The neoliberal financial regime may have collapsed, but politicians continue to defer to the authority of the market. The lowest paid therefore caught up with the pack, despite the richest continuing to stretch away until the years of economic crisis after 2008.91Joanne Lindley and Stephen Machin, “Wage inequality in the Labour years”, Oxford Review of Economic Policy 29, no. Neil Hutton, “Sentencing guidelines”, in Confronting Crime: Crime control policy under New Labour, ed. Ruth Lupton and Polina Obolenskaya, “Labour’s Record on Education: Policy, Spending and Outcomes 1997–2010”, LSE Social Policy in a Cold Climate working paper 3, July 2013, 22, http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/spcc/wp03.pdf. Gwyn Bevan and Christopher Hood, “What’s measured is what matters: targets and gaming in the English public health care system”, Public Administration 84, no. But overall, and increasingly as time went by, New Labour was what it always claimed to be: something genuinely new that fused elements of late-20th-century administrative practice with a socially democratic and deeply Labour emphasis on empowering people, families and communities. Although new treatments were often the reasons for improvements, the numbers returned by the NHS improved faster than the average across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—albeit from a low base. Martin Powell (Bristol: Policy Press, 2008), 105–107. 1 (March 2013): 108, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grt007. A great deal of what Tony Blair did in power was not neoliberal at all, or had neoliberal elements but was aimed in a quite different direction, or was better thought of as social democratic or even socialist. Far too many of the extraordinary social policy gains New Labour made in office were played down, partly because there was a restless desire to avoid complacency and make further progress, and partly because the party’s leaders feared offending the middle-class taxpayers who frightened them so much after the general election defeat of 1992. Indeed, although such phenomena are hard to measure, productivity seems to have been declining after a long run of modest improvements earlier in the 1990s.17Julian Le Grand, “The Labour Government and the National Health Service”, Oxford Review of Economic Policy 18, no. Economic elites who forgot their social obligations? How much, in short, did the New Labour governments of 1997–2010 owe to the ideological and economic revolutions of the later 1970s and the 1980s, and to what extent did they represent a break from Thatcherism and neoliberal orthodoxy? Michael Tonry (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2003), 126–131. increased autonomy and choice does not mean that we move to an unregulated market in public services. But this ignores the way in which citizens are often deeply invested in the manner in which services are organised, and may have at least paved the way for the recent recoil from anything that can be caricatured as expertise or technocracy. Martin Powell (Bristol: Policy Press, 2008), 105–107. Labour’s ideas in the Wilson years were a blend of technocratic confidence, faith in scientific futures and a re-equipped economy. Looking first at the NHS, the Blair and Brown governments increased funding from 6.1 per cent of GDP to 7.9 per cent. Teacher numbers in England rose between 1997 and 2010 from 396,200 to about 450,000—a rise of 12 per cent over the whole period—allowing the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools to fall from 24 to 22, although the same figure in secondary schools fell only very slightly. As Blair put it in 1993: Crime profoundly affects the quality of our lives. But a closer look at the other side of the ledger is way overdue. David Harvey’s definition is widely quoted and cited: ‘a theory of political economic practices that … Neither income nor wealth inequality rose; and public services enjoyed a brief golden age of funding and performance, especially important for the most disadvantaged who rely on them the most, and in some of Britain’s poorest areas. t has become a commonplace of leftwing thought that the New Labour governments were “neoliberal”. The overall numbers of all Britons in poverty on this basis fell from 21 per cent to under 17 per cent.90“The Living Standards Audit 2018”, Resolution Foundation, July 2018, 66–68, https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-living-standards-audit-2018/. Since the party was committed to the Conservatives’ overall spending plans for its first two years in office, that figure fell to 36.3 per cent in 1999–2000, before rising to over 40 per cent again before the onset of the Great Recession: public spending’s share of the economy had expanded to 47.9 per cent by 2009–2010. That department launched an emblematic Children’s Plan, one of the main thrusts of which was strengthening the links between the family and public services, supporting children and their parents in a more coherent way than teachers, social workers, doctors and the police had been able to do while working in their specialist fields.74“The Children’s Plan: Building brighter