Blue Labour and Family, Faith & Flag

Over at Labour Uncut Dan Hodges has added his thoughts to the debate about Blue Labour. He makes some very good points and his article is well worth a read.

Instinctively, I find myself attracted to the notion that Labour needs to ensure that its policy platform can pass a Family, Faith & Flag test (very distinct from a cricket test, I might add). The problem is that the last Labour Government never "walked the walk" in the same way that it "talked the talk". Patriotic soundbites about British jobs for British workers seemed hollow when the public knew that a million of the new jobs created by the last Labour government went to EU migrant workers.

But I find Jon Cruddas's interpretation of Blue Labour too narrow to be resonant with more than a handful of estuary Essex constituencies. I can't see it offering much electoral appeal in Harlow, Hove or Hastings; but it could with better calibration. Hodges seems to appreciate this point, for he is right when he says that Labour needs to reacquaint itself "with those traditional working class values that were trampled under foot in the dash to occupy middle England and subsequent backlash towards liberal intellectualism".

The way Labour re-connects is by wanting to reconnect. That means not simply delivering publicity all year round, but making sure that the leaflets delivered talk about issues relevant to these target communities. Labour’s difficulty is that too few of our members actually live in and come from the communities that would respond to the type of message Blue Labour is attempting to articulate. That explains in part why Blue Labour is being greeted with suspicion for its focus on putting ourselves back in touch with the core of our core vote.

Labour dominated by a narrow, middle class, London liberal elite? Who’d have thought it?