One of the great puzzles of the English is the way most of us still insist that nothing really changes. Even after Thatcher upturned the economy and modernised British society with exceptional brutality, we still tell each other that politics will continue much as before. Even as the Scottish Parliament and the Human Rights Act alter 300 years of parliamentary rule, we reassure ourselves that such reforms do not interest people and do not really matter. Even when Peter Mandelson rockets to the height of fame and influence and then plunges back to earth in an 18th century parabola of pride and fall, we say knowingly that it is all about personalities, not policy.
Such insouciance is a familiar hallmark of Mandelson’s own version of history. Once under his spell, no divisions of substance within the New Labour “project” could be discerned. There was only one message; all else was a matter of personalities.
But there are big differences over policy within the Blair government, and even among the New Labour modernisers. For example, Mandelson proclaimed that the government “is intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” He presented his White Paper on a knowledge-led economy as heralding the end of government belief in state regulation. By contrast, Tony Giddens, also in Blair’s camp, argues for a society which limits inequality of incomes and learns to regulate in a “reflexive” fashion suitable to a cosmopolitan society. Thus New Labour contains an unfinished argument over whether intervention in the market is to be reshaped or jettisoned.
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