New Labour S Foreign Policy

On 12 May 1997, the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, launched a mission statement for New Labour's foreign policy. This essay asks whether New Labour have re-orientated the path of foreign policy from that established by the Conservatives.

New Labour came to power in 1997 promising to modernize Britain and its role in the world. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made ambitious pledges and launched bold policy initiatives. After thirteen years during which Britain became mired in divisive and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, New Labour's early promises€came to resemble€little more than the cynical political 'spin' which the government was so often accused of producing. Criticised as a poodle to the US and a deeply divisive presence in the European Union, where did it go so badly wrong for New Labour's conduct of foreign policy? This book provides a fresh and challenging perspective on British foreign policy during the New Labour years, 1997-2010. The collection is themed around the development of a brand new model of British foreign policy in three interlocking circles: Identity, Ethics and Power. The contributors are as one in arguing that the conceptual basis of British foreign policy action needs a more radical overhaul than New Labour either promised or provided. €.--Résumé de l'éditeur.

A major review of New Labour's foreign policy from leading experts. This book re-imagines policy thinking, away from Churchill's idea of Britain as at the intersection of 'three circles' (the English speaking world, Europe, and the Commonwealth) and towards a new conceptual model that takes into account identity, ethics and power.

This book provides a penetrating new study of the Labour Party’s thinking on international relations, which probes the past, present and future of the party’s approach to the international stage. The foreign policy of the Labour Party is not only neglected in most histories of the party, it is also often considered in isolation from the party’s origins, evolution and major domestic preoccupations. Yet nothing has been more divisive and more controversial in Labour’s history than the party’s foreign and defence policies and their relationship to its domestic programme. Much more has turned on this than the generation of tempestuous conference debates. Labour’s credentials as a credible prospect for Governmental office were thought to depend on a responsible approach to foreign and defence policy. Its exclusion from office was often said to stem from a failure to meet this test, as in the 1950s. The composition of Labour Cabinets was powerfully influenced by foreign and defence considerations, as was the centralization of power and decision-making within Labour Governments. The domestic achievements and failures of these periods in office were inextricably connected to international questions. The Labour Party and Foreign Policy is recommended for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in British politics and European history.

Part of a set tracing the evolution of the Labour Party's foreign policy during the 20th century, this text assesses the development and evolution of Labour's world-view and follows its foreign policy during World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Cold War.

Drawing on substantial new research, Saville focuses on the role of Ernest Bevin and his differences with Clement Attlee, particularly with regard to the Middle East. Countering the widely held view that Bevin sought accommodation with the Soviet Union, he reveals Labour's Foreign Secretary as a fervent ideologue, wholly in agreement with the deep-seated anti-Sovietism of his permanent officials.