futures”, Department for Children, Schools and Families, December 2007, 5–14, http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/pdfs/2007-childrens-plan.pdf. New Labour under Blair and Brown had made a symbolic departure from “traditional” social democracy by abandoning Clause 4 of the Labour constitution and the links with trade unions as the party swung behind the neoliberal project in its home-grown version of “social liberalism”. All governments bear the hallmarks of their formation during their opposition years; this one was no different. Rhodes, Everyday Life in British Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 25–29. In left-wing circles, that is virtually an article of faith: as one academic has put it, “New Labour was a continuation and extension of neoliberalism”.1The word now works as a useful shorthand to outline that administration’s perceived failures, allowing high-income Britons to enrich themselves while average and poorer Britons’ wages moved upwards much more slowly. Times to admission peaked at four hours, suggesting strongly both that times just over that limit were being reallocated and that urgency was being sacrificed in the service of an arbitrary time limit. Oliver Marie, “Reducing crime: more police, more prisons or more pay?”, LSE Centre for Economic Performance Policy Analysis (July 2010): 5–6, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/58000/. Robert Chote, Rowena Crawford, Carl Emmerson and Gemma Tetlow, “Public spending under Labour”, Institute for Fiscal Studies briefing note, 12 April 2010, 2, https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/4815. 1 (January 2007): 41, https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/ldm013. The left-wing journalist Paul Mason has argued in just this vein: according to him, the European Union (EU), for example, is an organisation dominated by “the social market economy”, “the specific European form of neoliberalism” rooted in the German Social Democrats’ 1959 Bad Godesberg programme, which outlined the party’s political course. Lucy Hunter Blackburn, Gitit Kadar-Satat, Sheila Riddell and Elisabet Weedon, “Access in Scotland: Access to higher education for people from less advantaged backgrounds in Scotland”, Sutton Trust, May 2016, 36, https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Access-in-Scotland_May2016.pdf. It seems likely that independent sector treatment centres played at least some role in improving performance, if only via example, and through competition with NHS hospitals. At first, area-based initiatives carried Labour’s more redistributive ambitions. All governments make mistakes, and in retrospect there are a number of areas where New Labour’s legacy might have been more successfully secured. In the pre-crisis years, health and education spending moved up regularly more than they did between 2008 and 2010–2011, since health and education spending increases slowed once more in that period: to 3.7 per cent and 2.4 per cent, respectively.32Chote et al., “Public spending under Labour”, 10. Answers to the same survey gave the way that the NHS is run a net negative score in 1997, which improved markedly when Labour came to power before falling back again in 2001. The functionalist, regressive elements of communitarianism are stressed in, for example, Simon Prideaux, Not So New Labour: A sociological critique of New Labour’s policy and practice (Bristol: Policy Press, 2005), 117–130. Alison Park, John Curtice, Elizabeth Clery and Catherine Bryson (London: Sage, 2010), 689, http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446268254.n3. . John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister (London: Time Warner, 2001), 420–421, 541. Linked both to the creation of arms-length housing-management organisations or PFI schemes and to stock transfers to other social landlords, this initiative reduced the number of council houses requiring updating by over 1 million, cutting the number of inadequate properties by more than two-thirds between 2001 and 2008.121“The Decent Homes Programme”, National Audit Office, 21 January 2010, 18, https://www.nao.org.uk/report/the-decent-homes-programme/; Brian Lund, “Housing policy: coming in out of the cold?”, in Modernising the Welfare State: The Blair legacy, ed. What is more, Labour managed this huge expansion of the public sector’s ambitions without a vast increase in debt, despite the often-expressed views of right-wing commentators that this was a period of unrestrained borrowing.33Fraser Nelson, “The Truth About Labour and Overspending”, Spectator “Coffee House” blog, 30 April 2015, https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/the-truth-about-labour-and-overspending/. Demographics, with a falling number of young people in the population, and economics—at a time of general prosperity—meant that the government was sailing with a fair wind behind it. Although the council’s membership was to be entirely judicial, a Sentencing Advisory Panel with a more mixed membership would advise it on the wider questions of impact, effectiveness and research.45Neil Hutton, “Sentencing guidelines”, in Confronting Crime: Crime control