Tony Blair's Third Way

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews, discusses and analyzes Tony Blair's quote in The Guardian newspaper article, "Reformers Versus Wreckers is the Battle For This Parliament". According to the paper, when Tony Blair decided, in 1997, to challenge the electoral power of four consecutive Conservative governments, he pertinently chose to call his draft for Labour's electoral platform 'New Labour, New Life for Britain'. The paper goes on to say that Blair's approach retains the fundamental values of the Labour party, while changing the means appropriate to their realization, and consists of trying to combine two apparently antithetic tenets: the liberal commitment to individual freedom in the market economy, and the social democratic commitment to social justice through the action of government.

From the Paper:

"Along with this necessity to stick to a stable economy, the most strategic aim of New Labour in this text seems to lay in the reform of public services and of the Welfare State. "Quality education, healthcare, safe streets [and] mobility" (lines 10-11) are needed. This goes along with the party's ideal of social justice: "We believe in strong public services because [they are] the embodiment of social justice" (lines 10-11). This is maybe the target the text stresses the most, as well as it points out that the only way this will be achieved is through investment and reform. After fighting the 2001 election on the theme of improving public services, Blair's government continued to raise taxes in 2002 -described by opponents as "stealth taxes"- to increase spending on education and health. Blair's aim is to keep investment coming into public services and then making the reforms, in order to use the money well. High-quality public services would mean improvement of the Welfare State, which has to be refashioned, providing equal chance to benefit from the opportunities Britain has to offer. In the text, the emphasis is put on the reform of the National Health Service in particular. It has to be designed around the needs of its patients, and this is only doable through investment. However, it is not enough: power must be decentralized, waiting time must be cut, and work with the private sector is necessary to use spare capacity. The major idea concerning the renewal of public services is to re-establish the intermediate institutions between the individual and the state that the Tories either ignored or destroyed."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Atkinson, Rob and Savage, Stephen P. "Introduction : New Labour and 'Blairism'". In Savage, Stephen P.; Atkinson, Rob (ed.), Public policy under Blair (London: Palgrave, 2001), 1-15.
• Leruez, Jacques. "French views on Thatcherism and Blairism". Historical Research, 73:182 (2000), 296-311. Publisher: Blackwell.
• Gardner, Nick. A guide to United Kingdom and European Union competition policy. 3rd. Macmillan, 2000.
• Mather, Janet. The European Union and British democracy: towards convergence. St. Martin's, 2000.
• Milward, Alan S. The European rescue of the nation-state. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2000.

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