At the Huffington Post and ABC Ethics and Religion, neither of which I feel much like linking to, you may find an article by Luke Bretherton offering unsolicited advice to the #OWS movement. His advice is rather strange and I’ll explain why. First, though, a note on Bretherton himself. While it is not very expedient for me to say this, I have not been very impressed by Bretherton’s work and I’m sad to see that he will be taking Hauerwas’ spot at Duke soon. He works generally in the field of what might be called “applied political theology” and all of his ideas generally boil down to a kind of Christiandom with a human face. He’s part of the “politics of paradox” crowd that unites the racist ideologies of Blue Labourism and Red Toryism (if you want to know more about that look at the other posts on this blog that deal with it). He’s also part of a group called Citizens United, which he holds up as a model for the occupiers to emulate. But this is a strange suggestion, for none of the things that Bretherton holds up as exemplary about Citizens United have, well, come to pass! For example, sure, Citizens United calls for a living wage to be implemented in London, but such a demand has never been seriously considered by the city government. What is advocating? Only that they look towards Citizens United as a model for how to fail politically but keep their veneer of respectability before the powers that be!
Now it has come out that Bretherton and Maurice Glasman (the entirely uncharismatic sexist and racist man at the centre of the limp theory of Blue Labourism) have tried to hijack the General Assembly meetings at OccupyLSX in London. Now clearly the OccupyLSX movement has been stalled, in part because the police reaction to the movement was so strong and in part because of the new problems that arose regarding St. Paul’s Cathedral, more a tourist trap than a house of worship. But what Bretherton and Glasman are doing, no doubt, is trying to completely change the character of the occupation. While I don’t believe in leaderless movements, or rather I think that such a phrase is an ideology that must be ruthlessly criticized from within the movement itself, the leadership style of Citizens United is entirely soft authoritarian. If the occupy movement allows itself to be co-opted by Blue Labourism or even Citizens United it will have already surrounded any chance it has of resisting and challenging the City (the Wall Street of London). Precisely because Blue Labourism is only capitalism with English characteristics. It is a form of extreme cynicism regarding what is possible within a human society masking itself as a high moralism which aims to protect all the old hierarchies at whatever cost. I can only hope that the London occupiers can see through the cunning dishonesty and hatred for true democracy present in figures like Bretherton and Glasman.
Monday, October 31, 2011 at 9:07 pm
Oh my. Just looked at some of Glasman / Blue Labor’s racist stuff. Strange hire, to put it (very) mildly.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 1:16 pm
My sources of the ground say the General Assembly has sent Blue Labour types away twice now with a flea in their ear. The participatory politics of that space are entirely opposed to the kind of “strong leadership” orientated community organisation of London Citizens.
Gotta love Bretherton’s completely fact free analysis of the alleged ‘anarchism’ and anti-statism of neoliberalism. Amongst the neoliberals, von Mises was very much a marginal voice even a real embarrassment, whereas the remainder of the neoliberals were fairly pro-state. Indeed, this was their analysis of the failures of 19th century liberalism. Even Mises was prepared to say that the strong Nazi state had “saved Europe” from fascism. Generic anarcho-capitalists are, of course, not even anarchists. But you know, what do I know, I am not going to take a hugely prestigious post…
Good fact: Glasman is banned from many Mosques in London, including the one closest to him.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 2:53 pm
I’m not sure where the neo-liberal=anti-state association comes from. There is certainly a fear of *some* state functions (largely, the re-distributivist ones), but certainly not all (largely, the police-military ones) to the point that Friedman and his students were happy–even honored–to write Pinochet’s economic plan. We talked about neo-liberalism in class the past two weeks (using Foucault’s “Birth of Biopolitics” lectures). The students refused to believe that a principled defence of freedom for some goes hand-in-hand with a principled defence of tyranny for others; that state or government doesn’t refer to the entirety of the state, but to just small segments. That we don’t have $6B for social programs, but we have $6B for prisons for which there are no criminals.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 10:06 am
While we are on the subject of fact free analysis, the account of both Blue Labour and Citizens UK in the original post are masterpieces of the genre.
