On 18 October 2010 a group of around twenty Labour politicians, advisers and academics met in The Butler Room, University College, Oxford. The meeting was part of a failed attempt to create a new synthesis between New Labour and what became known as Blue Labour. Five years on, following a decisive election defeat, the question for the Labour party is whether that fledgling alliance can be revived.
The October 2010 meeting was the first of four discussions, jointly hosted by four academics, Maurice Glasman, Marc Stears, Jonathan Rutherford and Stuart White. The idea was to stimulate new thinking in the Labour party, which had been ejected from office after thirteen years in power. As people began to take their seats around the table, Maurice Glasman stood outside, smoking. This is not an unusual sight, but on this occasion he was calming his nerves. He was about to present his paper on ‘Labour’s Radical Tradition’.
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