Why should I identify with a ...city instead of a Country one you people like to pretend doesn't exist to further the privileges you steal from us out here in the middle of nowhere at the back of beyond - cretures just like you put us .... there.

I would have to born without a brain to believe a single word you utter .... don't you realise that when you change the name of something with a spell you also change the value attached to it?

Some of you do I am sure and the oters are virtual automatons being directed to see the world as they are presumed upon to see - it! How many generations before you find yourselves in the compound of a farmyard being newly de-scribed with the same terminology as cattle or sheep.

I'm sure Cruddas will be writing books and making a good living off this for years to come, sadly I cannot for the life of me see the public no matter how bad Cameron is voting labour, Blair has gone and now we are back with kinnock mark two

If jon Cruddas is the best intellectual the LP can muster, well, oh dear. Nice bloke I'm sure and some good notions, but 'earning and belonging', is that really going to light the fires of a people's revolution? (Oh sorry fogot that social democracy is just about mitigating Capital). But what about democracy that is social? or participation and control by citizens? And he's still banging on about economic grwoth and global competitiveness - so he doesn't understand the ecological emergency and he's no internationalist.
He might know aout Raymond Williams but I can't see the great Welshman being swept along with this - perhaps he should be reading Latouche and Gudynas.

THE problem with Jon Cruddas is that he privileges the romantic, utopian and the tribal over rationality and materialism. In a previous speech he said that for him ‘politics is more about emotion than programme; more groups, community and association – imagined as well as real – rather than theoretical or scientific’. This, then, is a direct challenge to rationalism. Cruddas is in love with words. Perhaps it is no coincidence that he likes to quote the playwright turned political leader Vaclav Havel who used words like ‘love, friendship, solidarity, sympathy and tolerance’ to make his point about human community.
In contrast he rejects the words ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’. The word ‘radical’, he points out, comes from the Latin to uproot, while ‘progressive’ means going ‘forward to achieve improved, altered social structures’. Cruddas is concerned that this attitude can ‘often harbour contempt for those fearful of change’. Again, rationalism drains ‘emotion and connection’ as ‘social democracy retreats into a cold managerialism; politics as a variant of rational choice theory’. He continues: “For Labour to rediscover its energy, vitality and language it has to confront this reality; literally to rediscover its soul. I would suggest to rediscover exiled traditions within its own history – romantic, utopian traditions that might contest and win the notion of the The Good Society here and now; today.” He argues that the ‘history of socialism has always been a contest between its romantic and its rationalist traditions within which the latter has tended to win out at the expense of our essential soul and sentiment’. And from this emerges his sense of The Good Society ‘where people fulfil their capacities and flourish; a new covenant between it and the people, a modern utopianism’.
Like all Romanticism it is difficult to pin down. This is inevitable precisely because it rejects reason and rationality, making it hard to define. In a sense it rejects argument, as witnessed by Cruddas’s comment: “It is not a choice rather an obligation.” In so far as he does argue for his case, however, it is also incoherent because it is not based on rationality. Generally Romanticism prefers the concrete or the community over abstract rationality and universal rights. From a purely practical political point of view it is also dangerous because it sails close to conservative romantics like Edmund Burke with their appeal to wisdom immanent in tradition and custom, family and nation, strong social order. Differences can be drawn between romantic socialism and conservatism in the former’s optimism in human nature as against the latter’s pessimism. But the similarities are sufficient to make The Good Society and The Big Society in danger of merging into one another with the former taking on the mantel of failure associated with the latter.
Nevertheless Romanticism is the source of a rich cultural and political heritage and Cruddas can claim credit for attempting to bring this back into the Labour Party. But does it have to be a choice between Romanticism and Rationalism? Can we revel in the high-flown subjectivism of Romanticism, where concrete communities are the extent of our individual sensibilities, but also draw on the universalism of Rationality grounded in materialism? I think the distinction between Romanticism and Rationality is a false dichotomy and we can turn to the work of the American philosopher Thomas Nagel with his impersonal and personal viewpoints to see why.

