Where would you place New Labour on the political spectrum?

Résumé du document

Since its foundation in 1900, the British Labour Party has been in power eleven times, and has had five Prime Ministers. It was founded as a social-democratic party, close to the unions and advocating the rights of the working class. On June 2001, led by Tony Blair, it won its second General Election in a row, securing a second full term in power, something unprecedented for the party. Since he became leader in 1994 after the death of John Smith, Tony Blair has tried to reshape Labour's image and policies. This strategy has proved divisive, even among the party's ranks. Critics have argued that ?New? Labour ? as Blair branded it ? is merely a continuation of Thatcherism and that it has jettisoned its core values. As Ben Pimlott put it, in 1989, Labour was still ?known to be against privilege, social hierarchy, capitalism, personal wealth, inequality, unregulated markets, the powerful, the establishment, the upper classes, nationalistic fervour, military might; and in favour of equality, civil rights, state intervention, democracy, the working class, internationalism? . Blair has tried to move away from this old image and has tried to convince voters that ?Labour? is no longer the party of ?tax and spend?, by putting the emphasis on individual choice, equality of opportunity, reform of the welfare state and other themes that are usually associated with neo-liberal ideology. He also coined the term Third Way, to ...

Extraits

[...] Where would you place New Labour (in 2003) on the ideological spectrum? Since its foundation in 1900, the British Labour Party has been in power eleven times, and has had five Prime Ministers. It was founded as a social- democratic party, close to the unions and advocating the rights of the working class. On June 2001, led by Tony Blair, it won its second General Election in a row, securing a second full term in power, something unprecedented for the party. [...]

[...] Welfare to work policies such as the New Deal were implemented on the ground that social rights come with duties. The government insisted that work should pay, as opposed to welfare programmes supposed to encourage people to rely on benefits, without seeking active work. As Melissa Benn puts it, this policy asks one particular hard-pressed group (the unemployed) to achieve upon the agreed- upon national goal, and those who refuse to follow the programme are targeted for severe punishment (temporary suppression of benefits)[9], reminding the toughness of the Thatcher years against the most vulnerable individuals. [...]

[...] References Melissa Benn, Labour and social exclusion”, The Political Quarterly (Vol 2000), pp. 309-318 Mark Bevir, Labour: a study in ideology”, British Journal of Politics and International Relations (Vol 2000), pp. 277-301 Tony Blair, New Britain, my vision of a young country (Fourth Estate, 1996) Ben Clift, Jospin The Political Quarterly (Vol 2001), pp. 170-179 Steven Fielding, The Labour Party, continuity and change in the making of New Labour (Palgrave, 2003) Andrew Gamble, legacy of Thatcherism”, in Perryman The Blair agenda (Lawrence and Wishart, 1996), pp. [...]

[...] This essay will try to place New Labour on the ideological spectrum by arguing that it is a centre of the left party that has incorporated elements of Thatcherism and neo-liberalism to a greater extent than other social-democratic parties. Even if Thatcherism and neo-liberalism have had a strong imprint on Labour, its continuity with Labour can still be traced, underlining its centre of the left position in British politics. Labour: the imprint of Thatcherism In 1992, after Labour had lost its fourth election in a row, modernizers such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson thought that the leader, Neil Kinnock had failed to transform the party. [...]

[...] He also coined the term Third Way, to define a “Third Way between unbridled capitalism and laissez-faire on the one hand, and old style Government intervention, the corporatism of the 1960s social democracy on the other”[2]. In 1997, there was a widespread belief that New Labour was a mere continuation of Thatcherism and that it had abandoned its social-democratic ideology. However, according to Third Way theorists, such as Anthony Giddens[3], New Labour is still a social- democratic party even if it has modernized. [...]