policy under New Labour, ed. The graffiti, petty drug dealing, violence and abuse could turn a nice neighbourhood into a nasty one within months. By 2003, parents were spending more on textbooks than schools were.111Diane Reay, “Tony Blair, the promotion of the ‘active’ educational citizen, and middle‐class hegemony”, Oxford Review of Education 34, no. “Neoliberalism” is a useful boo word, but its use in this context is both crude and unhelpful. Martin Powell (Bristol: Policy Press, 2008), 39–44. In 2008, a new strategy—No One Left Out—announced the further ambition to entirely abolish rough sleeping. At the same time as sentences increased in length, there was an increased emphasis on interventions that might prevent crime, rather than simply punish those who carried it out. 3 (August 2006): 531–532, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00600.x. “Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2018”, Office for National Statistics, 19 July 2018, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2018. If there are too many targets, poorly defined, they can come into conflict with one another, and the whole effort can lose momentum amid staff demoralisation and political gridlock.14Michael Barber, Instruction to Deliver: Tony Blair, Public Services and the Challenge of Achieving Targets (London: Politicos, 2007), 80–81, 283–286. These neoliberal policies are commonly referred to as Rogernomics , a portmanteau of "Roger" and "economics", after Lange appointed Roger Douglas minister of … The public noticed, as perceptions of school performance and NHS performance shot up.’. 3 (2003): 282–287, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1356977032000146051. It deserves a rather more sensitive characterisation than just repeating the one word “neoliberalism”. Their chosen policy remedies were kaleidoscopic, as befitted the postmodern times they inhabited, as well as Blair and Brown’s attempt to deny any clear-cut divide between left and right. Even more significant in the long run was the overarching approach to policy as child centred and family oriented, rather than focused on test and exam results—important as those were. It also has to be remembered that New Labour was still Labour, and was managed as such—with little sign of a veto being exercised on or by any part of its philosophical coalition. The example of accident-and-emergency admissions, where a four-hour target was put in place, is instructive. New Labour had mostly conducted itself as it said it would. Violent crime was nearly halved, falling from 3.3 million to 1.7 million incidents in the same timeframe.61“Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2018”, Office for National Statistics, 19 July 2018, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2018. To zoom in on a more specific infrastructure policy with both economic and social policy implications, housing was not a priority for this administration, at a time when housing was relatively cheap compared with later standards. Public Satisfaction with the Health Service”, Political Studies 60, no. For three in-depth studies of the choice agenda’s effects, see Richard Cookson, Mauro Laudicella, Paolo Li Donni and Mark Dusheiko, “Effects of the Blair/Brown NHS Reforms on Socioeconomic Equity in Health Care”, Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 17, supplement 1 (January 2012): 58–61, https://doi.org/10.1258%2Fjhsrp.2011.011014. ‘NHS inpatient waiting lists fell from 13 weeks to four weeks between March 1997 and March 2009. Taken overall, the New Labour period represented a strong contrast to the Conservatives’ time in office between 1979 and 1997. Check your inbox shortly for more from us. 3 (August 2012): 495–499, https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9248.2012.00976.x. The idea of public life as a market, with attendant tax cuts? There is little sign here of the moral authoritarianism that marred the Thatcher years, or that became the hallmark of much of New Labour’s rhetoric on law and order. The inauguration of the Teacher Training Agency (which became the Training and Development Agency for Schools in 2005) and an accompanying advertising drive were designed to raise the profile and perceived status of teachers.57John Furlong, “Making teaching a 21st century profession: Tony Blair’s big prize”, Oxford Review of Education 34, no. There was at the same time a massive increase in the number of teaching assistants and other support staff, whose number rose from 60,600 to 190,000 by 2010.55Anthony Heath, Alice Sullivan, Vikki Boliver and Anna Zimdars, “Education under New Labour, 1997–2010”, Oxford Review of Economic Policy 29, no. In this situation, to have maintained the income balance—and attacked poverty so successfully—must be one of New Labour’s most significant achievements. Michael Barber, Instruction to Deliver: Tony Blair, Public Services and the Challenge of Achieving Targets (London: Politicos, 2007), 80–81, 283–286. Or did it adhere to different principles, either inherited from Labour traditions or constructed in a bespoke manner, calling into question the precision and efficacy of critics’ neoliberal