Middle Class Tory swing voters in Eastleigh, specifically. That, as much as anything is what, as the trite phrase would have it, “the convincing story of the nation.” Is all about. The idea that we can create some idealised society between the state and the market is an absurdity based on wilfully misrepresenting both and the dialectics within and between both.

This nation as even neo-liberal reformists like Neal Lawson mean it can perhaps be found in Eastleigh. It can perhaps be found as well within the metropolitan liberal elite and it’s mutually reinforcing networks. - These same networks having whatever ethical purpose Dr Cruddas, in what is largely a vocation of his own making is able to claim for the One Nation end of the Labour neo-liberal continuum. John Cruddas can witter on about the shortcomings of the managerialism of the state and the transactions of the market all he likes. Such pronouncements mean little or nothing. But they do give that veneer of intellectualism that Labour neo-liberals quite like and which Dr Cruddas has carved out a niche for himself in providing.

It is of course unlikely that middle class Tory voters in Eastleigh, or anywhere else for that matter, are going to be taken in by Dr. Cruddas. Labour voters who are not part of the metropolitan liberal elite, (and are still less one of that elite’s jobbing comedians,) might not follow Dr Cruddas’s wilfully abstruse language: but they know when they are being patronised and conned.

The ‘new labour’ elite and perhaps a large part of the deeply middle-class strata of the electorate, (Tory and Labour,) whose interests One Nation Labour seeks to represent and project, can live in something like the economic and cultural condition located somewhere between the state and the market as theorised by John Cruddas. But they can only do that because the economic and cultural capital they possess gives them a degree of autonomy in the market and a degree of independence from the day to day state which in practice enables them collectively and individually to make demands on the resources of the state; and indeed on how the state allocates its resources in relation to much of the rest of the population.

In the last few days we see childish finger pointing in the One Nation Labour playground. Len McClusky, (who really ought to have more about him) denounces Alan Johnson and others as ‘Blairite zombies’ and ‘neo-liberals.’ They it seems are to blame for all of the Blair and Brown Gvts policies and all of its failures. Perhaps so. But what was McClusky doing at the time? What policies were the current and next Miliband’s pushing? Ditto the present shadow cabinet? In what ways do the policies put forth by the shadow cabinet NOT build upon the neo-liberal settlement? Has McClusky really not noticed how a whole range of the working class as it exists in today’s economy and society have been systematically expunged from the PLP over the last 25 years? Does he really think that a PLP drawn in recent years from an ever narrowing social, cultural and ideological base, - and in which Jon Cruddas is able to comport himself as the in house intellectual, is somehow not neo-liberal?

Scapegoating some neo-liberals does not make One Nation Labour any better than those colleagues it now seeks to vilify. Nor is such blatant opportunism on Mr McClusky’s part necessarily of assistance to him in Unite’s current leadership election.

Messrs Miliband and Cruddas are currently enthusing about a Mansion Tax. In their different ways, they patronise and exploit the ‘deserving’ poor and by means of the Bedroom Tax identify and scapegoat yet further a particular section of the extensive ‘undeserving’ poor. Even some of One Nation Labour’s target electorate have some qualms about this. These qualms can only increase, (not least in a place like Eastleigh,) when people realise that a Mansion Tax cannot really be brought in without a wholesale re-evaluation of Council Tax Bands.
Do not expect to see the Mansion Tax in Labour’s 2015 Manifesto. Do not expect to see the abolition of the Bedroom Tax either.

Boy does this remind me of Labour under Kinnock we will win and the leader will be Kinnock except of course Kinnoch did not make it because the people did not trust him.

My problem it looks and sounds like a labour party of the middle class Tory swing voters.

I’m sorry, but as a member of the public, one of the poor that journalists often talk about, what I took from JC’s speech was that there’s no possibility of Labour inheriting a healthy economy; and policies, as to be expected, are still a work in progress.

New labour’s philosophical framework erred towards too great a dependence upon individual materialism, and this flaw might be fixed by a collective DIY approach to building a fair and just society. This, after all, is the way of the working classes as history shows.

Hmm, well from my perspective that would be, as you were, as in Labour's good times regardless of a system meltdown and a coalition government pursuing business as usual policies making your life harder, boarding on impossible....

Where’s the hope?