Lets ignore the wholly unsubstantiated claims of racism and ad-hominen attacks and focus on substance. For a start Glasman’s open advocacy of the german social model jars with your description of blue labour political economy as “capitalism with english characteristics”. To the extent that Glasman is an advocate of capitalism at all it is “capitalism with west german charecteristics”. More importantly a key source of Blue Labour thinking is Karl Polanyi’s critique of the commodification of land, labour and money and the deleterious consequences of imposing the utopia of self regulating markets on societies. Hence his call for the “democratic micro entanglement” of capital with civic associations. The capacity of micro entanglement to have any impact on macro globalised forces of capital might be considered wildly optimistic or naive but cynical? Hardly.
The presentation of blue labour is not just fact free but a gross mischaracterisation. You cant make any sense of why blue labour types would seek to shape the direction of OccupyLSX protest in the first place if you don’t understand where they are coming from. The implication of your “analysis” is they want to co-opt the movement to render it docile and ultimately snuff it out. The demand that the corporation of london should itself be democratised adds a radical and concrete demand to protest that otherwise appear nebulous. At the same time this local demand gets at the huge sway the city of london corporation exercises over both the UK economy and the shape of the global economy as a whole. Lets have an open debate about the merits of this strategy rather than a lazy attempt at character assasination.
Which takes us to the BLue Labour relationship with citizens UK as a practical embodiment of the micro entanglement of capital. Note that the group Glasman and Bretherton are associated with are not called citizens united – the latter ARE in fact e a conservative lobby group based in the US that i should imagine have very little truck with the Industrial Areas Foundation, the US organising group founded by Saul Alinsky, which ARE the direct inspiration behind Citizens UK. Lets not confuse apples and pears at the outset.
The key claim that the living wage campaign has had no tangible success is wholly inaccurate. As a result of the campaign initiated in London by CItizens UK ten years ago there are now some 100 living wage employers in london and beyond. See here for a chronology of the campaign and impact to date -http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/livingwage/chronology.html
The chronology shows that the claim that the demand for the living wage “has never been seriously considered by the city government.” is just factually wrong. The conservative mayor Boris Johnson was lobbied by Citizens UK to adopt a living wage for all GLA staff, pledged to so and in implemented it in july 2008.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 11:47 am
gracchus, i, for one, was just hung up on the nasty anti-immigration stuff. that’s a fact, no?
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 12:16 pm
First, I want to let everyone know that I’m fairly certain t. gracchus is a sockpuppet. We know that John Milbank likes to use sockpuppets and I wouldn’t put it past Glasman either. If I’m correct about this, and the IP address lends some support, it’s rather pathetic that you can’t debate like an adult under your own name. I am putting myself at risk openly using my name in these posts because I have no secure employment, while these are men with full-time academic positions and yet are scared to actually sign their sneering. Pathetic and sad more than anything.
I’ll then go point by point here:
1) This is a blog post. Not an analysis. An analysis, I would hope but I understand your confusion as a Blue Labour supporter, would be much longer and engage with a lot more data. That said, even though this isn’t an analysis as such (people have done those, including our own Alex Andrews), the rest of your response is still wrong.
Why, well 2) These are not unsubstantiated claims of racism nor are they ad hominem attacks. I have emails from John with structurally racist rants within them, and if you’re not careful I’ll publish them. I also have a peer-edited paper in Political Theology that shows John’s racism at work in an interview he gave that can be found in the CoTP’s Belief and Metaphysics volume. Glasman is a complete Islamaphobe, as is evidenced by his banning from a number of Mosques that work with Citizens United and his own personal emails where he refers to an Islamic colleague as “Abduallah al Karin Brylcreem hamza fikri” in order to mock him. Again, the only reason this isn’t more public, and I think it should be, is due to the mercy of the person who he was mocking. There are also reportedly allegations of sexual harassment. So, again, be careful unless you want this all substantiated. Then of course there is Glasman’s comments about the EDL, which are well known and idiotic, coupled with his British “nationalism” (which is of course a misnomer). An ad hominem attacks an argument on the basis of a person’s character, it is different from attacking a person’s character. I fully attack the character of John Milbank and Phillip Blond on the basis of many interactions with them and Maurice Glasman on the basis of a number of charges that have been leveled against him as well as his own public statements. I think these are bad people and while being a bad person doesn’t necessarily lead to bad ideas, in this case we do in fact have both!
