[attach id=421130 size="medium"]Blue Labour is not only relevant to the UK.[/attach]
‘Forging a new politics’ is the sub-title of a recently published compilation of essays edited by Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst titled Blue Labour (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, London, 2015). It sets the scene for a new way of doing politics in a difficult time when established politics and politicians are losing their credibility and are being criticised for losing touch with reality. Their space is being taken up by populist and nationalist parties on the extreme right or left which thrive on hardening sentiments of greed, envy and fear.
Adrian Pabst and Maurice Glasman are two of the essayists. Both were speakers in the course ‘The Call to Public Life’ organised last October and November by the Malta group of Fondazione Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice and the Pastoral Formation Institute.
Glasman is a Labour life peer who is the main exponent of this political thinking that has been coined as Blue Labour. What is being narrated in this book is not a simplistic middle ground or centrist view of politics. It is much more radical than what the way we have got used to politics being practised today.
2008 has been a watershed year not only for the global economy but also for politics and society. The financial crisis was an eye opener for many who thought economic growth fuelled by technology and globalisation had no limitations. However, there is doubt whether the revelation that greed, self- centrism and obsession with rights (over duties) will lead to a new opening for a better society. Politics has degenerated into a bundle of sleaze, corruption, deceit, manipulation, and ‘scratching the surface’ where vice has taken over from virtue.
Blue Labour is not a book that is only relevant to the UK. It resonates globally and particularly in the so-called advanced or civilised world. It is not utopian or romantic although it aims at a much better world that values tradition while embracing innovation and technology.
Politics has degenerated into a bundle of sleaze, corruption, deceit, manipulation, and ‘scratching the surface’ where vice has taken over from virtue
It starts with the premise that the fusion of social and economic liberalisation has failed. Secularisation that promotes both liberal economic and social thinking has provided wider choice, virtual utility and immediate satisfaction, but has left the person empty in both self-fulfilment and in building sustainable relationships. Blue Labour moves away from narrow self-interest and greed and aims at shared benefit and mutual flourishing.
Rowan Williams, from Magdalen College, Cambridge, wrote in the book’s foreword that “we need to wake up to the fact that a lot of our politics assumes various things about our humanity that are not true; that we are being actively encouraged to lead lives at odds with what we actually are, with how our minds and feelings actually work”. In a nutshell, rights and duties can never be imbalanced, while grace and generosity cannot be forgotten. The human person is both an individual and a member of society.
The new politics is found in Christianity and specifically in Catholic social teaching. Glasman, himself a Jew, constructs his new political narrative on the principles in the popes’ encyclicals and on the notion of the common good.
Ethics in the UK and the western world is the product of a Christian inheritance that we cannot in any way negate. In practical terms, this new politics is based on the belief that there are benefits in civic institutions, and that even labour unions and business can be transformed with a vivid social conscience. The State has to shrink in size while civic society is to be empowered to participate in both decision making and action.
This is not a wishy-washy process, but a robust and muscular movement where tension is necessary in the generation of the common good and human flourishing. The authors do not spoon-feed the practical steps that a new or reformed political movement need to take in opening this new world. They provide, however, the historical context, the evolution of thought and the basic tenets that will bring about this renaissance.