Don't be fooled by the artistically triumphant but historically inaccurate 'Man for All Seasons' - Thomas More was a nasty piece of work; he not only exected 'heretics' for reading English Bibles he insisted on torturing them until they recanted. In this context the generally vile Henry VIII's execution of More was relatively restrained. At least his death was quick unlike the slow and agonising demise of many Lutherans, whose only 'crime' was to disagree with the Church and State about which language the Bible should be in.

Cruddas also fails to address the contradiction in his own argument which both prioritises economic growth and condemns an emphasis on an economistic approach:

'But is to "earn and own" the essence of Labour? Is it really what people want? Does this give our lives true meaning?

Here, what we aspire to consists of the impulse to accumulate and consume severed from a deeper sense of responsibility to others and society as a whole. It is a bit one-sided. Let's call this the "economistic tradition" within Labour. It also strips down the notion of earning into one built around consumption rather than, for example, earning respect or citizenship.'

and:

'The institutions that generated the crash are still predominant within the economy. The predatory is winning out over the productive. There is no growth strategy other than more of the same.'

It is little wonder that Labour in the past turned to economistic means. Social democrats across Europe soon realised that replacing capitalism was beyond them and instead concentrated on trying to harness the existing system for as many people as possible - hence the economistic approach of British Labour. And despite the radical break with the past by Blair and New Labour there was of course an echo of this in the economic policies from 1997 to 2010: trying to unleash the power of markets which profits were then txed in order to fund investment in Public Services. And we all know how this ended!

But this still doesn't mean that it is obvious what should be done instead. Anyone who is understandably sceptical about narrow economism still has to face the uncomfortable task of providing an alternative - including Jon Cruddas. One response is to ressurrect the socialist aim mentioned above of replacing capitalism but this is clearly not what Cruddas is arguing - so what does he mean?

Stan: even though Lewis anticipated the charge of 'usual suspects' (and in my opinion successfully dealt with it) you persisted in making a sweeping statement which apparently referred to all those who have posted on this thread. Paul might have contempt for Cruddas but I see no sign of it the posts of either Lewis or myself. Please explain to me how you reach the conclusion that I apparently rely on 'ideology' (blinkered or otherwise) whereas you and Cruddas manage to transcend it and point out the significance of your statement about 'aligning... ....with some unlikely bedfellows'. Since for example both Tories and socialists condemn fascism it could be claimed that they are 'unlikely bedfellows'. But this would be trite and conceal more than it reveals about the very real differences between the two vastly contrasting political ideologies!

I think it would be far more worthwhile for those who support Cruddas to engage with the above criticisms rather than make vague assumptions about the motive(s) behind them!

Steady Lewis; Dr Cruddas as Polydor Virgil is one thing. But encouraging comparison with Sir Thomas More is perhaps a burdon too great to expect to expect the much abused and put upon Labour Party to endure.

Troubling news,Stan.

Paul has found bones under the New Labour car park that suggest there was almost certainly once a socialist body within the Labour party.

Forensic evidence suggest it died a hard and brutal death assailed by many foes.

Reconstruction indicates that it had appealing features,despite subsequent propaganda,and that compassion was in its DNA.

Dr.Cruddas has suggested that it be re-interred in Essex marginals at low tide.Usual mourners in attendance.

The usual suspects here have the same contempt for Jon Cruddas as that leading Blairite John Rentoul(see Rentoul's blog "Jon Cruddas and "belonging") which is interesting in itself.

Once again they cannot see beyond their own blinkered ideologies even if means aligning themselves with some unlikely bedfellows.

As I said in my comment on John Rentoul's piece (under my nom de plume), dismissing what Cruddas had to say as blah and waffle is crass. His attack on the narrow economism of Milburn was completely justified and bodes well for Labour's policy review.

We must hope that Labour will win the next General Election. Certainly the fact that the Tories and Lib Dems have fallen out with each other in the specific matter of the Parliamentary boundaries cannot but help. Older comrades, colleagues and friends might recall the delicious theatre of Home Secretary Jim Callaghan orchestrating the Gvt benches in voting down a Boundaries Commission report in the 1960s.

