“We show no relish for reconfiguring the relationship between the state, the market and society. The world is on the turn, yet we do not seem equal to the challenge.”
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman, is the founder of the Blue Labour movement, a “small-c conservative” strand of socialism that champions tradition, community, and civic association. A life peer in the UK’s House of Lords and Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at London Metropolitan University, Glasman is a rare figure on the British left: a political theorist who draws inspiration from Jewish socialism, Christian democracy, and the moral economy of guilds and trade unions. A longtime Labour member, he rose to prominence after 2008 by arguing that the post-1945 welfare state lost touch with the working-class culture it claimed to serve.
More recently, Glasman has unsettled mainstream Labour voices by aligning with populist movements that cut across conventional left-right lines. At the 2024 Postliberalism Conference, he hailed Donald Trump’s re-election as “world historical,” praising what he saw as a multi-ethnic working-class revolt against liberal elites.
