Thatcherism’s final triumph
The complaint from the left against Blair is that he missed the chance to push Britain further leftwards. His failure to build a new consensus, plus the collapse in trust over Iraq, means the chance has now gone
Tag: New Labour and the British left
The Brown revolution
It is July 1994. Gordon Brown has just been elected leader of the Labour party. Tony Blair becomes shadow foreign secretary, with a mission to reform Britain's relationship with Europe. What happens next?
Lies, spin and deceit
Tony Blair is charged with lying and deceiving the public with "spin." But spin is just the reaction of politics to a more aggressive media. And on Iraq, it is Blair's judgement, not his integrity, that is at stake
New Labour odyssey
From the back streets of Birmingham via Oxford to election as an MP in 2001, I have been at the heart of New Labour. It was never a middle-class coup—it grew from the core of Labour's traditions
What happens next?
The government has run out of steam. Where should the party go from here?
Labour’s real leadership problem
Tony Blair is not the cause of the Labour party's fundamental problems. Their roots go back to constitutional changes made in 1981
Labour’s good book
"The Future of Socialism" was the last important book written by a Labour politician
National anxieties
Issues of security and identity have been unexpectedly prominent since 1997. On this terrain, New Labour has found itself squeezed between its liberal supporters and its anxious ones. The two can be reconciled in a politics of liberal realism, based…
Interview: Adam Smith
The author of the Wealth of Nations, back in Glasgow for a university fundraiser, has some surprising ideas on international development, taxation and the role of the state
John Stuart Mill
Mill left no systematic legacy— there is no "Millism." But 200 years after his birth, his liberalism is still relevant. And Britain's greatest ever public intellectual was often surprisingly contrarian
In bed with the neocons
Oliver Kamm has made a brave attempt to reconcile left-wing idealism with US neoconservatism. But can non-Americans really be neocons?
Cameron’s challenge
David Cameron cannot emulate Tony Blair, but he will change New Labour
Too much choice
Most of Labour's public service reforms make sense. The new focus on individual choice does not. The "super-modernisers" who are pushing it make a false analogy with the private sector
Emotional confusion
The left appears to be confused about the place of emotion in modern politics
Born in Bradford
I witnessed the birth of political multiculturalism in Britain. It was in Bradford in the late 1980s when the left, shamefully, swapped secular universalism for ethnic particularism
Cook of the Balkans
Robin Cook's finest hours on the political stage came in the former Yugoslavia
Mini interview
Nick Clegg, MP for Sheffield Hallam and leading Liberal Democrat strategist
Emotional spasm?
Like the US left in 1968, a section of the British left wants to spite its own face
Lessons of power
After seven years at No 10, I believe that government retains a great power for good, and that politicians are as impressive, and ethical, as their counterparts anywhere else. The danger is not from hubris, but that governments will believe…
Don’t follow the people
Politicians of the left once led public opinion. A hagiography of David Blunkett shows how today's "authoritarian populists" now just follow it