3) The capitalism with English characteristics was a joke. A funny line. Like “communism with Chinese characteristics”. That said, my point was that what is being argued for is a kind of return to an English idyll where capitalism is humanised through a kind of insipid and limp Anglo-Saxon moralism. He (or should I perhaps be saying “you”) may cover over the more backwards aspects of this with fancy academic jargon like “democratic micro entanglement”, but we also know his views of democracy are a hierarchically driven democracy. And what drives that democracy? The backwards values of a fairy tale England. I’ll let Alex deal with the Polanyi and German Social Market bullshit.
4) Regarding the attempted co-option of OccupyLSX, which you sugar coat by calling it “an attempt to shape” thereby admitting an attempt to change the fundamental character of the event. Well, regarding this I’ll break from polite conversation here – the fucking point of the global Occupy movement is to be nebulous and broad. Again, people are tired of patching up the holes in a system and then putting it back on the road, precisely because the road is paved with the labor and bodies of people who are being constantly fucked over. “Democratizing” the City of London is just another one of those patch jobs. It is cynical in so far as it keeps the powerful elite in power, but further erodes the power of the people. Look at the way the cuts were rolled in or the way the student protests failed to move anyone or, to go back, the way the Blair celebrated the “open debate” that was allowed to take place concerning the Iraq war. Fully “democractic” and hence any challenge after this so-called open debate is ruled illegitimate. Fuck democratizing the City; abolish the City.
5) I got the name wrong – mea culpa. (Seriously, why do English people think sentences like “Lets not confuse apples and pears at the outset” are clever?)
6) There are real questions about £7.45 is a living wage in modern London. But more than that the point about seriousness goes to the fundamental limpness with which this demand has been made. You’re counting it a success when 100 businesses pledge to pay a living wage over 10 years. I count it a success when a real living wage is implemented by law rather than on some weird corporate serfdom where you entreat the lords to give the serfs a bit more. So, no, it hasn’t been taken seriously at all. It’s the same kind of greenwashing we see from Boris’ government with his rent a bike scheme. None of this counts as serious changes to a broken and decaying system. It only amounts to academics being given a stage with which to share their masturbatory fantasies while those in power use them to pretend there is any kind of difference between the neoliberal managerialism of the past and the present or that there is any kind of difference of kind (rather than degree) between Labor and the Conservatives. It’s really a rather sad state of affairs and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 12:25 pm
I’d say its a question of (bad) interpretation than a fact –
Glasman’s own apologia is here -http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/07/blue-labour-immigration-2
Having a critical view on the free movement of labour strikes me as entirely consistent with a view that land and labour shouldn’t be treated as commodities. Its a case of arguing the merits of what is actually being said rather the media frame it is all to easily slotted into. Glasman is right to berate himself for being crass but if you read what he actually says in re finding commonality between different faith and non faith groups and what he actually does with London CItizens which have worked especially closely with immigrant communities in London its just a gross mischaracterisation to equate his views with those of the far right and is being a form of nasty anti-immigration rhetoric. It is ultimately employers that benefit from this race to the bottom and the problem is not one of culture or race but power relationships within labour market.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 12:28 pm
That’s rich.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Let’s deal with the specifics in a series of posts where I’ll deal with immigration stuff, Occupy LSX and finally, later, the German Social Market stuff.
1. Glasman’s position on immigration oscillates between two positions.
First is the position Gracchus alludes to above, whereby the free movement of labour creates a race to the bottom, lowering wages.
The second is more subtle and found also in Phillip Blond and those associated with the magazine Prospect, and their editor and now director at the Demos think tank, David Goodhart. An example is the following debate, where Blond states “is there a point at which mass immigration undermines the social foundations of a society?” – note for the rest of his interview he is talking about cultural factors, not anything economic. Glasman says something similar in a BBC programme, “Now obviously it [mass immigration] undermines solidarity, it undermines relationships, and in the scale that it’s been going on in England, it can undermine the possibility of politics entirely”.This argument finds its basis in MacIntyre, whereby liberalism’s lack of shared values (that is to say, culture) prevents even rational discourse from occurring on the ends and goods a society should pursue – hence the “undermine the possibility of politics entirely” line. Much as with Schmitt on democracy, a population must be more or less homogenous. Therefore the presence of immigrants corrodes “our values” and should be prevented.
