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New Statesman
14 hours ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Meet the Blue Labour bros
Illustration by Nate Kitch Blue Labour has always been more of a collection of guys than a faction. From its beginnings in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it was Maurice Glasman and a small handful of Jons and not a huge amount more. It is now having something of a resurgence, and beginning to develop a degree of internal reality, although the reality of its actual influence remains debated. A Blue Labour group of MPs formed at the end of last year; now a parliamentary staff network has been set up. There are, I'm told, around 15 of these staffers so far, planning a roster of events and meetings and general association. Over the last few weeks, I've been speaking to some of the new staff group to try and understand them. What does this lanyard class that hates the lanyard class believe? You can paint a picture of who they are with heavy use of the caveat 'mostly but not exclusively'. They are mostly, but not exclusively, men, and mostly, but not exclusively, quite young. They mostly work for new-intake MPs; they are mostly white, and mostly from outside of London. In short, they look like any random sampling of Labour's parliamentary staff class would. Some work for members of the Blue Labour MPs group; some work for completely conventional Starmer-era Labour MPs. Their diagnosis of what is wrong with the country and what Labour should do about it is commensurate with the rest of Blue Labour in its Dan Carden and Jonathan Hinder era. One member of the staff network views Blue Labour as a project of 'realigning the party with areas it represents'. Having come into the party as a Corbynite, they say they 'used to be much more liberal on immigration', but now believe that in the country the 'Overton Window has moved' and have moved with it. One staffer talks about being the grandchild of immigrants and hearing her family and friends increasingly express concern that more recent immigrants are not well integrated – indicating, she thinks, that worries about immigration and integration are far from the preserve of racists and traditionally anti-immigration parties, but are something Labour needs to reckon with. Another staffer says that Blue Labour is concerned with people who have been 'ignored by the establishment for decades', suffering both 'economic neglect' but also being 'ignored on issues like immigration'. He reckons that the 'liberalism of Blair has dominated the party for two decades', with 'not enough focus on class'. Another thinks we have an 'economy too focused on London and the South East', and that Labour is 'not giving white working-class men anything'. 'You've got to read the way the world is going,' they say, and ask 'do we want it in a Labour way, or in a right-wing way?' However, while my impression of Jonathan Hinder is as a man of total conviction (believing among other things that universities should be allowed to go bust and that we should at least think very seriously about leaving the ECHR), the staffers seem just as animated by the process of thinking and talking about politics as they do by the positions themselves. Clearly one of the attractions is not the specific appeal of Blue Labour itself, but the space it provides to talk about things. Keir Starmer's Labour Party is not a very ideas-y place, and these are, on an intellectual level, painfully earnest young people. 'We debate quite a lot – it's good to talk about ideas and philosophy, and all the things staffers never talk about,' says one member; another feels there is a 'frustration with the lack of ideas from the progressive wing of the party'. A third notes that 'a lot of MPs are issues-led, but not political'. When I ask for political heroes, I get Crosland and Blair: my strong sense is that in a different internal climate, these people might not have found themselves at the door of Blue Labour, and instead been scattered, ploughing perhaps somewhat idiosyncratic furrows in a variety of different factions. However, while their attitude to the government could in broad terms be described as loyalist, the ideological vacuum of Starmerism – famously unburdened by doctrine – and the government's lack of (or even decidemad uninterest in) intellectual vitality brings them here. It's not surprising that the people who are here for the debating society have ended up in the tendency which began life as (and arguably has never been much more than) a series of seminars. The staff group's convenor does sees debate as part of the programme though: he says having 'debate and discussion' is really important in and of itself, but also hopes to help flesh out the Blue Labour policy programme (answering questions like, 'what is a Blue Labour foreign policy?' for example). This desire for debate also intersects with another current dynamic in the party: the total sidelining of the Labour left. Dan Carden, the leader of the Blue Labour MP caucus, was a member of Corbyn's shadow cabinet and came up through Unite (he has described his journey into Blue Labour as being from 'left to left'). Various members of the staff network started their political lives as Corbynites, and even those who didn't are fairly ardent believers in the need for a broad-church Labour Party. I hear some variant on 'Blair never expelled Corbyn' more than once in my conversations. One staffer thinks that thanks to Corbyn's foreign policy positions and the anti-Semitism scandal, 'the entire Corbyn project was delegitimised' and there wasn't a thorough evaluation of what worked and what didn't. