A Free Left Blog

In his recently-published book Tribes , the Labour MP David Lammy, newly-appointed as Keir Starmer's Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, makes a number of accusations against me based on a reading of my book The Tribe . As you can see from the passage below, Lammy calls my book "conspiratorial", saying that I "chastised" his words in responding to the Grenfell Tower disaster "as an example of identity politics' most flagrant excesses". However, if you read the passage from my book that he quotes afterwards, I think you will find none of that. I certainly didn't set out to chastise him or anyone else in the book. Rather, I was seeking to describe how progressive identity politics (or the identity politics of the 'liberal-left' as I describe it in the book) has become so utterly normal that a senior politician can respond to a deadly fire by putting not just skin colour, but gender, front and centre of how he responds to it a...

In my book I wrote quite a bit on how efforts to keep the United Kingdom in the European Union have mobilised what I call 'the system of diversity', by aligning to a view of the world in which certain identity groups like women, gay and non-white-skinned people appear as victims of unfavoured groups like men, white-skinned people and the ethnic English. Seemingly every day brings more remarkable evidence of this. Via Twitter, James Mendelsohn has kindly sent one of the best, most concise examples I have seen so far - a video by a campaign group called Our People, Our Choice which calls itself, 'A group of young people campaigning for a #PeoplesVote on the Brexit deal!' We say no to Brexit And social mobility, grinding to a halt. We say no To the rich doing fine but the poor getting poorer Whilst parliament “negotiate”, dividing regions and communities. WATCH, SHARE & RT this powerful poem by @antoniacundy . #PeoplesVote #WednesdayWisdom pic.twitt...

My book, The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity , is being published on 1st of July, so not long to go now. Last week a courier dropped off my copies - showing this thing  that has been dominating my life for the past few years in physical form for the first time. THE BOOK: it exists I have already posted the backcover blurb and some of the theoretical background . But what is it about, really? How would I sum it up? At the most basic level, The Tribe is an attempt to explain what  on earth is going on with the politics of identity and diversity. How has it come to dominate our public sphere? And what is the role of the progressive liberal-left in this? It obviously has a major role, but how does this work? Why is this combination so powerful? And what are the consequences of it, not least on our public life? It is not a history book. It does not attempt to find 'root causes' for what it going on or to track back in time to find a few individua...