Slowly, But Surely

According to an email today from someone fairly high-powered, with its economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative patriotism in all directions, the Labour Party of Ed Miliband, Jon Cruddas and Maurice Glasman is "the British People's Alliance for slow learners."

But then, with its fondness for German-style worker representation on boards and remuneration committees, economic patriotism including both tight controls on capital movement and tight controls on immigration,  strong manufacturing, domestic food and fuel supplies, ownership of industries and enterprises by the country's own citizens, regional banking with close ties to the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, small and medium-sized family businesses on the Mittelstand model, and vocational as well as general skills training accorded the same respect as a very high level of academic achievement, the Labour Party of Ed Miliband, Jon Cruddas and Maurice Glasman is also the SDP for even slower learners. It has even arrived at features, such as the Euroscepticism and the strong sense of Englishness, that now define the continuing SDP, but which did not characterise the formation of that name in the 1980s.

And then, there are the famous words of  Robert E. Dowse: "From the beginning the ILP attempted to influence the trade unions to back a working class political party: they sought, as Henry Pelling states: 'collaboration with trade unionists with the ultimate object of tapping trade union funds for the attainment of Parliamentary power.' The socialism of the ILP was ideal for achieving this end; lacking as it did any real theoretical basis it could accommodate practically anything a trade unionist was likely to demand. Fervent and emotional, the socialism of the ILP could accommodate, with only a little strain, temperance reform, Scottish nationalism, Methodism, Marxism, Fabian gradualism, and even a variety of Burkean conservatism. Although the mixture was a curious one, it did have the one overwhelming virtue of excluding nobody on dogmatic grounds, a circumstance, on the left and at the time, which cannot be lightly dismissed."

Substitute "English patriotism" for "Scottish nationalism". Substitute "Catholicism" and "Radical Orthodoxy" for "Methodism". Clarify that "Marxism" is of the kind that is not really at all, since it sees itself as going all the way back to John Ball and Wat Tyler, at least as much rural as urban, and committed to the parliamentary, the municipal, the industrial and the general communitarian processes rather than to revolution, with the proletariat at most leading the other classes, if not simply working side by side with them. Take out that "even". Take out the suggestion of "curiosity". And the Labour Party of Ed Miliband, Jon Cruddas and Maurice Glasman looks like the ILP for very slow learners indeed.