You don’t have to leap too far from this to have “nasty anti-immigration rhetoric” – indeed, this is the way it has been read widely. But it is more important to note that racism in general has moved from grounding itself supposedly in biology to a discussion of ‘culture’. Take, for example, the analysis in The force of prejudice: on racism and its doubles by Pierre-André Taguieff. This line is continued in the French Nouvelle Droit, who emerged from strongly racist organisations like the French National Front to take much the same line on immigration as Glasman takes in this regard, right down the to “double exploitation line”. The International Third Position holds a similar line. A good book on this is Tamir Bar-On’s Where Have All The Fascists Gone?, which pays particular attention to Alain de Benoist and the ENR.
Therefore, there is good reason to think that Glasman’s rhetoric resonates with the radical and racist right. But more to the point, considering we are about the enter a period of extreme economic hardship, where the spectre of a renewed popularist fascism is quite real, is it not best to keep a good million miles away from this easily appropriated issues? Cast a brief eye over the forums of the EDL when Glasman says this stuff to see. Even if what Glasman says is true (which it isn’t) then surely there are rather more pressing issues at hand than to play this dog whistle?
2. Occupy LSX
Glasman’s article on St Pauls is incredibly patronising considering he want to “direct” the protests – some of the participants have been involved in community organising themselves and seasoned people there have been involved in dozens of campaigns! Capitalism (note capitalism, not neoliberalism) is not a nasty man who lives in The City. What ends would ‘democratising’ The City achieve? Would it precipitate the end of financial domination globally? – unlikely. Would those with money power still wield decisive influence? – likely. Just as having your campaign bankrolled by Sainsbury’s is hardly the height of radicalism.
As to whether this will render it docile and snuff it out – I think it would. The battle against the church has already partly absorbed it into the pervasive lobbyist culture. Lets put it this way: London Citizens is an organisation which (at least once had, maybe loosing the community organiser training contract means the honeymoon was over) the ear of the government and was capable of summoning the leaders of the mainstream political parties to a debate last year where Glasman wrote Gordon Brown’s admittedly excellent speech. It has received huge plaudits and the influence now on the opposition through Milliband’s (David’s initially, but carried on by his brother) Movement For Change, which they trained. Considering this and their membership, power, money and contacts, they have not managed to democractise the City of London, despite campaigning since at least 2008 and having all these things in a row. Making Occupy LSX into an annex of this campaign is disingenuous in the least, especially when this kind of thing hasn’t worked for someone as powerful as London Citizens. Its strategically idiotic to main this a main aim. There are bigger fish to fry than some legal idiosyncrasy regarding The City – the other global financial centres don’t have this arrangement and they are not exactly reformed into benevolent centres of democratic micro-management.
It says a lot about London Citizen’s organisation model that they plain don’t get the culture of general assemblies and consensus decision making. Their attitude is to train strong leaders from communities to do things, with that community behind as a simple mass benevolently led. This is the opposite of the London Occupation which is directly democratic, opposed to leadership and hierarchy.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 6:14 pm
While we’re looking at race and the occupations … this, by Henwood, is just atrocious: http://lbo-news.com/2011/10/30/angela-davis’-advice-identify-with-the-defeated/
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Ok so this an improvement – its not yet a particularly civil discussion but it moving towards a more substantive debate.
Sorry to disappoint you but I am neither Maurice Glasman or John Milbank nor Philip Blond. And should also point out, as this bears rather strongly on your argument, that Glasman is not Milbank and Milbank is not Blond. But yes I am broadly sympathetic to Blue Labour if not red tory or radical orthodoxy . Despite the vitriol of your response I’ll take it as a compliment that you have moved from a fact free splenetic blog rant to an attempt at an argument if not exactly an open-minded engagement with the ideas and positions you criticise. You’ll have to forgive me for holding the naïve idea that a blog post should be something other than than mudslinging and preaching to the converted. The claim about Citizens UK now seems to have shifted from a claim that they have had no impact at all to a claim that you find the impact they have had irrelevant/undesirable/ not what you think should happen. That’s a useful clarification.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Not sure I am fully convinced by that. I’ve read a lot of stuff by Glasman and your phrasing seems pretty familiar. If you were, it would actually be fine as far as I am concerned, though others might feel differently. I do note the irony of supporters of the radical orthodoxy orbiting politics hating on vitriol of responses.
Read it in context. There is more than one person on this thread, who have different opinions of different things – Citizens UK is a complex phenomena.
