The
Death
ay 1997 saw Tony Blair stride into No.10 Downing Street, his gait matching the optimism optimism and hope encapsulated in the feverish flag waving and fresh spring air of that day. Blair, it was thought, was leading his party and even the country on a grand project of modernization, creating a politics and a nation for the 21st Century. This venture was New Labour. Now, over 12 years later, with the faces of that movement worn and furrowed by events and stresses, a number of lessons need to be learnt. Blair saw his modernisation Labour Party as the realisation of an idea born at the London School of Economics. His admiration for Anthony Giddens, the cerebral father of the Third Way, verged on a desire for doctrinaire implementation of the University’s former director’s ideas. Retrospect shows us that ideology has in fact been the biggest victim of Blair and Brown’s project. Rather than becoming the ideology to rule all ideologies, transcending the clash between left and right, the Third Way has sucked ideas out of British politics altogether. This is evidenced by the nature of debate in the Westminster village today. In a time when events have challenged fundamental assumptions of the economic orthodoxy, the political community has been discredited as nepotistic. Numerous global problems persist without clear answers and it is staggering to contemplate the narrowness in the range of remedies proposed by mainstream politics. Some see the limited choice we face as a victory for free-market based liberal democracy over rival systems of government and economics. This End of History reasoning (promulgated by Francis Fukuyama), undoubtedly has some merit when applied to domestic politics but does not explain everything. Whilst the society Britain has created for itself has been a successful one, there is widespread recognition of persisting problems. Poverty
image credit: flickr “Robertsharp”
of Ideas M
“We have lived under a government without an ideology for nearly 13 years.”
has not been eradicated, provisions for health and education are not of an acceptable standard, grave threats to our well-being such as climate change are not met with an adequate reaction and the role of a postImperial Britain in the world remains unclear. In short, we haven’t solved everything and one would thus expect debates on the kind of government action or inaction that is needed. History tells us that unanswered questions such as these should lead to an exaggeration of differences in ideas, presenting citizens with a noteworthy choice as to the objectives and methods of government. This is certainly not intended to be a call for extremist ideology. Ideas are powerful instruments and can be forces for evil as well as good. Radicalism can be dangerous, but variation of some description and for the right reasons is the lifeblood of a liberal democracy. New Labour is inculpated in this end to ideas for a number of reasons. Primarily, its own
emptiness is to blame. We have now lived under a government without an ideology for nearly 13 years. Perhaps we have simply forgotten what it looks like. Commitments such as the famous 1997 manifesto promise to be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ seduced us into thinking we were at a landmark moment, putting the dogma of left and right behind us and adopting a set of universal beneficial values. Such aphorisms are successful because they are so hard to disagree with. Who wouldn’t want to tackle crime as well as its causes or accept responsibility along with their newfound rights? Sadly, these visions never became a reality. Rather than achieving its transcendental goal and becoming the ideology to rule all ideologies, the third way revealed itself as an act of overcautious triangulation. The electorate unconsciously swapped honesty as to the difficult choices intrinsic in making policy and effecting change for a politics in which presentation rules supreme. Tragically, government in this way inescapably results in a race to the bottom. While blame does not lie exclusively with the Labour party, opposition of substance is awkward when one has nothing concrete to push against. The Conservatives chose to play by Labour’s new rules rather than rewriting them for the better. Into the vacuum of ideas pours techniques of style and packaging. It is deeply troubling that some of the most employed tools of policy formulation and government emulate the operations of an advertising agency. Does it seem likely that the answers of how best to flog a packet of crisps and what the best way to regulate immigration lie in the same process? With this phenomenon, scrutiny falls down the wayside. Criticism of politicians centres on pointing out gaps in their polished presentation rather than questioning values or policy proposals. This election has the potential to be a crossroads for our society where important questions are met with worthy answers. Sadly, and largely thanks to New Labour, May will undoubtedly be a triumph of form over substance. Ideology, R.I.P.
Oliver Wiseman o.wiseman@lse.ac.uk
New Labour and the Death of the Ideas
New Labour and
The New Labour post mortem certainly demands a wide range of questions, but above all we must ask of our politics: where have all the ideas gone?
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