Labour, that leave aside the old, tired political duopoly, are part of the wave of the future precisely because they are rooted in political and human reality.
