A Free Left Blog

I left the Labour Party this morning. I won’t go on for ages about why because I don’t want this blog to be about me, but I will say a few words. Firstly, people who have read some of my witterings on here will be aware that I’ve always been critical of the Labour Party, quite stridently in some cases. I think Labour has deep institutional and cultural problems, albeit I think these are really issues of the liberal-left ‘tribe’ and the systems of identity group favouritism it has spread into much of our public life rather than just about Labour. Labour simply provides a focus and a centre for them. My 2015 leadership election ballot paper Nevertheless, in looking at all this as I’ve done here, and on LabourList while I was allowed to write there, I’ve seen myself as a critical friend – as someone who is basically on the same side and wants us to change and become more responsive to all the people rather than just minister to certain groups and our own – mostly middle-clas...

UKIP’s political ‘earthquake’ has happened. In these latest elections for the European Parliament, this party of no MPs in Parliament, no councils under its control and a seemingly substantial body of weird and not-so-wonderful candidates has secured the largest percentage of the vote and the largest number of MEPs of all the political parties in Britain.   This is despite a hugely-impressive campaign of sneering contempt from liberal opinion in Britain and latterly the mass media too – the Murdoch papers in particular. To paraphrase (and reduce) one of Bob Dylan's most cutting lyrics , something has been happening here, but some of us have little or no idea what it is, and others want to shut it down. There is a lot that could be said, so I’m just going to concentrate on what may be a bit different from what others have been saying. First up is the matter of what we might call ‘existential’ representation. Look at Doncaster for example, a place represente...

I’ve found myself blathering on about immigration rather too much for my own liking lately, but it is probably the issue which best demonstrates a conceit at the core of current liberal-left politics in Britain. We have reached a point which feels like a crescendo in the ‘debate’ on immigration, at least in terms of attention being paid, following BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson’s BBC2 programme last night, entitled ' The Truth About Immigration '. Yet the response of mainstream liberal-left publications and their writers to this heightening of discussion and awareness has been almost universal: that we shouldn’t be having the debate at all . It is a revealing viewpoint, and offers a nice opportunity to look at the arguments of Chantal Mouffe on how liberal politics seeks to crush what she calls ‘the political’ in favour of a sort of self-styled ‘rational consensus’. Let’s have a look at some of the arguments for suppression first. First up is Stephen B...