The experience of new labour: A politics for post-Fordism (in Kein Staat zu Machen: Zur Kritischen Sozialwissenschaft) (original) (raw)

The role of the British Labour Party a century on

2002

There is broad agreement that, under its new unofficial name of 'New Labour'the British Labour party has undergone a metamorphosis. About the nature and contours of that metamorphosis there is much less agreement. There has been a voluminous debate about its policies and ideology-about how significant and deep-seated the changes are and what they signify for the actions of Labour as the UK's ruling party. What does New Labour stand for–and for whom?

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.

Interpreting the Labour Party: Approaches to Labour politics and history

2003

Nick Randall wishes to acknowledge an ESRC Postgraduate Training Award (R00429634225), which allowed him to conduct the doctoral research on Labour's ideological dynamics on which his chapter is based. In addition he would like to thank Martin Burch, David Coates, Colin Hay, Steve Ludlam and members of the PSA Labour Movements Group for their comments on earlier drafts of chapter 1. Lawrence Black wishes to thank John Callaghan, James Thompson, Nick Tiratsoo and Leo Zeilig, and the audience at a seminar held at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, for their comments and advice about sources. Michael Newman is grateful to Tony Benn for permission to quote from the unpublished version of his diary. Steven Fielding and Declan McHugh wish to thank

Comments on ‘New Labour’s Double-Shuffle’ (New Labour’s doppelte Kehrtwende: Anmerkungen zu Stuart Hall und eine alternative Perspektiv zu New Labour)

Gramscian terms as a dynamic transformist expression of neoliberalism with a social democratic face. Like his earlier analyses of Thatcherism and New Labour, however, his analysis is stronger on critical discourse analysis and his own political rhetoric than it is on its grasp of political economy and its implications for political practice. Indeed it would be interesting to subject this text itself to a critical discourse analysis to demonstrate the theoretical lacunae and the conceptual slippages in its powerful, persuasive, but ultimately flawed, exploration of this latest transformist project. I will focus on six issues raised by Hall's text and then offer an alternative analysis rooted in a regulation-and state-theoretical political economy. A Critique of Hall First, Hall operates both with superficial analyses of the political scene as a series of points when unconstrained choices can be made and with more detailed analyses of the political scene considered as a 'current conjuncture' characterized by a dialectic of path-dependency and path-shaping. Thus the paper begins with the bold claim that 'the Labour election victory in 1997 took place at a moment of great political opportunity … [that presented] a fundamental choice of directions for the incoming government' (Hall 2004: 1). This suggests that the election was a distinctive moment of unconstrained choice and, if so, this would suggest a voluntarist and decisionist approach. This is clearly inconsistent with Hall's more general analyses here and elsewhere. It also invokes a mythical " Left " that was capable in 1997 of pursuing a

New Labour: 'The Road Less Travelled'?

Politics, 2003

This article offers a contribution to the debate in recent issues of this journal concerning the relative ‘newness’ or otherwise of New Labour. It briefly assesses the significant arguments of the respective academic protagonists and asks if, in responding to a changing social and economic climate, New Labour, the highly focused use of language and rhetoric aside, is, in a significant sense, different to the measured, pragmatic and reformist revisions of the past. It emphasises significant associations and continuities in Labour's recent evolution and the largely rhetorical and politically (and electorally) expedient nature of the party's current designation. It offers an interpretation of New Labour, based around two related observations of the party's historically broad and complex political culture and diverse perceptions and preferences of Labour's traditionally centre-right ‘governing elite’, that suggests that the post-1994 ‘New’ Labour party possesses significant precedents within elements of Labour's diverse, centre right ‘dominant coalition’.