Blue Labour

The Labour Party's response to Cameron's Big Society is 'Blue Labour', so said a programme on Radio 4 on Monday night:

There is a new force in the Labour Party with a radical plan to win back working-class voters and provide the left's response to David Cameron's Big Society.

It is called Blue Labour and it wants a rethink of what, for many, was the party's greatest achievement - the creation of the welfare state in 1945.

The first time that I came across the phrase 'Blue Labour' was when Stephen Bush used the phase to describe the cultural English nationalism of John Cruddas:

While the 'Blue Labour' idea put forward by Jon Cruddas, Jonathan Rutherford, Maurice Glasman and others is superficially attractive, it isn't the way forward for New Labour or for our party.

Beyond motherhood, apple pie and the frequent use of a dog whistle it offers little to the party moving forward.

‘Blue Labour', a new way of doing Labour politics based around ‘family, faith and the flag' is in many ways the inverse of what made New Labour strong. Based on fantasy, not grounded in reality. Frightened of change, not accepting of it. Embracing our own conservatism, not challenging it. And, most importantly, offering not a better tomorrow but a defence of yesterday.

Stephen Bush didn't mention the word 'England' himself - he retreated into the language of Britishness - but maybe he should have mentioned England, because if Blue Labour is a response then it's a response to a Big Society idea that doesn't really extend outside England's borders.

At least Roy Hattersley seems to understand that fact, even if he's not on side:

"Blue Labour seems very nostalgic to me. This is the idea of Arcadian England, the idea that there was some mythical time when we all loved each other."