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe As much as one of the older members I speak to wants to stress that Blue Labour is not just a reaction to Reform and has been 'going for 15 years', the experience of Corbynism and of the loss of Red Wall seats in 2019 has clearly imprinted itself deeply on the tendency's new iteration. The new Blue Labour owes significant DNA not just to the valiant seminar-convening of Jonathan Rutherford and co., but also to post-2019 projects like the moderate 'Renaissance', the Corbynite 'No Holding Back', and the Labour Together thinking on show in 'Red Shift', the report which famously brought us Stevenage Woman. This post-Corbyn inheritance is also present in how the tendency talks about the state and the economy. In one staffer's view, Blue Labour's 'economic populism is more important than its cultural elements'; the group's convenor immediately says that it is Blue Labour's answers on political economy that most appealed to him. The staffers' views chime with the views of Blue Labour MPs Jonathan Hinder, Connor Naismith and David Smith, who wrote in LabourList last week that their agenda is 'an explicit challenge to the neoliberal, capitalist consensus, and it belongs to the radical labour tradition'. There is a reticence amongst the staffers when it comes to Glasman and some of his more recent interventions (the repeated assertion that progressives don't want you to enjoy sex with your wife; an appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast; tirades about the chancellor and the attorney general). While the group's convenor (who tells me that he first became interested in Blue Labour because when was younger he would 'watch and read stuff online, lectures and articles, by Cruddas and Glasman') says the Labour peer's connections with the Maga movement are 'realpolitik', conversations Labour needs to be open to having, others are less positive and more awkward when asked about their long-time standard bearer. They also acknowledge that Blue Labour has, as one of them puts it, a 'brand issue' within Labour, a party whose membership are in the main bog-standard left liberals. They aren't wrong: one Labour MP I spoke to about this piece called Blue Labour 'four guys who claim they do have girlfriends but that they go to another school'. It's hard to escape the impression that this MP and critics like them won't be persuaded by one staffer's arguments that Blue Labour is 'not anti-liberal, it's a critique of liberalism' or another's earnest assertion that he just wants more of our political conversation to address the 'moral plane' of people's lives. Arguments about the out-of-touch nature of the political classes are probably not best made by Westminster bag carriers – as the bag carriers well know. (There are 'too many of me in the economy', the group's convenor, a white man in his 20s with an Oxbridge degree, tells me ruefully.) Everything, however, starts somewhere. Political history is scattered with the vehicles of bright young things, some of which went places and some of which didn't. This group of earnest young people could do worse for themselves than as the staff vanguard of Labour's most discussed faction – even if not all the discussion is wholly positive. That being said, the staff network claims fairly moderate ambitions for itself and its tendency: 'Can I ever see them putting forward NPF or NEC candidates? Honestly, no,' one member tells me. In the meantime, though, there's another seminar to attend. [See also: Labour's 'old right' has been reborn] Related
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Labour MP accuses families impacted by Labour's tax raid on private schools of 'crying to the courts' after they lost High Court bid to stop VAT on school fees
A Labour MP has accused families impacted by the private school tax raid of 'crying to the courts' after they lost a bid to stop the VAT on fees. Families were dealt a devastating blow after they lost a High Court challenge to the taxes on fees. The judicial review claim, heard earlier this year, aimed to have the 20 per cent tax declared 'incompatible' with human rights law. However, in a decision handed down on Friday, judges rejected all claims, despite agreeing with some of the arguments. Jonathan Hinder, the MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, criticised the families, saying taking the case to High Court was 'crazy'. He said in a post on X: 'A tax commitment included in an election-winning manifesto, duly delivered. That's democracy. Campaign to reverse it if you like. Fine. 