New Labour or the normalization of neo-liberalism? (original) (raw)
Related papers
New Labour: politics after Thatcherism
New Labour: politics after Thatcherism, 1998
This book provides a systematic outline of New Labour's ideas and policies. The authors show how the Party s economic and social policies are more neo–liberal and conservative than ever before. To counter accusations that New Labour is Old Labour updated or Thatcherism mark II, they explain how Labour has gone beyond social democracy and is shaped by Thatcherism, yet different from it. New Labour: Politics after Thatcherism shows how the New Labour Party has looked to the USA, Europe, Australasia and East Asia for inspiration. It outlines the path of modernization which led to the Blair revolution. Driver and Martell explain the role of big ideas such as communitarianism, globalization and stakeholding. And they provide a full introduction to and interpretation of New Labour's policies on the economy, welfare and constitutional reform. Students and general readers will find this an accessible introduction to New Labour ideology and policy. Experts will find a new interpretation, which breaks with other perspectives on Labour under Blair.
From Thatcherism to Blairism. Britain's Long March to the Market
This article offers a critical assessment of the social and political reforms promoted by the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1979 to 1997, and subsequently by New Labour under Tony Blair. First, the underlying philosophy and practical achievements of the Conservative governments is discussed. Second, the nature and impact of New Labour's policies since taking office seven years ago is reviewed. I argue that both administrations have shared similar concerns, namely, to refashion British culture and society so as to make them more entrepreneurial and better able to face the challenges posed by an increasingly globalised economy. What distinguishes these two cultural projects is New Labour's concern for social inclusion, rejecting the Conservatives' crude 'sink or swim' Darwinism. However, New Labour has attempted to advance inclusion through a revised, minimalist conception of social justice, that is, a conception which grants full validity to the New Right critique of the 'entitlements society'. Both programmes are also characterised by remarkably similar policies. New Labour has taken further the Conservatives' effort to promote administrative decentralisation while engendering political centralisation. Given their similarity, it is not surprising that both programmes have shown analogous dysfunctional side-effects. On the one hand, the free-market policies devised to make Britain a business-friendly and economically flexible country have increased inequalities and have entrenched social, economic and geographical divides—outcomes which New Labour's meek redistributive policies fail to redress. On the other hand, the structural reforms pursued by both parties, far from reducing the role of the state in society, have reinforced some deep-seated tendencies of the British political system towards what Lord Hailsham (1978) called an 'elective dictatorship'.
Blair’s New Labour and the power of the neoliberal consensus
2013
New Labour’s rise to power in 1997, achieved through a landslide victory -43.2% of the seats- in the general elections then seemed to bode a change of course, or even a reversal, of the Thatcher-Major’s years of neoliberal policies. By neoliberalism, we mean the intellectual project, born in reaction to the postwar welfarist and Keynesian consensus, which burgeoned within the academic world and whose fundamental premise is “the superiority of individualized, market-based competition over other modes of organization”. Or as economists would say, the market is a more efficient allocator of resources than the state. As such, neoliberalism praises “the moral benefits of market society” and identifies “markets as a necessary condition for freedom in other aspects of life”2. It is therefore a market-centric centric vision of society: from this central premise stems an array of consistent political, economic and social positions which together form the project of neoliberalism. Even though Blair’s New Labour came to power on the basis of a social-democrat agenda which included redistributive social policies and expansionary economic policies, it seems that instead of reversing the neoliberal consensus of the time, New Labour under the premiership of M. Blair actually maintained such consensus and mostly followed in the footsteps of its predecessors. This paper will thus analyze M. Blair’s New Labour policies from a neoliberal perspective. In the first part, we will expose some policies, undertaken under Blair’s government, and which signaled a clear anchoring of New Labour’s position to an existing neoliberal paradigm. In the second part, we will analyze those policies within the framework of the larger neoliberal consensus and inquire into the reasons behind the hegemony of the neoliberal doctrine.