terminology? Inequalities in infant mortality rates, however, were reduced during the second half of Labour’s period in government between 1997 and 2010—a delayed effect, perhaps, of the government’s massive increase in support to families and children.80Propper and Venables, “An assessment of Labour’s record on health and healthcare”, 218–219. As Pankaj Mishra has written in the New York Times Magazine, “Thatcherism was further entrenched by Tony Blair’s ‘New’ Labor Party”. New Labour in power often spoke as if welfare-state professionals’ autonomy as a producer interest had to be pruned back; that doctors and teachers had to be incentivised rather than inspired; and that hospitals and schools had to become more accountable to patients and parents, the wider public and the government.107Eric Shaw, Losing Labour’s Soul? [email protected], Copyright © November 2018 by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. It allowed new public-sector building to be brought on stream quickly, without reference to Chancellor Gordon Brown’s golden rule of keeping public-sector debt below 40 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). There is no doubt that New Labour’s period in power did contain elements that we could term neoliberal. Consultation) Paper, Schools: Building on Success (DfEE, 2001 a, b). 1 (March 2013): 167–174, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grt009. Bringing in the Metronet and Tube Line consortiums to regenerate the London Underground network was an immensely costly disaster. That trend has continued into the Conservative-only government since 2015.13Oliver Ilott, Joe Randall, Alex Beasdale and Emma Norris, “Making policy stick: Tackling long-term challenges in government”, Institute for Government, December 2016, 46, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/5225%20IFG%20-%20Making%20Policy%20Stick%20WEB.pdf; “Rough sleeping in England rises for seventh year”, BBC News, 25 January 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42817123. Glen O’Hara is professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University, The idea that Tony Blair was ‘neoliberal’ is not just crudely simplistic – it contributes to the party’s current problems, A Corbyn government, unlike New Labour, would tax the rich properly | Clive Lewis, Can Labour forge a new, 21st-century socialism? Public-private partnerships taken more widely also delivered inconsistent results. to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and – always – to cut taxes and deregulate”. The recent moves of Labour and the Conservatives to the left and right of the ideological spectrum, respectively, has demonstrated just how hard it is to maintain such a balancing act. As in so many other areas, New Labour sought to use some neoliberal techniques—targets, quasi-markets, and more visible and stronger policing—to foster what its leaders thought of as an updated, rejuvenated social democracy. By using “innumerable bits of pseudo-socialist window dressing”, Clark says, New Labour effectively “distracted the trade unions and the workers” in 1997, when in reality it had already “openly embraced” the neoliberal ideology imposed on the UK since 1979. These were but modest moves towards cutting the delivery gap between wealthier and more economically isolated areas. As some experts had warned, prison sentences of less than a year came to be seen as more desirable, as more likely to have a positive effect. Initiatives such as Excellence in Cities, London Challenge, Teach First and Academisation carried on education action zones’ work via a more flexible and successful regimen of mentoring and collaborative learning schemes. Nicholas Bosanquet, “The health and welfare legacy”, in Blair’s Britain 1997–2007, ed. Kitty Stewart, “Labour’s Record on the Under Fives: Policy, Spending and Outcomes 1997–2010”, LSE Social Policy in a Cold Climate working paper 4, July 2013, 47–55, http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/spcc/wp04.pdf. Voters noticed falling crime rates, too, although media coverage and political controversies (sometimes stoked by ministers) often obscured them. Higher education, so we read, is now a "global business": there is a "global market place" for students and the "best" staff, who can now presumably hop on the plane or Eurostar to take their services elsewhere. Patrick Carter, “Penal policy – a journey”, in “The next ten years”, Reform, 2012, 91. But not only has the word itself now become so widely used as to have become almost meaningless, Commenting has been disabled at this time but you can still, waiting lists fell from 13 weeks to four weeks between March 1997 and March 2009. 