It might seem axiomatic to observe that Red Tories and Blue Labourites must have as much in common as anything that might divide them. That’s one thing to take from Amol Rajan’s splendid overview of Philip Blond and Maurice Glasman’s attempts to refashion British politics. The other, I would suggest, is that Blond and Glasman’s rejection of liberalism leaves them on the reactionary side of the argument.
Perhaps that’s the right or most politically profitable place to be. Some polling seems to suggest this could be so, at least on the left. Glasman says it is “too simple to say that we are on the left on economic issues and on the right on social issues” but does little to refute the suspicion that this is, broadly speaking, a useful shorthand for the Blue Labour approach. Of course it’s something that could be said about the Red Tories too.
Glasman insists
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