Labour's Thatcherite Revisionism: Playing the'Politics of Catch-Up
Political Studies, 1994
Labour's] new programme accepts the basic parameters of the Thatcher Settlement, in much the same way that the Conservative governments of the fifties accepted the parameters of the Attlee Settlement. It does not seek to extend the public sector or reverse privatization to any significant degree. It does not propose to raise the overall level of taxation, but promises to adjust its incidence in a mildly more egalitarian direction. It does not substantially depart from the laws that now regulate industrial action, while rendering them a little more favourable to trade unions. It does not abandon the British nuclear deterrent. All these changes of the Thatcher years are uncontested.' Modernization or Accommodation Few commentators and political scientists would deny that since 1987 the Labour Party has undergone a profound transformation of both structure and policy. More contentious, however, is the assessment and evaluation of the nature of such change. Has the Labour Party accommodated itself to the terms of an emerging Thatcherite settlement and political consensus, or has it merely updated its policies in the face of a transformation in the structures of global capitalist accumulation? I here review one increasingly prominent attempt to deal with these issuesthe 'modernization thesis'. This account suggests that Thatcherism has merely provided the context within which Labour has begun to undergo a long overdue modernization and that the resulting Policy Review has led to the emergence of a 'reinvigorated Labour Party which appears. .. to have overcome its apparently fundamental divisions'.2 I argue that such The author would like to thank Bob Jessop, Michael Moran and two anonymous referees from Political Studies for their extremely helpful and incisive comments on an earlier version of this article.
2016
after Blair becomes seriously interesting if we suppose that within the Labour Party Neoliberalism could be dethroned. Although this event hardly appears immanent, it could be brought forward if the nature and location of the breeding ground of the Neoliberal beast became public knowledge. For a quarter of a century people to the left of what was once a staunchly right-wing position (too rightwing for the rightwing of the Labour Party) have been struggling against Neoliberalism with ever diminishing success. This failure has taken place despite much cogent analysis of the sociological and geopolitical forces fuelling the Neoliberal conquest. The working assumption has been that if Neoliberalism’s books could be opened so that the world could see who its real winners and losers were and the extent of their winnings and loses, then citizens would see the light and politicians of good will would repent and political process would once again enter into a progressive era. This essay brea...
Neo-liberalism, Political Leadership and Civil Society: The Case Study of Thatcherism
Aa.Vv., Power and Resistance: Current Debates and Historical Background, (Politsci ‘05, III International Political Science Conference Proceeding)
The so-called “Thatcherism” provides us an interesting case study to investigate the relation between Neo-liberalism, political authority and civil society from the prospective of political philosophy and political science. This investigation is based on the idea that Thatcherism was not only, or mainly, an attempt to change the economic structure of the United Kingdom, but it was also a project to change the values, the political culture and the society as a whole, and economic reforms were used in order to reach that aim. This intention was clear in the words of Margaret Thatcher herself, who in a famous interview in 1981 said “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul” of the country. Some of the issues that can be explored trough Thatcherism are: the relationship between a charismatic political leader and the people, the possibility/opportunity to use a political leadership in order to change the dominant moral values in a society, and the related risk of populist authoritarianism. To work on Thatcherism from the perspective of political philosophy means on one hand to study the role of ideas in a process of political change, and on the other hand to study the role of a charismatic leadership in a process of cultural change. The first aspect involve the issue of the role of economic development as sources to legitimate the political power, while the second involve the issue of the role of myths and of the risk of populism in a process of reforms realized by a charismatic leadership. In this regard it is interesting to observe that one of the peculiarity of Thatcherism is that it was an attempt to conquer not only the consent of the élites, but also the consent of the whole society in favour of capitalism and free market. Furthermore the outcome of our analysis will show several paradoxes that we face observing the historical experience of Thatcherism with the lenses of the political theories of Liberalism and Conservatism, which were the references of Mrs Thatcher, and these paradoxes could lead us to a better understanding of Thatcherism as an attempt to use the political power in order to induce cultural changes in the society.
Currents of Neo-Liberalism: British Political Ideologies and the New Right, c. 1955-1979
English Historical Review, 2016
This article investigates the emergence of neo-liberalism in Britain and its intellectual relationship with each of the three main British political ideologies. The article distinguishes between different currents of neo-liberalism that have been absorbed into British political thought, and shows that this process to some extent pre-dated the electoral success of Thatcherism in the 1980s. The article further suggests that labelling recent British political discourse as unvarnished ‘neo-liberalism’, while at times analytically useful, simplifies a more complicated picture, in which distinctively neo-liberal ideas have been blended in different ways into the ideologies of British Liberalism, Conservatism and even Labour socialism. The article therefore turns the spotlight on a more obscure aspect of the making of British neo-liberalism by exploring how politicians and intellectuals of varying partisan stripes generated policy discourses that presented neo-liberal ideas as an authentic expression of their own ideological traditions. Perhaps the most surprising finding of this article, then, is that neo-liberalism, although frequently characterised as rigid and dogmatic, has in fact proved itself to be a flexible and adaptable body of ideas, capable of colonising territory right across the political spectrum.