'But this habit of going crying to the courts all the time is silly. Obviously the right decision, but crazy that it got to the High Court.' The controversial tax, pledged in Labour's manifesto, came into force in January this year. The MP has accused families impacted by the private school tax raid of 'crying to the courts' after they lost a bid to stop the VAT on fees Three groups of families – most of whom are anonymous – joined private schools in bringing a legal challenge against the policy. Their lawyers argued the tax is a breach of children's right to an education under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The various families also said it was 'discriminatory' – either because their child has special educational needs (SEN), has a preference for a religious education, or because they need an all-girls environment. But Dame Victoria Sharp, Lord Justice Newey and Mr Justice Chamberlain concluded the VAT policy was 'proportionate' in its aim to raise extra revenue for state schools. They added Parliament ultimately had the right make the decision. A spokesman for the lobby group Education not Taxation told The Telegraph: 'The court's ruling that the taxation of independent schooling is discriminatory and will have a disproportionate, prejudicial effect on children with SEN clearly demonstrates that any 'crying to the courts' was entirely justified. 'While it is disappointing that the court ruled the action is not illegal, it nevertheless makes a powerful statement: the policy is discriminatory.' Julie Robinson, the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), said that schools were 'right' to have escalated the challenge to the High Court. She said: 'Thousands of families have already been negatively affected by the policy, with more than 11,000 children leaving independent education since last year – far more than had been anticipated by the government.' At the opening of the court case in April, families of children with SEN from all over the country protested outside. They said they have been forced to choose the private sector due to the state provision for SEN being so poor – but cannot afford the extra cost of the VAT. Alicia Kearns, the shadow minister for home affairs, described Hinder's tweets as 'class warfare'. She said: 'Parents in my communities have been put through enormous stress and their children's education disrupted. 'They do not deserve the ridicule of Labour MPs indulging in class warfare and crowing about manifesto promises whilst glaringly silent on the extra money promised for state schools. 'I wouldn't be quite so glib if my ideological experiment had left our state schools worse off.' The ruling comes after a £43,000-a-year boarding school has been forced to make the 'heart-wrenching' decision to close after 125 years following Labour's tax raid on private education. Queen Margaret's School For Girls in York said they are 'unable to withstand mounting financial pressure'. The school also blamed 'increased national insurance and pension contributions, the removal of charitable-status business rates relief, and rising costs for the upkeep and operation of our estate'. The 125-year-old institution said that 'tireless efforts' in the past 18 months to 'respond to these challenges' included a possible merger or sale and the search for 'fresh investment'. However, the school said 'none of these routes resulted in a successful outcome' and coupled with declining entries, it has 'been left with no alternative' but to close. After 'strong student enquiry levels' in Autumn, the school said 'these declined sharply in early 2025 following the implementation of VAT' and is 'below the viable level required' to keep the school open.
Telegraph
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Labour MP accuses families hit by private school tax raid of ‘crying to the courts'
A Labour MP has accused families hit by the private school tax raid of 'crying to the courts'. Jonathan Hinder, the MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, criticised families who were hit by Labour's 20 per cent VAT levy on private school fees after they lost their challenge at the High Court on Friday. He said taking the case to the High Court was 'crazy', before adding in the post to X: 'A tax commitment included in an election-winning manifesto, duly delivered. That's democracy. Campaign to reverse it if you like. Fine. 'But this habit of going crying to the courts all the time is silly. Obviously the right decision, but crazy that it got to the High Court.' Three separate challenges were heard together in a judicial review between April 1 and 3, using more than a dozen families as case studies. In a single written judgment issued on Friday, the three judges presiding over the case said they 'dismiss the claims'. Dame Victoria Sharp, Lord Justice Newey and Mr Justice Chamberlain said the VAT policy was 'proportionate' in its aim to raise extra revenue for state schools. A spokesman for the lobby group Education not Taxation told The Telegraph that 'crying to the courts' was 'entirely justified'. He said: 'The court's ruling that the taxation of independent schooling is discriminatory and will have a disproportionate, prejudicial effect on children with special educational needs (SEN) clearly demonstrates that any 'crying to the courts' was entirely justified. 