Quite right!: Maurice Glasman's manifesto for 'proper' Labour | Part one
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The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Maurice Glasman, Labour peer and founder of Blue Labour, has spent years warning that Labour has lost touch with the people it was created to represent. In the first of a two-part conversation on Quite right!, he joins Michael and Maddie to explain why he thinks Keir Starmer’s project was never really Labour at all – and why the party’s working-class traditions have been replaced by progressive liberalism.
They discuss Labour’s roots in community, sovereignty and the dignity of work; how Brexit exposed the divide between Labour and liberalism; and whether Starmer’s response to Southport marked a turning point. Maurice also sets out what a genuinely Labour government might have done differently on immigration, welfare, industrial strategy, defence and AI – and why Reform’s rise should not come as a surprise.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
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Transcript
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| 0:35.9 | Hello and welcome to The Spectator Podcast, Quite Right, with me, Michael Gove, the editor of The Spectator. |
| 0:41.8 | Today, Maddie and I will be talking to Morris Glassman, Lord Glassman, one of the most influential thinkers in the Labour Party over the course of the last decade. |
| 0:50.4 | Morris is associated with the Blue Labour movement, socially conservative but economically redistributionist. |
| 0:56.8 | And in this first podcast with Morris, we'll be looking primarily at the Labour Party, its roots and its divisions. |
| 1:04.8 | As Starmer's period in office appears to be coming to an end, what went wrong and what is the future? Can it rediscover its |
| 1:12.6 | working class roots and its sense of mission? Or is it doomed, a bit like the French |
| 1:17.0 | socialists, to become a party of progressive minority unmoored from the working class base which |
| 1:23.7 | once gave it like. Morris. |
| 1:28.1 | Michael. |
| 1:32.4 | Two years on, almost, from Labour's victory, |
| 1:35.3 | bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, |
| 1:38.5 | but to be blue labour was very heaven. |
| 1:39.9 | Where did it all go wrong? |
| 1:41.5 | Well, it never went right, Michael. |
| 1:44.7 | I mean, this is a really important point. |
| 1:46.3 | I know everybody... One was, Keir ran a leadership election that was basically Corbyn Light. |
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