One of Ed Miliband’s first decisive acts on becoming Labour leader (one of his few decisive acts, sceptics would say) was to appoint as his press secretary a seasoned hack with no illusions about how the media work. He chose Tom Baldwin of the Times, by all accounts about as unillusioned as they get. I assume the point of hiring Baldwin was to have a News International insider who could mix it with the likes of Andy Coulson, although that’s an idea Miliband is doing his best to bury at the moment. At the same time, Miliband revealed his other side when he elevated his favourite maverick intellectual, the community organiser and social theorist Maurice Glasman, to the House of Lords. Glasman was under instructions to keep thinking outside the New Labour box. Baldwin and Glasman represent the yin and the yang of Project Edward Miliband: the bruiser and the dreamer. So far, though, there is little sign of harmony. One of Baldwin’s first acts was to issue an injunction to the broadcasters (who ignored it) and to Labour spokespersons (who didn’t) that it was time to stop talking about ‘the coalition’, as though the current administration were a consensual and collaborative enterprise. Its correct title, according to Baldwin, was ‘the Tory-led government’. Dutiful Labourites, with their eyes on the real enemy, started spouting this phrase. But not Glasman. The opening line of his fairly startling essay in this new collection of ‘Blue Labour’ thinking is as follows: ‘The Liberal-led coalition government, self-consciously progressive in orientation, while appropriating Labour’s language of mutual and co-operative practice, asks a fundamental question as to what distinctive gifts Labour could bring to this party.’

LRB 28 July 2011 | PDF Download