'Without the action taken by the claimants, the government's prejudicial behaviour would have gone unchecked, obscured by the false narratives and political spin used to justify this attack on educational choice. 'While it is disappointing that the court ruled the action is not illegal, it nevertheless makes a powerful statement: the policy is discriminatory.' Julie Robinson, the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), said that schools were 'right' to have escalated the challenge to the High Court. The ISC was part of the legal challenge and represents more than 1,400 private schools. 'This is an unprecedented tax on education and it is right that its compatibility with human rights law was tested,' she said. 'Thousands of families have already been negatively affected by the policy, with more than 11,000 children leaving independent education since last year – far more than had been anticipated by the government. 'As the court noted, there was interference with human rights and this policy is likely to have an outsized impact on families of faith and children with SEND but without an EHCP.' In the wake of the VAT hike, private schools across the country have been forced to close. Queen Margaret's School for Girls in York said it had been forced to make the 'deeply distressing' decision to close following Labour's VAT raid. The £43,000-a-year boarding school said it was 'unable to withstand mounting financial pressures' after the introduction of the tax in January led to student enquiries 'declining sharply'. According to the school's website, the enrolment numbers for the coming academic year were below the level needed to keep the school open. The 'heart-wrenching' decision was taken after failing to secure fresh investment. The school also blamed 'increased national insurance and pension contributions, the removal of charitable-status business rates relief, and rising costs for the upkeep and operation of our estate'. Queen Margaret's alumni include the socialite Manners sisters – Lady Violet, Lady Alice, and Lady Eliza – daughters of the 11th Duke and Duchess of Rutland. The independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18 was due to celebrate its 125th anniversary next year. It will close at the end of their summer term on July 5. Alicia Kearns, the shadow minister for home affairs, described the tweets as 'class warfare'. She said: 'Parents in my communities have been put through enormous stress and their children's education disrupted. 'They do not deserve the ridicule of Labour MPs indulging in class warfare and crowing about manifesto promises whilst glaringly silent on the extra money promised for state schools. 'No sign of keeping that promise, quite the opposite as state schools struggle and Labour Ministers this week admit their funding is insufficient to cover staff pay rises next year, and the NEU calling it a 'crisis in funding'. 'I wouldn't be quite so glib if my ideological experiment had left our state schools worse off.'
Telegraph
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
A day out in northern England's happiest town
Whiskery men sit around a wood-burning stove with guitars and a banjo. They start to play and sing the classic folk song by Ewan MacColl, Dirty Old Town. 'By the old canal…' go the lyrics, which is appropriate, for here we are, right next to the old canal, the 127-mile long Leeds & Liverpool Canal to be precise, in Skipton, North Yorkshire. The Boat House Bar, with big windows looking onto a canal junction, is a favourite among gongoozlers, real ale fans and folk musicians alike. Every other Sunday locals gather to strum and croon. Before long, those men might be singing songs about railways too. The 12-mile Skipton to Colne line, closed in 1970, has been in the news. There are plans to reopen it, to boost transport links with East Lancashire, forming a new trans-Pennine route. Colne MP, Jonathan Hinder believes it will improve access to jobs and housing. If you are thinking of moving home, Skipton, famed for its building society, is an attractive place to live in more ways than one. This gateway to the Dales ranked as the sixth happiest place to live in the country in a recent poll by Rightmove. I can vouch that the locals are a friendly lot. With a population of some 15,000, Skipton is small enough that towpath etiquette – to greet passers-by – seems to have seeped into the town's cobbled lanes and alleyways. 'Ow do?' said an elderly man as he tipped his hat. 'Beautiful day!' replied a rosy-cheeked woman. In the compact canal quarter of shops and cafes, I ventured into The Beer Engine bar and, over a pint of Saltaire bitter, was soon in conversation with a Skipton resident. Chris loves the easy access to rivers for kayaking and hills for walking, he said. He suggested I could visit the villages of Appletreewick, Malham and Grassington, 'where 'All Creatures Great and Small' was filmed.' That unhurried, neighbourly good life of James Herriot's days still reigns in Skipton. I witnessed the rare sight of students putting empty sandwich cartons and crisp packets into their rucksacks rather than discarding them onto the towpath as they walked from school in Aireville Park. Next to the school, the leisure centre was busy with people over 60, such as myself, enjoying a swim, followed by a sociable steam and sauna, all for the bargain price of £3.55. On a walk from the canal junction, where a colourful little narrowboat, Sam, belonging to Pennine Cruisers, sets off on 30-minute pleasure trips in all weathers, I followed the towpath of the dead-end Springs branch, beneath the church tower and beside a converted mill, until it became a teetering boundary between a rushing tannin-coloured beck on one side and an ivy draped, disused waterway on the other, the precipitous cliffs and walls of the Norman castle, rising above it. This branch of the canal was built to transport limestone from quarries in what is now Castle Woods. The broadleaf woods have several way-marked circular walks. 