Blue Labour told us many valuable things - but Maurice Glasman is now straying onto dangerous territory, writes Left Foot Forward's Daniel Elton.
Maurice Glasman has added much to the intellectual debate of the Left. The now Lord Glassman asserted that the Labour party’s mission is about people, not the gini coefficient or policy wonkery. First and foremost, he reminded Labour that it must always answer the question “which side are you on?”; to which the correct answer is “working people and their families”.
Unfortunately, his particular answer to that question is becoming sinister.
This morning’s Daily Telegraph reported that:
Lord Glasman, the leading policy adviser to the Labour leader, said the country should “draw the line” on immigration and even renegotiate EU rules that allow free movement for migrant workers…
He told The Daily Telegraph that Britain is “not an outpost of the UN” and the needs of the British people must be put first…
In an interview with this newspaper, he said: “We’ve got to reinterrogate our relationship with the EU on the movement of labour. The EU has gone from being a sort of pig farm subsidised bloc to the free movement of labour and capital.”
This is dog-whistle stuff, pure and simple, and is one step away from “Powell was right’.
It follows a recent Progress interview from Glasman where he said that Labour needs:
“To build a party that brokers a common good, that involves those people who support the EDL within our party.”
This seems to ignore the fact that the EDL, whatever worrying potential it has, still represents a small minority. Furthermore, the previous generations of Labour leaders that Glasman wants to emulate, always had to contend with an electorate where up to two-fifths of the working class voted for the Conservatives, often built on the back of right-wing populism that traces its lineage through Enoch Powell to Joe Chamberlain.
The Labour Party didn’t win the great national arguments by appeasing those elements but confronting them.
43 Responses to “It may soon be time ‘to draw the line’ on Glasman”
Kevin leonard
I have always been a Labour voter but the fact that they as a party are wiling to follow like sheep as the sovereign rights of this once great nation are handed over to unelected corrupt parasites in Brussels annoys me. So too the ability of the left wing to remove itself from the fact that only 33% of the UK voters would vote to stay within the EU if there was a referendum. Whatever happened to the democratic belief that the majority should rule?
Dave Citizen
The debate on immigration is, in a crowded world rapidly running into various limits, one that all serious politicians need to open their eyes to. Old tribal positions are simply not the order of the day.
If those on the left fail to engage with reality on the ground and close their minds to difficult questions they are simply handing over agenda setting to the nasty narrow minded bunch who use divide and rule as a tactic of choice.
Ed's Talking Balls
This is pathetic stuff.
I thought that the election of Ed Miliband as leader and the talk about Blue Labour was supposed to signal a debate within Labour. Some debate, when certain voices who speak uncomfortable truths are shut out and ostracised.
As Dave alludes to above, shutting your eyes and putting your fingers in your ears isn’t an option.
InternationalUNCUT
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Leon Wolfson
Dave – Limits? Oh, you mean the Tory immigration policy which is limiting the influx of *skilled* workers and costing the UK economy growth and jobs.
Again, even the Office of Budgetry Fiddling agrees that immigration is economically a net positive, what needs to happen is a percentage of that increase is set aside for a fund to tackle the social issues of that immigration.
Being exclusionary on these issues, copying the right, alienates those of us who consider ourselves British, but are not part of the white small-c christian majority (I’m white and look “the part”, certainly, but Jewish – and some of the nonsense I hear from even those on the left who should know better…).
Also, given the entire point of the EU was free movement of capital, labour and services, it’s just another call to pull out from the EU. I don’t see it as necessarily a step from Powell, although it’s certainly a step *towards* Powell.