The Elephant in the Room : Why Gordon Brown and New Labour got things so Wrong
From the outset, the New Labour project relied on economic growth to right the social ills of British society. Growth was to provide the resources needed to improve services and increase opportunities for all. Growth required the continuation of Thatcherite neo-liberalism and an embracing of globali...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/osb, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Anglais |
| Veröffentlicht: |
Observatoire de la société britannique
2012
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| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | From the outset, the New Labour project relied on economic growth to right the social ills of British society. Growth was to provide the resources needed to improve services and increase opportunities for all. Growth required the continuation of Thatcherite neo-liberalism and an embracing of globalisation. As Chancellor, Gordon Brown was central to promoting and pursuing this approach. Throughout, the claim was that traditional Labour principles remained intact, but that the socio-economic context in which they were to be pursued had altered. From 1997 onwards – as the British economy tended to expand – this claim seemed to hold some water. However, the onset of the economic crisis exposed the blatant limitations of New Labour’s approach. This paper explores these limitations. It argues that New Labour’s dash for growth – overseen by Gordon Brown – led it to misunderstand the social damage caused by thirty years of neo-liberalism and the gross limitations of its own approaches to rectifying it. |
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