A Free Left Blog

“The strong cannot help confronting; the less strong cannot help evading.”                                                               Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time One of the core themes of my forthcoming book The Tribe is the remarkable power that certain kinds of identity politics have attained in our public life. The knowledge base of this politics is the universal victimhood of its favoured identity groups. As the United Nations’ ‘ Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance ’ Tendayi Achiume put it in her report on how awful and racist Britain is, “The harsh reality is that race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability status and related categories all continue to determine the life chances and well-being of people in Britain in ways that are...

On Thursday 2 nd May, The Spectator published a fascinating interview conducted by Isabel Hardman with Frank Field in which Field ranged freely and controversially across subjects including welfare, immigration and the EU, the ‘Living Wage’, his role advising the current Government – and unions (“We won’t win the election because of the unions, we’ll win it in spite of them”). Field talked of personalities, including Gordon Brown (who “never really understood anything, let alone the economy”), Ed Miliband (“should just take a few more risks”) and Jon Cruddas (who “has got the job of saving us”). He also made some barbed comments about Labour’s loss of working class women voters, linking it explicitly to the “equalities agenda” pursued by the party under the aegis of deputy leader Harriet Harman – something which I have been critical about here and elsewhere. Field said: “Why has our vote collapsed amongst working class women? Because they do not relate to the equ...