'New Labour' tag archive

The future of post-socialism Michael Rustin This article discusses three contributions to new thinking on the Left. * Two of these, Anthony Giddens’ s Beyond Left and Right: The Future ofRadical Politics and David Miliband’s collection Reinventing the Left (to which Giddens contributes the first chapter), set out to provide the new thinking which the […]

Beyond Revisionism New Labour, socialist basics and the dynamic market economy Marcus Roberts Since his election as party leader in June 1994, Tony Blair has enthusiastically set about building a New Model Labour Party. In a sense, his prospectus represents only the final ceremony in a long and arduous process: the so-called ‘modernization’ of the […]

COMMENTARY Clause 4 Ted Benton , C o m e on lads – we all prefer nice things to nasty’: this desperate moral appeal, delivered above the chaotic mania of classroom rebellion, was the habitual resort of an old schoolmaster of mine. For those of us close enough to hear, it evoked peals of derisive […]

2 Commentary Beyond the Soundbites The general election in Britain Colin leys and leo panitch The 1997 general election result has rightly been celebrated as a huge relief, the lifting of a choking fog. For a while New Labour has the benefit of almost everyoneʼs doubt. There is, after all, an alternative, and people are […]

Commentary Via dollaro$a On the ‘Third Way’ Gregory elliott‘i have always believed that politics is first and foremost about ideasʼ, confides Tony Blair in the opening sentence of last yearʼs Fabian pamphlet The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century. In the event, as the case of ʻstakeholdingʼ indicates, the prime minister has a […]

Commentary Third Way or Réalisme de Gauche? The new social democracy in France Ben clift The ʻThird Wayʼ remains nebulous and ill-defined, yet advocates argue that it stands for ʻmodernizedʼ social democracy – a vision around which the European Left must cohere. However, not all subscribe to Blairʼs singular reading of the modernization of European […]

Commentary New Labour versus Horny Catbabe Julian petley It is often forgotten that the first attempt to introduce video censorship in the UK was actually undertaken by a Labour backbencher. This was Gareth Wardell, the MP for Gower, who, in December 1982, introduced a ten-minute-rule bill ʻto prohibit the rental of video cassettes of adult […]

power, or by the view that market mechanisms and profit are the solutions to environmental problems, to gather together, to reject Kyoto, to tell the world why this system is no good, and to force real changes based on social justice, leading to wider economic transformation. Sources World Bank carbon website: www.prototypecarbonfund.org/. [archive]Equity Watch, Centre […]

Commentary Blair’s jihad, Blunkett’s crusade The battle for the hearts and minds of Britain’s Muslims Gita sahgal As the city blazes, the watchman Sleeps happily, thinkingMy house is secure. Let the town burn, as long as my thingsAre saved. During the air strikes in Afghanistan, I was reminded of these words of the fifteenth-century poet […]

The poor against the poor? Race, class and anti-fascism Nick moss and mark neocleous The British Left has for years bought itself a quiet life by ignoring the link between the resurgence of far-Right groups across Europe and the steady growth in support for the British National Party (BNP) in the UK. Occasionally this attitude […]

Commentary Oppositional mentalities Intellectuals, protest and the Left Martin ryle‘t he “oppositional” mentality of the British Leftʼ, wrote E.P. Thompson in 1965, ʻis certainly a limiting outlook; but it has grown up simply because our Left has had so bloody much to oppose … The British Left … has been immersed in ineluctable political contexts […]

What is living and what is dead in Swedish social democracy? Magnus ryner Seeming to confirm that politics proceeds through contradiction, the essentials of a neoliberal project – the subordination of the social to market discipline – has been consolidated in Europe by social-democratic governments. As yet another political project which is referred to as […]

Commentary Lash out and cover up Austerity nostalgia and ironic authoritarianism in recession Britain Owen hatherley Britain has reacted strangely to the crisis of neoliberalism. The country’s seemingly endemic nostalgia, particularly for the Second World War, has long been exploited by Thatcherites and Blairites; but its recent political use shows, in an especially acute form, […]

individual capitalists and investor groups but from the juggernaut that is the inextricably entangled mass of global capital. Such a role could only come about under a change in the worldwide correlation of class and social forces in favour of popular and working classes. Yet mass socialist and worker movements, although they are burgeoning, are […]