What is Blue Labour?

Abstract

The essay ‘Corbynism and Blue Labour: post-liberalism and national populism in the British Labour Party’ by Harry Pitts and Matt Bolton sets out to define the flaws in the competing philosophies of Corbynism and Blue Labour, identify their similarities, and dismiss them both in favour of a third undefined philosophical alternative of ‘critical Marxism’. This proposed alternative would be capable of ‘holding the centre’. Our response argues that their criticism is based on a caricature of Blue Labour and that Corbynism is not an identifiable and coherent political philosophy. The hard-left politics of Jeremy Corbyn and his allies bear little relation to the agonistic politics of Blue Labour.