I have read nearly everything written about Blue Labour (from obscure pre-election pamphlets by European policy institutes, to more Soundings than anyone should read, to the main books on it, The Labour tradition and the politics of paradox and Tangled Up In Blue) and have concluded it is wrong. I think I have done my homework. Your assumption that anyone who disagrees doesn’t understand the material is rather unfounded.
I don’t really think it takes much argument to argue that Blond, Milbank and Glasman all share overlapping positions – a post-liberal theological assemblage if you will. They are not the same person, and there is nuance, but there is also overlap in analysis, particular of liberalism and of course, of theology and influences. This is not least exposed in the debate between Glasman and Blond pre-election in Prospect and the recent article by Blond on Cameron. In the case of the former debate, as someone on the left, I actually think Glasman does well, and the recovery of the language of class (sadly nearly always supplemented by ‘white’) and in this debate even the idea of class struggle is something that I think is good about this position (however, Glasman doesn’t go far enough). Its kind of weird to say they aren’t close when there is a trail of mutual citation as long as you want to go.
But importantly these differences do not bear at least on my own argument. I think Blond and Glasman in some ways are wrong for the same reasons, and in some ways wrong for different reasons. For example, Glasman’s analysis of the Labour party is poor and falls into all the same traps Ralph Milliband identifies in his work. And so on.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 8:29 pm
An improvement? Come on. Give it up and move on; you haven’t actually done anything here. You kind of remind me of one of John’s students who, due to lack of any actual teaching on his part, is trying to bluster his way through a conversation parroting the master. This is probably why you come across like a sockpuppet. Well, if you’re being honest and I’m still not sure of that.
Frankly I don’t really want to have a conversation with some ideologue who won’t even say who he is. But as for the vitriol, it didn’t change. They hold to despicable ideas and I’ve seen them individually hurt people, so yeah, they deserve every bit of it and you’re either willfully complicit with that or a hopelessly naive idiot for supporting them so dogmatically.
Friday, November 4, 2011 at 8:07 pm
1) Alex – on not responding to different posts and acting as if I was speaking to one person, you are totally right and I apologize.
2) The thing I am genuinely struggling with is the assumption that to see merit in blue labour is to be a signed up member of Radical Orthodoxy or indeed a student of John Milbank. Given what seem to be your very bruising encounters with the latter there is no reason for you to trust my motivation in wanting to have a dialogue on this but I can only say that I find the whole project of RO deeply troubling and don’t see why religious and non-religious views have to trump each other in discussions on political and ethical practice. It might be a problem in the journal and lecture circuit but I just don’t think the incommensurability of moral theories is the overriding problem in practical struggles and politics. I’m more interested in finding common ground than proving the ultimate superiority of any particular view. I guess this makes me some kind or naïve moral relativist to RO types but I prefer to think of myself as someone that believes that an ethos of open democratic engagement with rival values is both all we have to rely on and what we should aspire to. I just don’t buy the monolithic account of the failure of the “enlightenment project” that writers such as Macintyre and Millbank put forward. The best account that I’ve come across on this is from Jeffery Stout in Democracy and Tradition. I’m not saying it’s the final word (what it is?) but it’s the closest position I’d identify with in this terrain.
3) On what I actually said and where I agree and disagree with Maurice Glasman. I never said that there weren’t overlaps with Glasman and Blond only that their positions were not reducible to each other. There is an undeniably an overlap but there are also important differences. Post Liberalism is important commonality but its also a pretty broad category encompassing lots of different positions. Most importantly democracy figures much less prominently in RO or Red Tory than Blue Labour thinking. For me the differences are more important than the overlaps. Within the overlaps some are important and some aren’t. This is just a basic point when judging the merits of different thinkers and positions. Social democrats, Marxists and Christians might all overlap on a critique of neo-liberalism but draw completely different conclusions on how to address the crisis it has created. Conversely they might reason from different premises to shared conclusions. Surely the art of democratic negotiation is to see in the first instance whether commonality came be found while agreeing to disagree if it enables shared political projects and aims to be realized. Call me a naïve Dewyan democrat ( or even a dreaded liberal !) but I think it’s all we have and I don’t have problem with that.
4) On my reading there seem to be three key contemporary thinkers in the bue labour mix – Alinsky, Polanyi and Macintyre. I think Glassman’s attempt to bring the thinking and practice of Alinsky and Polanyi to bear on a mainstream political party is refreshing and potentially radical and practically fruitful. Many of the problems kick in for me when Macintyre’s deeply problematic account of a tradition is used to underpin questions of culture and politics. And it is the shared grounding in Macintyre critique of “liberalism” or the “enlightenment project” that seems to unite Blue Labour with RO.
