The man who hopes to win English votes for Labour

Maurice Glasman and Ed Miliband do not think as one. But Miliband’s Favourite Thinker™ is an undoubted influence on the Labour party — and, as such, it’s worth tuning into his ideas from time to time, if you have a tolerance for such things. Glasman’s “Blue Labour” philosophy has already enjoyed heavy exposure this year, and he has an interview in today’s Times (£) to explain it even further. If you’re not minded to buy, borrow or steal a copy of the Thunderer, then here are a few observations.

First, it’s striking just how much Glasman dwells on the personal. “If you want to know everything that was wrong about Scottish Labour and Labour,” he urges, “then just look at the career of Gordon Brown. He was completely cynical in his calculations, then he dressed it up as the moral high ground.” And Glasman’s brand of armchair psychology even stretches the current Labour leader, whom he suggests “still feels completely guilty” about defeating his brother to the throne. He adds that MiliE has “a real mixture of gentleness, of spirit and stubborness, that is perfect for this moment.”

And then there are the ideas themselves. David Aaronivitch has depicted the Blue Labour ideology (£) as one harkening back to a “Merrie England” — and there’s much of that here. “There is a great space for Labour to be the patriotic party, to say this is a great country,” is how Glasman puts it, “It’s England — and now we have England back.” To that end, he suggests bolstering institutions such as pubs, football clubs and post offices, as well establishing an English Parliament.  And he takes a line on immigration that bears some comparison to David Cameron’s speech on the subject in Munich:

“There was a ‘big rupture of trust’ between Labour and voters over immigration. ‘Under New Labour, immigration was used as a de facto wages policy — it kept wages down at the bottom end. Labour went for a big multicultural agenda when I think I think it should have gone for a much more robust, common-good agenda.’ Does he back an immigration cap? ‘We’ve got to engage with a very serious discussion with the EU on the free movement of Labour and why that is not a positive good.’ The country will have to have a ‘regularisation of immigrants’. ‘I don’t think we should be in the mass deportation business. But we’ve now got to say “We’ve got the people. We’re fine with diversity but we have to broker solidarity.'”

There are aspects of Glasman’s thinking that might have surface attractiveness for the electorate. But the main problems, to my mind, come when Labour try to package and sell them. It’s all well and good for an academic to argue that smoking should be allowed in bars, for instance, but the public may not find it so persuasive coming from a party that said — and did — differently in government. And then there are the similarities between Blue Labour and its philosophical flipsides, Red Toryism and the Big Society. Glasman maintains that the latter has no “critical word about the markets.” But just try explaining that on a poster.