Beloved comrades.
I would like to bring light in the darkness and share a generally chirpy mood at the end of a long year.
A great dragon in the English political imagination has been slain. Thatcherism has shaped the political consensus for more than forty years and this year, it has been reduced to the status it should have always enjoyed. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng do not look like standard bearers of a growing movement but the bedraggled remnant of a lost cause. They strolled into power cutting taxes and welfare and even the financial markets rejected them. The people they thought they worked for, sacked them. It was quite beautiful.
In December 2019, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives built a cross class coalition that decimated Labour in our heartlands around Brexit and Levelling Up. And they couldn’t do it. They could bail out the bankers out but they could not stand up to them. There is now a general awareness that organising our economy around the principle of the most effective exploitation of human beings and nature and their transformation into capital, is not really the best way to distribute power and resources in society. The only way that the Conservatives can renew is by being Conservative and rejecting market liberalism, and they can’t. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.
The Liz Truss episode was the most significant political moment since the Brexit referendum. Everybody knows the Thatcherite cuckoo has taken back control of the Conservative nest. It’s out of time, out of date and out of order.
But what is our alternative?
I sense a constipated anxiety in the Labour Leadership. As if they are on one of those strange minimum-input, minimum-output diets that involve sitting quietly for long periods of time and never smiling. We learnt in Covid who had to go to work and who did not. There were those who worked on zoom and those who had to leave the house and do something for somebody, usually with their hands. Those are our people, and our party needs to represent their interests and their sense of the sacred. We all know that shit happens, but what is going on now is out of order. The trains don’t work, the hospitals are exploding, the privatised utilities are stoking inflation and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Out of Order.
So this is our time. Regional banks, workers on boards, an educational strategy built around vocational colleges and recognising that universities are stupid. Politics above policy, getting people to organise themselves and hold their arrogant leaders accountable. A bigger role for the state in the economy, a dignified role for labour and the elevation of the places where they live. Establish civic trusts where once there were privatised utilities, held accountable by local assemblies. Deepen democracy, love liberty and build Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land. That’s where I’m at, and it all makes sense and it feels good.
I wrote a book about it this year called Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good. It’s quite a flat book in some ways. I wrote it during Covid and I was feeling sad. It’s not very funny. I still don’t understand why I wrote it in the way I did, exclusively for people who really hate Blue Labour. Academics, political obsessives, professional policy people, but I did my best to explain why we love our people and politics so much.
Unfortunately, there was a long period where you could only buy it on Amazon. Can you imagine how I felt? That Jeff ‘Pharoah’ Bezos was the principal beneficiary of my labour. That my book was being lugged around warehouses by people who were not allowed to join a union or go to the toilet. So please, if you want to buy my book don’t order it on Amazon: please order it from your local bookshop. At least then it will be in a bookshop so that one day I may walk in, see my book, buy it with cash, and actually read it. It’s a dream I know. But you can make it come true.
Anyway. Enough of all of that.
By far the most important moment this year was the death of her Majesty. Her body died, but her other body rose in glory. For three weeks our nation was blessed with grace and the Kingdom was real. It was blindingly obvious to everyone except those who went to our better universities that she embodied the form and substance of nobility. That her status and character were one: gracious, compassionate, just, dutiful, kind and of good heart. A strong democracy and a strong monarchy go together. Politicians must never be at the apex of our constitution. When PM Truss rose to speak at her funeral I felt the rapture of truth. Who? I feel blessed to have lived in her time and witnessed the perfection of her public performance. And to those people who throw eggs at King Charles during his year of mourning for his Mother I urge a minimum of one year imprisonment in which they are served a daily diet of eggs. Or maybe we could bring back the stocks and the pillory and bombard them for a day with rotten eggs. She embodied all that was best in our culture with her love of horses, 1970’s sitcoms and her casual disdain for contemporary English literature. Her quiet profound faith is a crucial part of the blessed inheritance she left to our People. Long live the King.
Further blessings must be bestowed on Mick Lynch and the RMT. This is the best organised, most effective strike in living memory. I worked for London Transport when I left school and my union was the NUR. The RMT has proved itself a worthy successor and shows the necessity of strong trade unions in order to resist the domination of capital. Merry Christmas Mick and all the best for 2023.
My year was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It woke me from my slumber. I instinctively took the side of Ukraine against the invader and knew that I had to go and see what was going on. As you know, my Grandfather was a Jew born in Ukraine and all my family were slaughtered in a small town by Ukrainian Nationalists led by Stepan Bandera, with help from the Nazis. I have been back many times to look for my relatives or their graves but I can’t find anything. I spent six weeks in Ukraine last summer and I will be writing about it in the year ahead. I still support the Ukrainian people but I found the Zelensky government disgusting. They have banned trade unions and the Russian language, the mother tongue of the majority of Ukrainians. They have abolished workers’ rights and Bandera’s face is everywhere, from street graffiti to the arms of soldiers in the Ukrainian army. I spent two weeks in Odessa and there was a strong interest in Blue Labour from local people and I will be returning to Odessa and other Ukrainian cities in the Spring to spread the word. There is an alternative to globalised capitalist mayhem and atavistic nationalism and it’s Blue Labour. On the way back I found to my surprise that we were very popular in Poland. I gave a talk giving thanks to the Solidarity Movement in the early eighties and confessed that I stole my entire politics from them.
All of this is just my way of saying hello. The fundamental things, lie elsewhere. It has been a good year for music. I was listening to Al Green’s beautiful version of ‘How Do you Mend A Broken Heart?’ and was shocked to discover it was written by the BG’s, the Brothers Gibb. This led me to re-evaluate the BG’s and I think the 1970’s was their golden decade. Saturday Night Fever is worth listening to on a lethargic Tuesday evening. They may not have the aggressive intensity of Slade (Come On Feel The Noyze) or Sweet (Wigwam Bam). They may lack the melancholic intensity of Gilbert O’Sullivan (Alone Again, Naturally) or the melancholic cheerfulness of Leo Sayer (Raining in my Heart). They certainly never recorded anything as sublime as George Michael’s version of Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me but the BG’s have something. I don’t know what it is but if you have any ideas I would be interested to hear them.
And the fundamental things apply as time goes by. All of the Queen’s troubles were caused by her children not loving her enough, not following her example. They thought they knew better and they did not. There is a lot of talk this year of ‘mental health’ and ‘wellbeing’. I don’t like these words. I will never accept the way that our society humiliates workers and talks to people without a degree. No amount of breathing exercises and yoga is going to soften my rage. And I yearn for love with my family and friends. These two things go together. What is wrong is to direct your rage against your Mum. Life is much better if you direct your rage against bankers, rail franchise managers and the Fabians, for example, and turn with a loving heart to your Mum. I am going to spend Christmas with my mother-in-law and that is probably going too far but I beseech you. If you are lucky enough to have a living Mum, be nice to her this Christmas.