'In spring they're full of wild garlic and bluebells,' said a dog-walker. 'What I love about Skipton is that you can walk straight from the High Street into these woods and then out onto the hills,' she added. Privately owned Skipton Castle, one of the best preserved medieval fortresses in the UK, is notable for being fully roofed. One wing, not open to the public, is the residence for the current owners, the Fattorini family, but for much of the castle's history it was the Clifford family who called it home. On a visit you can learn about the remarkable achievements of the last member of the clan, Lady Anne Clifford, who restored her family seat after it suffered extensive damage in the Civil War. Near the castle, a treasure trove of a wine shop sells Skipton gin, its bottle labels featuring a boat on the canal, the castle and sheep (the name Skipton is said to come from 'sheep town'). The Wright Wine Company, in a former blacksmith's, has over 1,000 different whiskies, a similar number of gins, £1,000 armagnacs and countless wines. 'We've been shopping here for about 40 years,' said one woman, who the owner greeted warmly with a kiss on the cheek. A loyal customer base appears to be the firm's foundation. 'People drive for an hour and a half to get here,' said an assistant. As for eating out, my pub-acquaintance Chris had mentioned a High Street restaurant, Le Caveau, as the place to go for 'fancy food'. With barrel-vaulted ceilings, this cellar restaurant was once the town's prison – for 'felons and sheep rustlers', it says on the website. At £70 for a five-course menu (or two courses for £35), it was beyond my budget so I made do with home-made soup and a (huge) bowl of chips next to a roaring fire in a friendly inn with rooms, The Woolly Sheep. When it comes to shopping – a key reason why people visit Skipton these days – the market takes place four days a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday). Stalls stretching up and down the High Street are full of arts and crafts, meat, eggs, cheeses, cakes, hand-made clothes and second-hand books. That corn mill that I passed, once powered by that tannin-coloured stream, Eller Beck, has been converted into upmarket shops including one selling stylish furniture. Off the High Street, Craven Court is a dinky, covered pedestrian lane with glass roof and wrought iron, developed in the 1980s. Its roots date to a 16th-century theatre but now little boutiques and cafes make for rainy-day browsing. For a break from shopping, the Craven Museum in the Town Hall is small but perfectly formed. There are sheep-shearing and weaving implements, information about the history of lead mining, the local geology of limestone, millstone grit and sandstone, visible in local architecture, and a map of the historic region of Craven, which stretches from Skipton to Settle and whose name might derive from a Celtic word for wild garlic. There is a display about early tourism and how artists such as JMW Turner and Edwin Henry Landseer popularised the region's appeal. 'The Dales have never disappointed me. I still consider them the finest countryside in Britain,' wrote J.B Priestley. Inspired, I took the 72 bus for a 30-minute scenic trip to Grassington, disembarking at the last stop: the Visitor Centre for the Yorkshire Dales National Park. I hiked through the village, past a tea shop selling 'all cakes great and small' and up into the hills for an exhilarating circular hike that included part of the Dales Way and a high footpath following drystone walls and stone-stepped stiles. Drifted snow lay in the shadow of walls, sheep grazed near skeletal trees and the views were far-reaching, rolling away for unhindered miles of beiges and greens. Wooden shutters on an abandoned hilltop farm, Bare House, creaked in the wind. Then it was back to the touristy village for a pint of local ale and a tasty lunch in The Black Horse next to a wood-burning stove before boarding a bus for the nine-mile journey to Skipton. Towns with the epithet 'gateway to…' often have nothing more to offer than their location and a train station. Skipton must be one of the finest gateways there is. Before long, there may be another railway line to get there too. How to do it Paul Miles stayed in Skipton on a holiday hire boat from Anglo Welsh. More conventional accommodation is offered by The Woolly Sheep Inn. Another option is Heriotts Hotel, next to the canal and opposite the train station. You can travel to Skipton easily by train from London Kings Cross, via Leeds.