5) Much of this is based on my intuition rather than a deep reading of Milbank. As you’ll no doubt have spotted I’m not a theologian – let alone a student of his and actually haven’t done much homework on this. I have read Blond since his emergence as a “red tory” and find him totally incoherent. My sense is that his claims would at least seem less odd if he was much more upfront about their grounding in RO. But then ROs seeming desire to offer the one true account of ethical and political salvation don’t strike me as a particularly compatible with a democratic and pluralist politics. Again I’m not sure I know enough about RO to make a definitive judgement on it but that’s my take from what I do know.
6) Perhaps I want to have my cake and eat it but I don’t believe that the politics of democratic association and an attunement to the problems of commodification that Glasman and others like Mark Stears or Jon Cruddas are attempting to synthesise stand or fall on accepting Macintyre let alone Milbank or Blond. Glasman may well disagree on the Macintyre point but the genie is out of the bottle and, for me at least, he’s the one that released it.
7) A reflection on this discussion so far. I’d like to think I’m not a naïve idiot or dogmatic follower of any one thinker or tradition. Who wouldn’t? But it strikes me that it is genuinely dogmatic to conflate distinct but overlapping positions and maintain that anyone who disagrees with this conflation is herself being dogmatic. I don’t assume that any one associated with this blog is a naïve or stupid, and don’t generally think that of anyone unless they give strong reasons to think otherwise. Flinging around insults might be gratifying but it doesn’t do anything to clarify the nature of the disagreement and therefore the possibility of a genuine conversation. My original impetus on responding was that much of what was in the original post was a mischaraterisation of the blue labour position and factually wrong on Citizens UK. To say that Citizens UK have actually achieved something concrete is not to say they are beyond criticism or that they are the sole or even best route to political change.
8) This mischaracterization in the original post could stem from misunderstanding (itself flowing Glasmans sometimes unhelpful tendency to rhetorical excess) or deep disagreement. The will to mischaracterization could and I suspect in your case is motivated by deep disagreement. That still strikes me as unhelpful way of proceeding – though I do actually take your point that quickly written blog posts will use insults without spelling out the deep reasons for them. But moving the discussion to a clarification of deep disagreement is surely the only way of determining whether there can be thoughtful exchange that might lead to some common ground. I don’t assume that anyone who disagrees with Glasman (or anything else that I happen to think) must misunderstand but I am interested in understanding the conceptual and normative nature of the disagreement. Indeed it is precisely because I disagree with Macintyre’s brittle notion of moral reasoning that I bother to engage in the first place.
9) I’m not getting the sense from Anthony Paul Smith that he likes me very much so perhaps should “give it up and move on”. But you can’t have everything I suppose – I am glad that you have had the decency to accept the posts and to respond. But I’d be very interested to hear from Alex re the mistakes Glasman makes with regard to Labour History and Ralph Miliband. At the outset I’d like to state that I don’t have a settled view on this, I’d just like to hear what you have to say.
Friday, November 4, 2011 at 9:17 pm
First, I don’t understand why anyone would be in favour of Glasman over the myriad radical democratic theories that have emerged after 1999.
Second, I hope you are Maurice Glasman or someone close to the circle. Engagement with intelligent people who are opposed to your ideas might be a learning experience for you. The opinions herein may have begun polemic, but they are hardly un thought out.
Third, to associate the phrase radical with the Labour party (even before Blair) is as absurd as it is ridiculous – and this gets to the heart of Glasman’s analysis and its problems.
Friday, November 4, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Also, you earlier said on RO you were broadly sympathetic. Now it is deeply troubling. Which is it?
Saturday, November 5, 2011 at 10:20 am
I’m all for learning experiences and agree that as the discussion has evolved it has become less polemical and based more on reasons and arguments. Alex i’d like to come back on your first point in a couple of days if i may. With regard to RO i thought i had been pretty clear when i initially said “i am broadly sympathetic to blue labour IF NOT RO or Red Tory” which is difficult to read as meaning anything other than that i am not sympathetic to RO. Perhaps I could have been clearer still if i said “But not RO and Red Tory” rather than “if not”. But I think my subsequent comments make it clear: I find it deeply troubling.