The New Labour Experiment

The book provides a clear assessment of the New Labour public policies and their outcomes in Britain under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997–2009. Authors Florence Faucher-King and Patrick Le Galès argue that New Labour, in contrast to its European counterparts, developed a right-wing economic policy program based upon light financial regulation and strict macroeconomic management. Blair and Brown developed a large controlling bureaucracy, making Britain's government one of the most centralized in the world. While some progressive policies were implemented, Faucher-King and Le Galès point to an overarching program of authoritative controls, massive surveillance, and illiberal social policies. Profound reforms were therefore linked to a new bureaucratic revolution that has subsequently been rejected by the British people. According to the authors, the financial crisis and the collapse of part of the banking system have signaled the end of the New Labour project.

The book provides a clear assessment of the New Labour governments in Britain, when Tony Blair then Gordon Brown were Prime Ministers between 1997 and 2009. This assessment is based upon a review of implemented public policies and their outcomes instead of programmes or discourses.

This work explores the emergence of New Labour from the ruins of old Labour's four successive defeats by the Conservatives. Based on the British Election Surveys, the book explores some of the key questions about contemporary British elections and the factors that decide their outcomes.

This book makes sense of New Labour by interpreting its ideas and practices as symptoms of the times in which we live. Making Sense of New Labour is an in-depth study, interpreting a wide range of material, including party political broadcasts and other election material, Tony Blair's speeches, and internal policy discussion. Finlayson disentangles and analyses the different elements of New Labour's political philosophy, which he argues is in large part a reflection of the culture and politics of contemporary capitalism. As such the party inevitably finds itself managing a status quo rather than driving genuine change. The book considers: - Labour's marketing strategy and susceptibility to consumer culture - the rhetoric and practice of modernisation - the place of the Third Way in the context of recent British political and intellectual history - the meaning of the 'knowledge economy' and significance of welfare-to-work - Labour's conception, and management, of the state Alan Finlayson is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Wales Swansea.

This book explores Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s attempt to sell the European ideal to the British people. New Labour came to power in 1997, promising to modernize the country and make it fit for the twenty-first century. In foreign policy, Blair and Brown set about rethinking core components of the British national identity, especially the country’s relationship to its past and its role in the world. Rebranding Britain, they argued, meant helping the British people feel comfortably at home in the European Union. What did New Labour achieve and did its European policy succeed? How did Blair and Brown try and persuade the British to accept a European future? What were the obstacles they faced and the strategies they used to overcome them? This timely study of New Labour’s effort to build a ‘pro-European consensus’ in Britain argues that the government failed to live up to its early promises. Based on evidence from well over one hundred of Blair and Brown’s foreign policy speeches supplemented by interviews with policy-makers, advisers and speech-writers from the time, the book is sympathetic to the challenge New Labour set itself but also critical of the rhetorical techniques it used to advance the Europeanist cause. Trapped between a broadly hostile media and an apathetic public, Blair and Brown failed to provide the necessary leadership to see Britain to a European future. Theoretically informed, empirically robust and methodologically innovative, this novel book will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary British foreign policy, the New Labour project and Euroscepticism in Britain.

Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, this book describes the work women do in their homes, caring for children and partners, and maintaining the house. It shows how their lives are shaped by domestic responsibilities and challenges the ways in which their work is neither recognized nor valued. Arguing that the work they do is socially necessary and central to the economy, it calls for a transformation of current social and economic relations.

In this timely work the authors track the influence of US ideology and experience on New Labour's reforms. They present the results of their pioneering examination of over fifty policy experiments in the US, checking whether the correct lessons were learned. Welfare-to-Work offers readers a unique combination of policy evaluation and the analysis of policy making.