So Much for Blue Labour
David Runciman
It’s slightly less than a week since my piece on Maurice Glasman and Blue Labour went to the printers, but slightly less than a week is a long time in the crazy circus that currently passes for British politics. Ed Miliband has won a victory of sorts by getting David Cameron to admit that he should never have hired Andy Coulson, but now he has the problem of knowing what to do about Tom Baldwin: if he gets rid of him, he rather diminishes the victory; if he keeps him, he allows the Tories to taunt Labour with being the party that hangs on to its News International insiders. Miliband’s riposte to questions about Baldwin in parliament today – that Baldwin’s line manager when he worked at the Times was Cameron’s education secretary, Michael Gove – is ingenious, but only adds to the sense that the story is descending into farce.
Meanwhile, in recent days Glasman has made some ill-advised comments about immigration (i.e. suggesting that it should stop) that appear to spell the early demise of Blue Labour – according to reports in the New Statesman Miliband is planning to pull the plug and letting it be known that Glasman’s influence with him was never as great as some people have supposed. Maybe so, since nothing Glasman has been reported as saying (including that his agenda is influenced by Aristotle, Miles Davis, Lionel Messi and the pope) would come as a revelation to anyone who had actually read the essay in The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox. That Tom Baldwin and Maurice Glasman should both turn out to be capable of embarrassing Miliband is hardly a surprise. Nor is it a great surprise that Glasman is the one being ditched first. As I said in my piece, the movement does tend to get sacrificed on the altar of electoral expediency.
Comments
(I keep saying I'll kick the 1970s Italian habit - there certainly aren't many jobs in it - but what can you do, they keep showing me the dirty pictures...)
Dear Mr Miliband
We are writing as British Jews and Muslims, rabbis and imams and community leaders, in an open letter which we are forwarding to the media of both our communities.
We share a commitment to fighting racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia wherever they are found – including within our own communities. This position is informed by Jewish and Muslim ethical teaching on equality and human dignity.
We wish to express our concern at some of the statements on English national identity, immigration and the English Defence League, made by your close advisor, Lord Maurice Glasman, Labour peer and founder of “Blue Labour”.
He has spoken of his vision for Labour “to build a party that brokers a common good, that involves those people who support the EDL [English Defence League] within our party”. He has said that it is not the case that “everyone who comes is equal and has an equal status with people who are here”. And he has also called for a complete halt to immigration, and implied that he is against asylum (“Britain is not an outpost of the UN...”).
These comments have caused such offence and concern with the Muslim community that some mosques have announced a prohibition against Lord Glasman entering their premises.
We are extremely worried by Lord Glasman’s pronouncements and use of language. Whatever his intentions, these sentiments and soundbites on such an emotive topic as immigration just give fodder to extremism.
We feel that it is important for you to dissociate yourself from these comments, and we call on the Labour Party to reaffirm its best traditions of anti-racism, equality and compassion for all people in our country.
Yours sincerely
Sheikh Dr Muhammad Al-Hussaini, Lecturer in Abrahamic Religions at Al-Azhar College, Al-Azhar Al-Sharif
Sheikh Professor Mohamed Elsharkawy, Secretary of Scriptural Reasoning Imams Council
Dr Edie Friedman, Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality
Imam Shahid Hussain, Head of the Interfaith Department, Regent’s Park Mosque London
Rabbi Reuben Livingstone, Chair of Children of Abraham, Jewish Chaplain to H M Armed Forces
Imam Dr Abduljalil Sajid, Chairman of the Muslim Council for Religious and Racial Harmony UK
Rabbi Jackie Tabick, Chair of the World Congress of Faiths
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah, Rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
ENQUIRIES TO: enquiries AT childrenofabraham DOT org DOT uk
(Children of Abraham is the national charity for rabbis and imams, the Jewish Council for Racial Equality is the national body in the Jewish community on asylum and immigrant rights, the World Congress of Faiths is an international interfaith organisation, Al-Azhar Al-Sharif founded in 960 is the oldest centre of Islamic learning in the world, Scriptural Reasoning is the practice of Jews, Christians and Muslims meeting to study their sacred texts in order to foster understanding and respect for religious differences. Maurice Glasman has been a leading exponent of Scriptural Reasoning, and used this as the "Faith" justification in Blue Labour's "Faith, Family and Flag")
Instead it looks like some people have reacted in a pathetic knee jerk manner to a comment about recruitment/immigration levels, which he has actually admitted he overstated.
How could this innocuous statement create offence? What is more offensive is the group above attempting to deny a country, and its citizens, the legitimacy of its own borders.
Do they extend the same advice to Israel or Muslim countries that it is illegitimate for them to ever reduce their immigration levels?
http://rightsincontext.eu/2011/08/03/blue-labour/