The Triumph of New Labour

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-146
Author(s):  
David Denver ◽  
Mark Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Maastricht Treaty ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Gordon Brown ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Key Events ◽  
Economic Competence

This chapter covers the three consecutive election victories recorded by ‘New’ Labour, under Tony Blair, and assesses the reasons for the party’s remarkable run of success after almost two decades in opposition. The key events of the 1992–7 parliament are recorded, showing how John Major’s Conservatives lost their reputation for economic competence shortly after the 1992 contest and never recovered from the blow of ‘Black Wednesday’. The chapter shows that the Conservatives were also seriously divided in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty (1992), and their prospects were impaired by allegations of ‘sleaze’. By contrast, Labour under Blair seemed fresh and relatively united. Apart from recounting the party’s successful campaigns in 1997, 2001, and 2005, the chapter also examines the reasons for the eventual decline of New Labour, in particular the feud between Blair and his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, but also the decision to support the USA in its war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (beginning in 2003). As a consequence of these troubles, New Labour’s landslide margin of victory in 1997 and 2001 was reduced significantly in 2005, despite the continuing unpopularity of the Conservatives. The anti-war Liberal Democrats emerged as a serious threat on Labour’s left. Changes in voting behaviour are also noted, in particular the continuing decline of social class as a factor in electoral outcomes.

New Labour's post-Thatcherite modernisation project: a Third Way?

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIRIAM DAVID
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Summer School ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Policy Action ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Usa

Tony Blair The Third Way: new politics for the new century, pamphlet no. 588, Fabian Society, London, 1998, 20 pp., £3.50.Stephen Driver and Luke Martell, New Labour: politics after Thatcherism, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998, xii + 210 pp. £45.00, £12.99 (pbk).Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: the renewal of social democracy, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998, x + 166 pp., £25.00, £7.99 (pbk).Colin Hay, The Political Economy of New Labour: labouring under false pretences?, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999, xiii + 242 pp. £45.00, £14.99.Martin Powell (ed.), New Labour, New Welfare State? The ‘third way’ in British social policy, The Policy Press, University of Bristol, 1999, ix + 351 pp., £45.00, £18.99.Having just returned from a month in the USA, teaching summer school to graduate students on social and family policy in education, I eagerly read and/or reread these publications to get a renewed sense of politics and policy in Britain today. Whilst I was in the USA I became steeped in discussions of ‘post’ perspectives – post-colonial, post-modern, post-structuralist, post-feminist – on ‘discourses of welfare’ or the welfare state which now may include education and even communitarianism. I found myself longing for a more pragmatic as well as programmatic, or what might be called ‘critical realist’, perspective. So I was not disappointed by having to engage with these four books and the pamphlet, although initially they seemed a long way from my current research interests on ‘family and education’ from a feminist perspective.I have had a very enjoyable, exciting and even exhilarating time reading them. Together they present a most appealing package of accounts of New Labour as we are about to enter the new millennium. One gets the feeling of tremendous political activity and policy action over the last few years with plans and proposals galore for the future. To paraphrase the words of Celine Dionne for the heroine of Titanic ‘It will go on...’

Social Class and Underclass in Britain and the USA

1996 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Marshall ◽  
Stephen Roberts ◽  
Carole Burgoyne
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
The Usa

The Politics of Referendums

2021 ◽  
pp. 609-626
Author(s):  
Michael Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
The Impact

Ireland has become one of the world’s biggest users of referendums, which are an important part of the system of governance. The use of the referendum is tightly related to constitutional change, and partly as a result, referendums have not been held on classic left–right tax and spend issues. Rather, the main issues that have generated referendums have been moral (particularly divorce and abortion) and the ratification of EU treaties. The chapter analyses the factors influencing referendum voting behaviour: the impact of party allegiance has been weakening, while social class and age are both strongly related to referendum voting behaviour, though the pattern varies depending on the issue. Referendums are sometimes accused of facilitating the suppression of minority rights, but that has not been the Irish experience. On the whole, the referendum experience in Ireland can be seen as an enhancement of, rather than a threat to, representative government.

scholarly journals The Global Financial Crisis

2019 ◽  
pp. 94-112
Author(s):  
Edward Fieldhouse ◽  
Jane Green ◽  
Geoffrey Evans ◽  
Jonathan Mellon ◽  
Christopher Prosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Economic Vote ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Economic Competence

The Global Financial Crisis, which began in 2007–8, was the most significant financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and acted as a large shock to British politics. The economic vote is usually thought about as a short-term mechanism: a reward or punishment for the incumbent depending on recent economic conditions. In this chapter we examine how this shock played a role in the outcome of the 2015 General Election, seven years after the crisis began. The Global Financial Crisis continued to affect voting behaviour in 2015 for two reasons: first, it did long-lasting damage to perceptions of Labour’s economic competence, and second, it created a political opportunity for the Conservatives to blame the previous Labour government for the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Retrieving or re-imagining the past? The case of ‘Old Labour’, 1979–94

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
The Past

This chapter explores the concept of ‘Old Labour’. It contends that rather than affording a description of Labour’s ideology, programme and character prior to Tony Blair’s election as leader in 1994, it constituted a particular politically-driven representation of the party’s past and one which often corresponded poorly to the historical record. It was essentially a rhetorical device coined by the circle around Tony Blair designed both to discredit their opponents and to highlight the novelty and modernity of their ‘New Labour’ project. In this it achieved a large measure of success to the extent that, in the words of the Independent, the language of ‘Old Labour’ became ‘an effortless part of our vocabulary’ (22 July 1995), in this way advancing New Labour’s strategic purposes.

“You’re sitting on a hot soccer field drinking Gatorade…I’m sitting in a yacht club just enjoying the view, enjoying the drinks”: Parental reproduction of social class through school sport sailing

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 987-1005
Author(s):  
Anne Schmitt ◽  
Matthew Atencio ◽  
Gaëlle Sempé
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Dominant Class ◽  
School Sport ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Tactical Decision ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Teachers And Parents

This paper examines the utilisation of light sailing within school sport programmes in Western France and California. Sailing has been identified as a key activity for upper class participation in both France and the USA because it heavily involves intellectual skills, including preparation, tactical decision making, leadership and problem solving. Following on from this, we develop the social class concepts of Pierre Bourdieu (1979) to demonstrate how cultural and economic capitals are sought after and reproduced in comparative school sailing environments to maintain upper class social values and positions. We highlight interview commentary and field observations from a 1.5-year comparative ethnographic study of youth sailors and supporting adults, including coaches, teachers and parents. Our findings indicate that Western French and Californian upper class student sailors and their adult supporters are differentiated from each other in terms of how they prioritise either economic or cultural capital acquisition. This finding aligns with Bourdieusian conceptual distinctions of culturally dominant class and economically dominant class values and membership. Upper class status reinforcement and capital reproduction in these divergent ways reflects distinctive national cultures as well as social and economic structures underpinning youth/school sport and educational participation.

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