The secrets and lies born of unflinchingly right-wing politics remain as characteristic of One Nation Labour as they were under Blair and Brown and the ‘new labour’ marketing brand. The degree of sanctimony from the strands of theory and action making up Labour neo-liberalism does seem to have increased in intensity and shrillness of tone as Labour becomes more at ease with its anti working class politics. But this sanctimony, associated as it so easily is with John Cruddas’s approach to politics, is far more generalised than that.- Listen to Liam Byrne; to Caroline Flint and to Frank Field, to name but three of dozens. The one good thing is that the sneering and disgustingly right-wing James Purnell is no longer in Parliament. - For which release, much thanks.

There is nothing insightful or progressive in what Dr. Cruddas has to say. It is a variant of the familiar, derivative, moralising thesis upon which this serious right-wing thinker has constructed his sense of Entitlement to Place and Influence in both the Labour Party and the metropolitan elite. Indeed, he has jockeyed so assiduously to these ends down the years, that it is a wonder that traces of him have not been found in a Tesco beef burger.

A conscientious young student preparing for her A Levels could have written a better piece for The Guardian than did Dr. Cruddas. He ponderously tells us of the Roman Catholic traditions within the Labour Party. This is not political or philosophical insight to any but John Cruddas himself. These traditions, for example, ensured that Hugh Gaitskell and not Edith Summerskill, was selected to be the Labour candidate for Leeds South, in 1945.

There is no virtue in what Jon Cruddas has written. It wilfully ignores all of the contemporary issues the majority of the population - beyond the self referential and mutually reinforcing networks of which the MP is a part, - have to live with.

When will One Nation Labour stop patronising and infantilising the men and women whose party, history and culture it has appropriated? When will the current Miliband and Jon Cruddas stop assisting the Tories in turning people against each other in the name of Cuts and Austerity?

For all that Dr Cruddas affects his familiar high moral tone; low self advancement is at the heart of his political positioning. If Labour wins in 2015 a seat at the cabinet table is surely his. If Labour loses in 2015, a bid for the Deputy Leadership or even the Leadership is almost certain.

New Slogan for Jon Cruddas Review

ONE NATION TWO TIER

Refounding Labour. (Arnie Graf)

One Nation Two Tier

One Nation double speak philosophy - New Labour, Old Labour, Blue Labour, Ed Milibands Labour (What ever that is)Where are the policies? Where are the ideas?

Two Tier Labour Party

1. A party of career politicians
2. A party of grassroot community activists

TWO TIER LABOUR PARTY.

Anobody disagree

I suppose,Neal,that to people of your ilk,these responses will seem to be "the usual suspects" unleashing their various deep reservations against Mr.Cruddas.

I think it goes beyond personalities though.

My views,and Brian's,and Paul's,and Jon T's,follow no common faction agenda.

But I think there is a common theme that the there have been too many secrets and too many lies in the post-Brown leadership,which is seen as fundamentally weak and sanctomonious.

It does look like Ed Miliband and labour will win the next election, however not on any clear policies or vision, but on the government losing through incompetence. What we hear from Jon Cruddas is another set of smoking mirrors in the same category of Ed Miliband's "one nationism". Utterly meaningless and devoid of anything that resembles social democracy, a mirage to hide another dose of business as usual and NewLabour. Centre right politics in all its blandness and lack of backbone, as other commentators have mentioned. Our country is in dire need of radical policies to reverse neoliberalism and the shameful attacks on the vulnerable. Unfortunately nothing we hear from Jon Cruddas and his colleagues go anywhere near these issues.

‘Straitlsthegate’ wrote this as a comment in the Guardian yesterday. It up sums the utter vacuity and pretentiousness Jon Cruddas unfailingly brings to Right-wing politics. I have changed nothing save deleting one word and replacing it with ‘behind.’

“Although no great fan of Miliband, I had some renewed hope for Labour when Cruddas was appointed to do the policy review.

Unfortunately it looks like my hope was premature. This junk is straight out of the policy wonks handbook; how to write pages of fine intelligent sounding copy without really saying anything except for a few platitudes, and without committing to anything or upsetting anyone. It sounds like nothing so-much as a Fischer Price Big Society - Toryism with a social democratic smiley face crayoned on it.

