New Labour

The election of Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party in 1994 has proved to be the beginning of an epoch in Labour Party history. Blair’s leadership and his desire to modernise and reform the internal and external politics of the Labour Party have been nothing short of radical. This chapter attempts to provide an account of New Labour’s political philosophy. Initially, one must make the point that New Labour is not the political agenda of either the entire national or the Parliamentary Labour Party. New Labour can be understood as being the politics and the political project of a group of powerful modernisers.2 The chief protagonists are obviously Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, their respective advisers, press secretaries and most members of the Blair Cabinets since 1997. As for the political project associated with the term ‘New Labour’, a generally accepted interpretation appears to be the project of making the Labour Party nationally electable and capable of forming majority governments for more than a single term, as was not the case throughout the twentieth century when the Labour Party held office as a majority government for only nine years.3 However, to leave an understanding of New Labour as merely the politics of modernisation by a powerful clique and as the project of electability and sustainable power would be to overlook some significant changes in political philosophy and reinterpretations of the Labour Party’s social democracy. This chapter does not argue that New Labour has one cogent and generally accepted philosophy, because the Labour Party is a broad philosophical church that often includes contradictory and conflicting ideas and principles. Furthermore, the brief history of New Labour has demonstrated that certain ideas and philosophical frameworks suddenly germinate but last only for a short period, such as the onetime interest in the ‘stakeholding’ ideas in society and economy.4 Nevertheless, this chapter rejects the cynicism of some commentators who view New Labour as being purely pragmatic and committed solely to being the natural party of government, and argues that New Labour is social democratic and is the new right wing of the Labour Party