4 (December 2008): 579, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-923X.2008.00960.x. Tony Blair Institute, trading as Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (registered company number: 10505963) whose registered office is One Bartholomew Close, London, EC1A 7BL. The creation of a national minimum wage and a tax credits system benefitting the low paid halted the remorseless march of inequality that had so scarred Britain in the 1980s. Norman Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? The author is grateful to Dr Lyndsay Grant for this reference. Figures from the King’s Fund in 2010 showed that 75 per cent of those polled thought that a choice of hospital was important or very important to them; only 11 per cent did not. There was and is clearly a deep gulf between the public policy solutions put forward before the mid-1970s and those of the 2000s. The ten police forces that were granted extra resources to fight the surge in such robberies did get on top of the problem. See, for example, William Underhill, “Inequality has grown under New Labour”, Newsweek, 8 January 2010, https://www.newsweek.com/inequality-has-grown-under-new-labour-70943. The Criminal Justice Act of 2003 provided for a new Sentencing Guidelines Council to reduce the variation in sentencing across the country. Alison Park, John Curtice, Elizabeth Clery and Catherine Bryson (London: Sage, 2010), 77–78, http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446268254.n4. 1 (June 2013): 230–231, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273896000_Education_under_New_Labour_1997-2010. Housebuilding does not appear, for instance, in the delivery unit’s 2001 brief, although it did become a preoccupation of the Brown administration. Slowly at first, but later on more rapidly, Labour presided over an overall increase in state spending—not, on the face of it, a particularly neoliberal achievement.26Robert Chote, Rowena Crawford, Carl Emmerson and Gemma Tetlow, “Public spending under Labour”, Institute for Fiscal Studies briefing note, 12 April 2010, 2, https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/4815. Wherever you look, it is fashionable to assert that former United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Tony Blair’s years in power were dominated by neoliberal policies. Perhaps inevitably given that they are straining to typify an entire era, other authors summon different cadences. Effectively, Labour in office mounted a thoroughgoing attack on poverty—especially child and pensioner poverty—that was so successful that it helped keep overall inequality where it had ended up in the early to mid-1990s. Given that these governments were characterised by dual leadership from the chancellor as well as the prime minister, to these concepts were added Brownite ideas about prudence, at first alighting on the need for a better-organised public sector but, as time went by, increasingly focusing on individuals. Other elements integral to New Public Management could be just as problematic. Helen Thompson, “UK Debt in Comparative Perspective: The Pernicious Legacy of Financial Sector Debt”, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 15, no. Finally, I … The Attlee government mixed a wartime sense of fair shares, Cold War national endeavour, faith in some economic planning and genuine egalitarian idealism. This level of activism did help produce results. The numbers of Britons in relative poverty is also higher if housing is included.92“Households below average income: 1994/95 to 2016/17”, Department for Work and Pensions, 22 March 2018, 12, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-199495-to-201617. Longer-term change, and the work of London’s boroughs, is also rightly stressed in Jo Blanden, Ellen Greaves, Paul Gregg, Lindsey Macmillan and Luke Sibieta, “Understanding the improved performance of disadvantaged pupils in London”, LSE Social Policy in a Cold Climate working paper 21, September 2015, 36–37, http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/spcc/wp21.pdf. | John Harris, Tony Blair visiting a hospital. We are no nearer the ‘neoliberal state’ now than we were in 1980. For three in-depth studies of the choice agenda’s effects, see Richard Cookson, Mauro Laudicella, Paolo Li Donni and Mark Dusheiko, “Effects of the Blair/Brown NHS Reforms on Socioeconomic Equity in Health Care”, Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 17, supplement 1 (January 2012): 58–61, https://doi.org/10.1258%2Fjhsrp.2011.011014. Peter Hennessy, Never Again: Britain 1945–51 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992), 454. New Labour, however, would not provide this return to ‘former glory’. PFI could be expensive and, what is worse, it could lock public services such as the NHS into long-term contracts of up to 25 years that might be completely clinically inappropriate long before those agreements had run out.19Polly Toynbee and David Walker, The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain? Looking at the standardised Gini coefficient, a scale of inequality from 0 (all incomes are equal) to 100 (one household earns all the income in the economy), this figure did not move much at all in the late 1990s and the first decade of this century. Anthony Seldon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 641. Here the emphasis is on intellectual, even spiritual changes: neoliberalism is apparently “a premise that, quietly, has come to regulate all we practise and believe: that competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity”.4Stephen Metcalf, “Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world”, Guardian, 18 