What about Workfare? What about the sick and disabled being told to work (even Workfare) up until a few days before they die? What about zero hour contracts? The growth of dubious self employment and part time scams? What about selection line ups in a morning for employment (the unchosen go home, just like their great granddads did from the docks and the pit head)? What about the £7 billion wasted on the Work Programme, to be mopped up by the private sector for halving the numbers getting jobs? Oh, I forgot, Labour like the Work Programme. Payment by results my behind. What about the fascistic Universal Credit monitoring every breath people take and costing tens of billions and sanctioning part time workers?

We're being taken back to Victorian levels of social provision and workhouses in the form of free labour for party donors, yet all the Labour Party can do is offer this incomprehensible rubbish.”

Pitiful.

Jon Cruddas has produced another 'narrative' to try and suggest the direction that New Labour should take. Although Labour does need detailed policies I would not dismiss this essay merely on the grounds that it is vague; with the coalition stagnating (largely because of the insular and self destructive extremism of Tory backbenchers) it is obvious why Miliband refuses to take risks by laying down policies in stone which could come back to haunt him in 2015. And to be fair Cruddas promises more detail later.

But I think that it is where Cruddas does go into more detail that he often betrays his rather subjective gloss on the past which gives cause for concern. He seems to be bending history and culture in order to get the past to fit his mostly unsubstantiated assumptions. With closer inspection these leaps of faith can be shown to be more to do with his imagination thatn any historical reality. For example:

'This was not always the case. Historically – and I would say this – Labour was as Catholic as it was Methodist, in that it was as wary of state domination as it was of market power.'

From the very beginning English Catholicism collaborated with the state. Without the sponsorship and patronage of Anglo-Saxon Kings Catholic missionaries would have disappeared without trace. So the English Catholic Church - just as it had done so on the continent - rather than be 'wary of state domination' actually become an instrument of state policy.

Thomas Beckett was very much an exception (which is not a surprise since he was not trained by the Church but imposed on it by his friend Henry II). Priests believed that while they were God's representatives so was the King to a greater degree. Only the Pope (who of course presided over his own state) had more importance in the eyes of the Church and the anointing of Kings at their coronation (copied from Carolingian precedents) underlined the religious role they had.

The only cause for Catholic scepticism was of course the Reformation. So any objections of Catholics to the English State was not based on any inherent distrust of states as such but centered on the fact that there was no longer a Catholic at its top. As Catholics elsewhere showed support for their State was forthcoming even it meant justifying the actions and 'legitimacy' of people as vile as Franco.

But this is not just a quibble about history but concerns the judgement of Cruddas. Why make such an empty and controversial claim about Catholicism and the Labour Party when it actually detracts from other more important factors. Does his point really add to the argument and materially help work out what direction Labour should be taking? Or does it merely highlight an obsession of Cruddas which he can't let go of? I think the latter is nearer the mark.

'Each gives a strong role to constituency parties. It transcends the old divide between party and organisation. It is a way that links can be made with faith communities and business to build our coalition around national renewal – the pursuit of a common good. '

What about those outside 'faith communities and business'? Don't they have a contribution to make too? It is as if Cruddas fails to grasp that the UK has radically changed since the 19th century and that agnosticism/atheism are very much part of the mainstream. If Labour intends to represent the country as a whole then it has to come to terms with these changes (which is not to say that religion and its adherents can be simply be ignored).

While I acknowledge the need for governments to consider tradtions and culture Cruddas appears to have decided which strains should be considered legitimate and which should be marginalised. Because in reality many versions of tradition exist and often clash with each other. What about the long tradition of the English enlightenment and scepticism in general. Is Cruddas actually trying to get Labour to impose a tradition he favours others? If so what is his justification?

Jon Cruddas:as at home nominating Diane Abbott as advocating David Miliband for the Labour leadership.

Multi-faceted as on old threepenny bit.

Prepared to lacerate the last Labour government,but too genteel to join it.

A smile on his face and steel in his heart.

A prince amongst progressives.

Put not your trust in princes,Neal!