WTAF is "Blue Labour"?

[Patrick Thistle]

Some goon on Twitter or a real thing?

https://twitter.com/blue_labour/status/1205866120256856073?s=19

[Bored Of Education]

Cunts, basically

[ursus arctos]

From their website

Blue Labour is the Labour Party pressure group that aims to put relationships and responsibility at the heart of British politics.

We combine respect for work, family and community with a commitment to the common good: sustainable politics that helps people lead meaningful lives. You can find out more about what this means in practice by downloading our e-brochure available here.

There has been a surge of interest in Blue Labour this year and a lot of people have been asking what they can do to help. We have spent this year expanding the movement by establishing regional networks. All the new regional groups have pages on Facebook so if you search there you should find a group near you.

Our volunteers are very active on social media which is a great way to be part of the Blue Labour conversation. You’ll find us on Twitter and also on Facebook.


About Us

Blue Labour was launched in 2010 by academic and Labour peer Maurice Glasman, and dedicated to reclaiming distinctive traditions of reciprocity and mutuality in the labour movement. It combines respect for family, faith and work with a commitment to the common good: sustainable politics that helps people lead meaningful lives.

Blue Labour is run solely by volunteers in their spare time. We’re working together to build Blue Labour into a national network with lots of ways for people to participate. Unlike other groups within Labour we don’t have any wealthy donors or institutions bankrolling our operations – just ordinary people making donations.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Fianna Fail basically. Half of Irish people classify themselves as economically left wing, which makes sense if you look at our income distribution. Two thirds of those people define themselves as socially conservative. You'd get some socially conservative people supporting the labour party, but most of them voted for Fianna Fail, who took care of their clientelism needs. The labour party has always had a strong socially conservative streak in it, and one of the reasons that so many younger women voted for the Tories in the eighties was that they might not have felt particularly well represented by some of their unions, or felt a little left out of the workingman club culture. Also it's difficult to stress just how tied up in Methodism a lot of the early Labour movement were. All big tent parties have bizarrely different

The Labour party was traditionally able to hold onto these voters by actually providing a service for them, however that changed in the eighties, and they became complacent that these people would support them for ever more, because the Tories had literally burned the northern half of the country to the ground. Certainly New Labour could have done an awful lot more. One of the big reasons that the Labour Campaign based around Austerity fell so short, particularly among the old, is that the Pension triple lock means that while no-one else's wages and income have really risen much, The pension triple lock has been delivering strong pension growth for the last decade, and for a great many retired people, the last 10 years have been better in terms of real rises in the pension than pretty much any decade ever. Now this obviously doesn't apply to ever voter over 65. Just five out of every eight,.

The Tories are giving them what they want. And since it's only older people who buy newspapers or watch television, they are exposed to an unending diet of propaganda. So now they all vote Tory. That's the point of a ruinous electoral bribe.

[ursus arctos]

FF is led by observant Jews?

Who knew?

[Nefertiti2]

Labour -but explicitly racist

[Sean of the Shed]

They should be banned from using the word 'socialism'.

[San Bernardhinault]

Sadly, if Thursday's vote was anything to go by it looks like these cunts do have a constituency in non-big-city, non-Tory England. In a proper PR system, I think they might make sense as a separate party. But if they took over Labour, Labour would quickly lose the cities to the Lib Dems, Greens or wetter Tories.

[tee rex]

As opposed to ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Tory

[sw2borshch]

PiS.

[MsD]

Rod Liddle involved.

[Nocturnal Submission]

It's usually Maurice Glasman selling this particular brand. He was on the screens a lot a few years ago (about the same time that Phillip Blond was flogging Red Toryism, I think) but then disappeared.

Back on Newsnight last night.

[delicatemoth]

It's basically red/brown-lite and very much to be avoided.

https://twitter.com/SzMarsupial/status/1205912008811536384

[Flynnie]

Blue Labour are kinda whatever you want it to be at this point, they don't have many members. There's the Paul Emburyist social conservative element, while their brochure talks more about localism than anything else.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

there's a bunch of similar and overlapping tendencies within labour that are pretty awful from like Red London/YCL lads on one end and Jess Phillips/Crouch End Terfs on the other. The irony is although they wear very different costumes (Stalin reincarnated versus sensible moderate) they believe pretty much the same things when it comes down to it.

[delicatemoth]

Crouch End Terfs

Hang on, is that an actual geographical reference or a thing like 'Worcester Woman'? Cos the former could explain why a couple of long-lasting friendships went south in the last year or two. I thought one of them seemed like she'd been reading their tired shit, and that's the sort of thing people do when they become friends with someone who has a hobby horse, like those horrid fuckers in the media.

[Patrick Thistle]

Is Jess Philips a TERF then? (Genuine q)

[delicatemoth]

Not a foamer at the mouth, usually keeps it quiet but yes. There are/are going to be a lot of dogwhistles from media Islamophobes and transphobes - basically, the people BLT refers to - about how supporting certain 'gone too far' minorities is what lost Labour votes in their white working class 'culturally conservative' heartlands*. Be alert for them.

*I think I've said this before, but in my experience the chattering classes are far more racist and transphobic than the actual working/underclass

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Hang on, is that an actual geographical reference or a thing like 'Worcester Woman'? Cos the former could explain why a couple of long-lasting friendships went south in the last year or two. I thought one of them seemed like she'd been reading their tired shit, and that's the sort of thing people do when they become friends with someone who has a hobby horse, like those horrid fuckers in the media.

it's a bit of both. there's a *lot* of very middle class transphobes in crouch end (and also a lot of guardian columnists, weird huh) and most of them are quite active in the labour party, consequently hornsey and wood green labour party is awful. some of them are quite closely linked with people happy to move in far-right circles..

Not sure what's going to happen to labour - there's clearly well meaning people with good ideas, but also a burgeoning reactionary current that is more organised than people appreciate, much broader and transcends the traditional party faultlines.

[delicatemoth]

Well, fuck. I thought my friend had too much sense to come out with that noxious crap from her own brain. Radicalising wankers. Ugh, I've known too many media-adjacent people over the years.