The general election campaign has been remarkable in two ways – first, for the way it has cast stark light on the fragmentation of political coalitions and second – ironically given the first point – for the way in which the debate continues to be delivered in the grammar of ‘left’ and ‘right’. The rise of various nationalisms, the growing attraction of the Green Party amongst disenfranchised ‘progressives’, and the surprising five-year survival of the Con Dem Coalition, should have given politicians cause to think and talk about politics differently.

One innovative stimulant in recent debate has been ‘Blue Labour’. This is a network of Labour Party politicians, members and thinkers who blend a "progressive commitment to greater economic equality with a more 'conservative' disposition emphasising personal loyalty, family, community and locality".

A number of these thinkers and activists have contributed to a new collection of essays, Blue Labour: Forging and New Politics – an attempt to enrich the debate on the centre-left. It speaks of the primacy of faith and family life: those anchors that give working people meaning and belonging, including also the value and dignity of good and meaningful work. It also honours a sense of place in undergirding the attachment ordinary people have to their local community.

It’s easy to misinterpret Blue Labour as just another attempt to pull the Labour Party rightwards, in much the same way as New Labour seemed to be. In reality, Blue Labour operates not so much on the spectrum between the polls of right and left, but between individualism – whether social or economic – and communitarianism. But in shifting the emphasis to the latter, it does not first and foremost propose a greater role for the state – the traditional left of centre position – but rather for the family, intermediate and religious institutions. 

Religious perspectives have an important place in the Blue Labour conversation. Political discourse has for too long been characterised by a new orthodoxy – a secular ‘illiberal’ variant of liberalism, which marginalises faith and can deny many ordinary people a voice.  However, as economic and social liberalism has fragmented a vacuum has opened up. Whether we’re talking about the economic crisis of 2008, or the very real consequences of excessive social liberalism, particularly in economically vulnerable communities new stimulants are needed to re-invigorate democratic life and strengthen citizenship.

The vacuum that opens up requires nothing less than a politics rooted in Christian theology. This politics is rooted in the idea of the ‘common good’ – an approach to politics informed by Catholic Social Teaching which resists the dominance of sectional interests in public life. For example, Jon Cruddas in reflecting on the profound challenges facing Britain writes "…we need to look to an idea deeply rooted in Christian life and thought. The idea of the common good" (p 87). Blue Labour recognises the need to build a generous space that includes others in the construction of a politics of the common good, seeking a more peaceable society and a fostering a nation at ease with itself and its neighbours. Many people engage with Blue Labour from a secular vantage point, yet it is the faith element that could prove one its most enduring features as it underpins many of the substantive themes.

Its explicit reference to a politics of the common good, rooted in Catholic Social Teaching, means it is of profound interest to genuinely orthodox Christians. It is actually a story rooted in a particular tradition, as the Labour Peer Maurice Glasman – founder of the Blue Labour movement – says:

"The Labour tradition and the Christian tradition are completely linked, and it’s about protecting the status of the person from commodification and the idea that our bodies and our natural environment are just to be bought and sold. In the politics of the common good, there has never been a greater need for the gifts that the Christian tradition brings, of which the greatest is love."¹

If you haven't heard much, or indeed anything, about Blue Labour over the course of the general election campaign that because it’s not a political repositioning, calculated to win votes. Rather Blue Labour will allow, with other emerging political ideas, a change in the nature of the political conversation.

[1] Third Way magazine, February 2012

Ian Geary is an Executive Member of Christians on the Left, and co-editor with Adrian Pabst of Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics (I.B. Tauris, 2015)

Image by Dean Hochman from flickr.com under the Creative Commons Licence