Abstract
A spectre is haunting the current Labour government – the spectre of Tony Blair. From the use of digital ID cards for migrants and the setting of social policy priorities to the UK’s position on the US–Israeli confrontation with Iran, Blair’s legacy remains politically relevant almost two decades after he left Downing Street. The lasting influence of the Blair phenomenon makes a systematic reconsideration of the Blair governments from 1997 to 2007 all the more important. Glen O’Hara takes up this challenge in New Labour, New Britain? How the Blair Governments Reshaped the Country, which stands out for its analytical rigour, methodological robustness, and contemporary relevance.
O’Hara mainly argues that, as a movement inspired by several schools of thought, New Labour’s time in office cannot be reduced simply to neoliberalism or the Iraq War. The author thus sets out to offer a policy-oriented reassessment of the Blair years in an analytically objective and historically balanced manner. After a general overview in Chapter 1, Chapters 2
Although the New Labour governments had a mixed record across the policy fields examined, with economic and social policy faring better than crime and housing, three cross-cutting sub-arguments emerge from O’Hara’s analysis. First, there was a gap between New Labour’s market-oriented rhetoric and actual policy practice which entailed a high degree of intervention in the economy in pursuit of social justice. Second, beyond higher public spending, the Blair governments lacked a clear and consistent approach to policy-making, a tendency O’Hara identifies as ‘policy hyperactivism’ (p. 98) – resulting in contradictory policy outcomes, most dramatically seen in the introduction of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences. Third, the Blair governments placed too much emphasis on meeting rigidly set performance criteria, prompting policy practitioners to privilege targets over the substance of policies.
Methodologically, the monograph offers an in-depth analysis of the Blair governments’ policies, covering their different stages, including background, preparation, enactment, implementation, and real-world consequences. What distinguishes the book from comparable works is its intellectual depth, emphasizing a range of intellectual traditions that informed New Labour’s landmark policy initiatives. The ‘end-to-end’ policy analysis draws on elite interviews with senior political figures who served during the New Labour years, including Blair himself, alongside newly released archival documents and a wide range of academic studies. Firsthand testimony from the interviews and documentary evidence illuminate hitherto underexplored negotiations over key policy schemes, not least between Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor Brown. The effective use of data, statistics, surveys, as well as figures and tables, demonstrates the consequences of key governmental decisions, contributing to the book’s analytical rigour.
The chapters focusing on individual policy fields follow a consistent structure: after a brief analysis of the pre-1997 Tory governments’ policy records, main critiques of New Labour in a relevant policy field are presented. This is followed by a discussion of key findings drawn from interviews, documents, and academic sources. Each chapter concludes with an analysis of policy outcomes by linking them to subsequent governments’ policy performance and by comparing New Labour’s Britain with contemporary cases, such as Germany, France, and the United States, where necessary. This comparative touch further strengthens O’Hara’s objective take on the New Labour governments, enabling numbers and data – not presumptions – to speak when evaluating Blair’s legacy. In addition, despite offering technical details on housing, education, and healthcare policies, the book remains grounded in an analytical narrative attentive to policies’ ‘grassroots effects’ (p. 3) – making it easy to read for a wider audience.
Despite these contributions, the book has some limitations. First, O’Hara states that the book is limited to New Labour’s domestic policy successes and failures, explaining the deliberate choice to exclude foreign policy. Yet this raises, for example, the question of whether New Labour’s European policy can be treated merely as a matter of foreign policy. Where the European Union (EU) was concerned, the distinction between domestic and foreign policy was increasingly blurred, since European integration shaped the UK’s domestic sphere as in other member states. Europe became a part of national politics, with undeniable domestic policy consequences, particularly during the Blair period. The Blair governments’ decisions, or lack thereof, on grand European schemes – single currency, EU constitution, Social Chapter – were thus ‘vital to the course of policy inside the country’ (p. 14), influencing New Labour’s policy record, electoral performance, and even political future. A fuller discussion of New Labour’s European policy, rather than one limited to Blair’s unpopular decision to allow free movement from the 2004 enlargement states, would strengthen the analytical scope of the work. Second, although O’Hara states that assessing New Labour only in relation to Thatcherism would be a mistake, he remains less definitive about the nature of New Labour’s relationship with Old Labour, except implying a connection with the revisionist social democratic wing of the latter. The book sometimes challenges the dichotomy between Old and New Labour, pointing to the striking similarities and continuities between them. However, at certain points, this distinction is maintained by drawing a clear-cut line between the two, giving the impression that the book accepts the conception of ‘Old’ Labour as it came to be defined by ‘New’ Labour. The book would benefit from a more consistent approach to this relationship.
Overall, New Labour, New Britain? How the Blair Governments Reshaped the Country offers fresh insights into the Blair era, seeking to move the debate from polemic to policy analysis. The study’s originality lies in its reassessment of the New Labour governments in their historical context through a meticulous analysis of their policy performance. With these qualities, the book is likely to contribute not just to history, the author’s discipline, but also to other related fields such as political science and public policy.