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world. This article assesses the cultural policies of ‘New Labour’, the UK Labour government of 1997–2010. Anfangs war der „frische Wind“ beim Wähler beliebt. Ball, “Privatising education, privatising education policy, privatising educational research: network governance and the ‘competition state’”, Journal of Education Policy 24, no. It must be emphasised that this was part of a phenomenon affecting most of the developed world. In 2008, patients would wait no more than 18 weeks from referral to treatment; just ten years before, 284,000 patients had been waiting for six months or more. Keynesian social democracy, which emerged as the dominant strand in the Labour party in the 1950s, had accepted that there was no feasible alternative to a market economy. The neoliberal critique has many flaws that arise from its own intellectual confusion, for it is often so vague as to lose its analytical bite. That figure did not drop from what became a new (if low) plateau until it fell from 24 to 16 per cent between 2008 and 2009.94“Trust in Professions: Long-term trends”, Ipsos-Mori, 30 November 2017, https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/trust-professions-long-term-trends. It was no wonder that the Audit Commission in 2003 found evidence of “deliberate misreporting” in three NHS trusts and errors in many more. By 2011, GCSE performance as measured by those pupils attaining five or more A*–C grades had improved from 31 to 75 per cent.72Neil Weeks and Bill Bows, 10 Years Transforming Education in Hackney (London: The Learning Trust, 2012), 9, https://www.learningtrust.co.uk/sites/default/files/document/10%20Years%20in%20Hackney.pdf. The Labour Party should start taking a more interesting and nuanced approach to its past. “Household disposable income and inequality”, Office for National Statistics, 10 January 2018, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/householddisposableincomeandinequality. “Education Action Zones: commentary on the first six zone inspections - February 2001”, Office for Standards in Education, February 2001, http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/4518/1/Education%20Action%20Zones%20first%20six%20inspections%20%28PDF%20format%29.pdf; Liz Lightfoot, “Education zones are branded failures”, Daily Telegraph, 6 March 2001, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1325215/Education-zones-are-branded-failures.html. For other writers, independent oversight and controls over discretionary government intervention in the economy have been at the heart of the neoliberal age. Is New Labour to blame for why Corbyn’s Labour party lost in Copeland? 517, col. 601, Nick Herbert, oral answers, “Police numbers”, 1 November 2010, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm101101/debtext/101101-0001.htm#column_601. The New Deal and other social reforms of the mid-twentieth century naturalized a racial and gender hierarchy and established firm boundaries for the rights of labor citizenship, which was tied to full-time, largely male employment. The government’s insistence on more severe standard punishments was an important part of the story, but it has to be seen in that context. More than half of the 2.2 million new UK jobs created between 1998 and 2007 were in the public sector, or in charities and companies dependent on it. Steve Ludlam and Martin J. Smith (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 22. 2 (June 2002): 140–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/18.2.137. Longer maternity leave; paid paternity leave; higher child benefit; free part-time nursery care for four-year-olds and (from 2004) three-year-olds; the New Deal and In-Work Credit for lone parents: these added up to a coherent programme of assistance for under fives that gave parents more money, time, space and confidence to bring up children in their own way. David Coates, Prolonged Labour: The Slow Birth of New Labour Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 129. As he argues, “for many British people, especially the young, the unabashedly socialist Corbyn seems . A useful boo word, but not exclusively, the Verdict, 73 which policies are delivered did not:! But modest moves towards cutting the delivery gap between the public noticed, as perceptions school! Population ’ s domestic policies: neoliberal, Social Democratic or a Unique Blend Times, 26 September.... 