Blue Labour’s AfD blunder could see them swept away by Burnham

Should Andy Burnham complete the double that is now expected of him – winning the Makerfield by-election, then quickly replacing Keir Starmer as PM – one happy result would be the reduction of Lord Maurice Glasman’s influence on Labour.

The founder of the party’s right-leaning Blue Labour campaign group has caused outrage after holding a meeting in Parliament last week with Maximilian Krah of Germany’s far right Alternative für Deutschland Party. Krah, who won election to German parliament last year, is regarded as one of the AfD’s most extreme politicians. Formerly a Eurosceptic MEP who declared that the EU was a “vassal of the United States”, he is known for repeating Russian and Chinese government talking points, for saying “I would never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal”.

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Yet Glasman, closely linked to Starmer’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and therefore with a direct line to the PM, agreed to meet Krah “to help him better understand the AfD’s political thinking”, according to website Zeteo UK.

It is poor judgement like this that will see Glasman sidelined in a Burnham administration. Though he remains close to Shabana Mahmood, who is thought to have been told she would continue as home secretary if the current Greater Manchester mayor becomes prime minister, his views on Europe are diametrically opposed to Burnham’s.

Glasman backed leaving the EU in 2016, insists “Brexit is a magnificent thing” and believes “we have to withdraw from the ECHR, we have to scrap the human rights act.” Meanwhile, Burnham would scrap some of Starmer’s Brexit red lines, and is considering adding the idea of joining a single market with the EU in his first Labour manifesto.

Removing Glasman from direct influence would be popular with activists who claim that he does not understand the party as it is today.

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Last November, Glasman – whose group has pushed the Starmer government further to the right on issues like immigration and DEI legislation – caused similar disquiet when he spoke alongside Reform figures and conspiracy theorists at the annual conference of Together Declaration, which has campaigned against Covid lockdowns, climate change action and digital IDs. Its founder Alan Miller has claimed that Labour has “contempt for us all” and is turning Britain “into [a] police state”.

Earlier last year, he told sweaty MAGA influencer Steve Bannon that “progressives” are “the enemy because they actually despise faith, they despise family, they despise love, and they don’t even want you to enjoy sexual intercourse with your wife”.

Glasman has previously talked up Mahmood’s chances in a leadership election, and would encourage Blue Labour’s Jonathan Hinder, who is sceptical about reopening old Brexit wounds, to run. But this week he probably doomed the ambitious former defence minister Al Carns’s hopes of becoming PM by saying he would vote for him.