I first encountered news of Lord Maurice Glasman of Stamford Hill and Stoke Newington of the Blue Labour tendency about a decade ago when I heard some of the idiotic ‘Jews for Jeremy Corbyn’ morons slagging him off at an event in North London. My first quiet thought was what has Lord Glasman must have done something or said something correct to attract the ire of such fraggles as the ‘Jews for Jeremy’ lot.
The more I’ve looked into Lord Glasman the more I’ve found stuff that I both agree with and disagree with. On the agreement side Lord Glasman was correct when he said that there’s room in British politics for a type of small ‘c’ conservative form of socialism and his call for those who supported the English Defence League not to be completely excluded from politics but to have their members reconnected with as most of those in the EDL just want a better life for their families. I have also agreed with Lord Glasman that immigration needed to be paused and that the post 1945 welfare state settlement weakened self organising and community organisation among the working classes. Where I disagree with Lord Glasman is with his association with the CitizensUK organisation as this organisation has morphed into something that regularly promotes un-British causes such as the promotion of Islam and of open borders.
However, on many things he’s correct. He’s been correct on the way that Donald Trump was able to appeal to America’s working classes far more effectively than his opponent in 2024 Kamala Harris was able to and he’s been right about the need for there to be respectful communications and relationships across political divides.
He’s recently appeared on a Sky TV politics programme speaking about the massive divide between the views of immigration held by the British public and those who govern Britain.
Here’s Lord Glasman speaking on the subject of a ‘long hot summer’ of public outrage at how badly the nation has been managed by the political classes.
You can find the video linked here:
https://x.com/edmsren/status/1949389038537916481
Link:
Some background information on the Citizens UK organisation. This article is extremely critical of Citizens UK
Yes indeed, Lord Glasman is to be respected and has very interesting ideas. I have been aware of him I think since when Ed Miliband was the Labour leader and he gave him the peerage, but I haven’t so far followed up on him that much.
I think you might be being a bit unfair on him though by criticising his links to Citizens UK as that was in the past before they morphed as you say, he was with Citizens London for a while when they were campaigning on issues such as living wages. Lord Glasman is now director of another community involvement group The Common Good Foundation and I can see no evidence he’s still supporting Citizens UK.
I disagree with regards mentioning Lord Glasman’s connections to CUK. They needed to be mentioned because it is such a troubling organisation from the top to the bottom. They’ve ran political cover for some pretty nasty Islamic preaches and have connections to the East London Mosque which is not altogether a clean hands entity which you will find if you take a look at the Harry’s Place Blog archive. CUK also for a time, but no longer from what I can gather, managed to muscle into some non-Orthodox Jewish groups that CUK used as shields to avert criticism. I recall speaking to a non-Orthodox Rabbi years back when CUK had got its claws into a Non-Orth group and mentioned my concerns and that maybe other means of expressing the Jewish desire to do good could be found only to be told ‘but CUK is the only social action game in town’. If I had not mentioned Lord Glasman’s connections to CUK then you can bet your bottom dollar that someone else would have brought it up either here or elsewhere.
For me, the fact that Lord Glasman is hated by the extremist ‘Jews for Jeremy’ crowd is a good thing. I’ve met some of this lot and the best I can say about them is that some of them are nice but naive and dim.
Practical politics is for me something that should not be any sort of purity test. Not every group or cause or individual will 100% align with my own views. For example I’ve quoted stuff from both the BBC and from members of Britain First in articles in the past but that doesn’t mean I fully agree with either of these entities nor support them nor agree with the ethos of these organisations it’s just like a broken analogue clock which tells the correct time twice a day.
Lord Glasman is certainly not a political yes man and for that I respect him even though I might believe that he’s not correct on everything. I do think that we will be hearing much more of Lord Glasman and those like him over the next few years as Britain slips into political chaos as he’s been proven correct that the Establishment has taken an ‘us and them’ view of migration with the British people being the ‘them’.