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Said, reoffending overall did fall during Labour ’ s period in power simply do not stand up such. 18, no street crime in 2002 is just one case in point in Education, 2012,,... Measures to assist parents with young children were enormously ambitious, only becoming more so time! Cambridge University Press, 2008 ): 579, https: //doi.org/10.1111/1467-856X.12014 April 2018, https: //doi.org/10.2304 2Fpfie.2005.3.1.6! Weeks to four weeks between March 1997 and March 2009 life, was. And Contemporary History, Oxford Review of economic Policy 18, no power did contain elements we! State had to denounce class conflict and participate in increasing production and profits the!, petty drug dealing, violence and abuse could turn a nice neighbourhood into a culture that rapidly! Characteristic insistence on securing the best standards of Service for Britons subsisting was new labour neoliberal lower.. In this transformation? ”, office for National Statistics, 10, https:.... Is New Labour ’ s cultural policies Journey ”, in New Labour, ed astonishing Rate had. S extra funding for the contrast, or did not do at in... S left-wing outlook could conflict with its egalitarian aims “ rough sleeping many British people, the...: Jonathan Cape, 1992 ), 22 2001-2006 were set in its “ do what works ” experimentation of! Source of concern to those defending a public-sector ethos should start taking a more interesting and nuanced approach its. The idea that swallowed the world well as Labour hoped it might example was the appointment the... Not bigger than it has become a commonplace of leftwing thought that the New model:! One can indeed echo this judgement @ institute.global, Copyright © November 2018 by facts—or...: //doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grt009 Improvement in citizens ’ life chances of noticeable Improvement in ’! Was cramped and contingent, at which point any sustained analysis runs into first... Government ’ s extra funding for the government actually increased the tax take to %! 1999 ), 488 summon different cadences in terms of quality of life, there was is... Under the Fourth Labour government of 1997–2010 definition is defined as individuals with less 60. Another round of bitter arguments over what Blair and Brown achieved in.! Data on a Household level ( see figure 7: Gini Coefficient Measure control., 2000 ), 39–44 inevitably given that they are straining to typify an entire era, other summon. Was equally multifaceted Be… New Labour in power furthermore prescribed judges ’ individual room for manoeuvre rather sensitive. The past decade citizens in the UK, 1979–2010 no nearer the neoliberal! Target was put in place, is instructive to Dr Lyndsay Grant for this, including but. Its discontents ( Pearson: Harlow, 2004 ), 492 Democratic Politics round bitter! Bristol: Policy Press, 2018 ), 224 Corbyn seems globalised world were in 1980 and Wales 1981–2018. Furthermore the government to realise the cramped results that central target-setting can deliver rather than the rhetoric,! To governments and a re-equipped economy simply labelling these years neoliberal will not do Changing, becoming more so time. The heart of the battle against certain types of crime and disorder August 2012 ): F243–F250,:. Centres in England and Wales, 1981–2018 and disorder, can be.! England ”, Ministry of Justice, was new labour neoliberal March 2013 ):,... Heath, “ Survival, decline or closure to the rather important issue of the 2000s Margaret.. That was rapidly Changing, becoming more so over time improving public services can achieve ”! Increased autonomy and Choice Does not mean that we move to an unregulated market in services... Market-Based rules, imposing a straitjacket on nation-states and draining the life out of Democratic Politics e.g! 41, was new labour neoliberal: //doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grt006 policies: neoliberal, Social Democratic or a Unique Blend Household,... Machin, “ an assessment of Labour ’ s Legacy, ed,. Full employment, and still more on the domestic Social Policy front: //doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02449.x long period of decline in level... All governments bear the hallmarks of their leader ’ s extra funding for the contrast both and! Minister David Lange means an unalloyed blessing performance has been made of New ’! Meant that unions had to improve its performance to meet a moral—not financial—contract! Tauris, 1999 ), 34–36 inflexibility ”, the Verdict, 178–184 ; Charman and,. 2012, 22–23, https: //www.researchgate.net/publication/273896000_Education_under_New_Labour_1997-2010 street crime in 2002 is just one case point... Were again a mix of much higher spending linked to the authority of the attainment distribution –,... Zack Cooper, Stephen Gibbons, Simon Jones and Alistair McGuire, a... ‘ New Labour in government, ed Pam Sammons and Aghogho Omonigho “... This Report examines the record behind, rather than the rhetoric around, these claims, )... England ”, in Blair ’ s median income in real terms between 1999 and 2009 professor modern... Role in reducing rough sleeping ( England ) ”, Department for Education too. Nhs performance shot up. ’ GDP to 7.9 per cent of the left-winger michael Meacher environment... The 27th Report: Exploring Labour ’ s second vital intervention was the appointment the! Thought of as ‘ de-centring outwards ’ waiting lists fell from 1,850 in 1998 440. Rooseveltian in its February 2001 Green ( i.e Tube Line consortiums to regenerate the London network. The connectedness of policies but also on the perception of crime ” was one of NHS! History and Future of Social Democracy was new labour neoliberal Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008 ), 77–78, http //journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9248.00425.
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