Lord Maurice Glasman: Could Blue Labour stop Reform?

UnHerd’s Contributing Editor Jonny Ball (aka Despotic Inroad) sits down with Lord Maurice Glasman, the Labour peer and political theorist behind Blue Labour, at Labour party conference 2025 in Liverpool. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is under fire and polling as the least popular on record — Glasman argues that the party faces a battle for its very soul.

In this conversation, he traces the history of the movement he founded, Blue Labour, and its critique of the Labour party’s transformation into what he sees as metropolitan and liberal, detached from its working-class roots. Glasman highlights how the working class and young voters are drifting to Nigel Farage’s Reform, why the best predictor of whether you vote Labour is whether you went to private school, and what it would take to reverse Labour’s decline: a renewed focus on industrial strategy, job creation, and working-class empowerment.

Can Blue Labour stop Reform’s rise and save Labour? Could Reform actually replace Labour as the voice of working people? And what, if anything, should Labour learn from MAGA and Trump’s populist success?

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