Journal of Political Ideologies

ISSN: 1356-9317 (Print) 1469-9613 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjpi20

Ideology, party identity and renewal

Steve Buckler & David P. Dolowitz

To cite this article: Steve Buckler & David P. Dolowitz (2009) Ideology, party identity and renewal,
Journal of Political Ideologies, 14:1, 11-30, DOI: 10.1080/13569310802649102

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569310802649102

Published online: 13 Feb 2009.

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Journal of Political Ideologies (February 2009),
14(1), 11–30

Ideology, party identity and renewal

STEVE BUCKLER
Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham,
Birmingham B15 2TT, UK

DAVID P. DOLOWITZ
School of Politics and Communication Studies, University of Liverpool, Liverpool
L69 3BX, UK

ABSTRACT The article explores the phenomenon of ideological renewal, where a

political party seeks to effect a radical break with the past and to present itself in
a new light. This exploration is placed in the context of questions concerning a
party’s ideological identity and, in particular, how a suitable sense of identity can
be sustained in the context of renewal. We suggest an analytical framework that
identifies the imperatives that a party has to meet, in terms of the ideological
construction and rhetorical articulation of ‘newness’, if the renewal process is to
have a chance of success. This framework is then deployed in the examination of
the construction of ‘New Labour’. Finally, some implications of the framework for
the prospects of ideological renewal in the Conservative Party are explored.

Ideology, party identity and renewal

Political parties continually adapt their ideological positions in the light of
changing social and political circumstances.1 Sometimes, however, supervening
upon this process is an imperative for renewal: a need for a party to effect a break
with the past and to present itself in a new light. This process is likely to occur
most often where a party has endured a sustained period of electoral failure and is
perceived to suffer from an entrenched hegemonic disadvantage. The issue of
renewal has been of interest in British politics recently in the light of the
electorally fruitful renewal process that culminated in the emergence of New
Labour and also in view of questions as to whether the imperative for a similar
rebirth faces the Conservative Party. However, the dynamics of the process have
not been subject to a broader analysis. We intend in what follows to suggest a
framework that facilitates the analysis and assessment of the process of ideological
renewal by reference to the key imperatives that a party is likely to face in
undertaking such a project.2 We will then, by way of illustration, use this
framework in order to examine the key ideological and rhetorical elements that

ISSN 1356-9317 print; ISSN 1469-9613 online/09/010011–20 q 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13569310802649102
S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

made up the renewal process undertaken by New Labour in the 1990s and which
account for its hegemonic success.3

Ideology and renewal

One issue raised immediately by considerations of this sort concerns the scope of
ideological change: the question of just how malleable we can take ideological
positions to be and how far, therefore, we can assume a party is able go in
reinventing itself. Mark Bevir has argued, in the course of a critique of the
tendency to ‘reify’ ideologies, that it is a mistake to suppose that there are any
fixed limits upon the ways in which an ideological position might be modified.
Ideologies, for Bevir, ‘are contingent, changing traditions that people produce
through their utterances and actions’ and, in the light of this, it is possible to
‘extend or modify [ideologies] in unlimited ways’.4 Bevir’s argument takes
inspiration from Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning as use. Avoiding the
problematic assumption that a pre-ordered world provides a substratum on to
which language is mapped, Wittgenstein argues that meaning arises in and though
the deployment of terms according to intersubjectively held rules: meaning arises
through use and particular variations of meaning through specific usage.5
The implication of this is that concepts themselves cannot delimit their own
application and therefore that meaning is malleable.
Assuming that we can see ideologies as being conceptual assemblages, this
suggests that there are no limits to the ways in which they might be revised. This
argument provides Bevir with grounds for rejecting the tendency to make
assessments of a party’s ideological position though comparisons with some fixed
ideological archetype, a tendency that he finds to be common in the literature on
New Labour. And it is indeed difficult to see what logical limits can be placed
upon modifications to an ideological position. On the basis of this argument, Bevir
suggests that a proper understanding of a party’s ideological standpoint requires
the tracing of actual influences and adaptations. This is plausible, although it may
not be enough entirely to eliminate reference to the ‘reified’ ideological
standpoints that he wants to dismiss as products of a purely intellectual error. Such
reference points, after all, may have a real and potent place politically: they may,
for example, play an important part in constructions of party identity,
constructions that require recognition and negotiation in processes of renewal.
In this sense, the philosophical plausibility of Bevir’s view does not guarantee its
political plausibility and there may be good reasons for supposing that there are
political limitations that attend the process of ideological renewal which a party
must take into account and which will curtail to an extent the room for ideological
manoeuvre. Such limits arise in so far as, in political contexts, ideologies are more
or less institutionally embodied in parties or movements. As long as this is so,
questions of ideological adaptation and renewal engage further issues to do with
party identity. And the character of the ideological problem that a party might face
here can be clarified by some reflection on the complexity of party identity.

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 I deology, party identity and renewal

The identity of a political party will always have a two-fold character. On the
one hand, a party is an institution and so it will have an identity that is embodied
in its institutional structure: lodged in its terms of membership, its formally
constituted legislative and regulatory bodies, its power and authority structures,
system of mandates and so forth. On the other hand a party can also be said to have
an ideological identity, an identity that is understood by reference to what are seen
to be the party’s most deeply held values and core commitments.6 This sense of
identity will be tied to a party’s history and provides its moral raison d’etre. Such
references may be contrived and may be based upon the sort of reifications that
Bevir complains about. They can, however, be important as a focus for loyalty and
a means of mobilization and may also play a significant part in the development of
rhetorical strategies in the context of party competition.7
Identifying the problem in this way should not be taken to imply that the basic
ideological identity of a party is fixed and cannot itself be modified. Ideological
identity is also malleable and, over time, what is and what is not held to answer
properly to that identity is subject to change. Furthermore, successive acts of
renewal may play a significant role in the modification of ideological identity.
However, acts of renewal are, in their nature, and in view of the motives generally
behind them, circumstantial and temporally specific, responses to particular
political problems. For this reason, from the point of view of agents seeking
renewal, the senses of party identity that provide a context necessarily appear
relatively fixed, needing to be negotiated rather than ignored.
The fact that such, albeit reified, ideological assertions of identity do matter
renders them a constraint.8 They present a reference point for identity that is
potentially only contingently related to the institutional identity of a party and
there is no ultimate guarantee of a stable relationship between fixed ideological
and institutional identities. And this is so even where elements of the institutional
structure appear to speak directly to certain core ideological commitments;
something to which the revision of the Labour Party Constitution in 1995 testifies.9
In normal circumstances, the ongoing process of adaptation, of policy
modifications and rhetorical positioning, do not present a problem and the
relationship between ideological and institutional identity remains stable.
The party’s ideological identity may often be invoked in these circumstances in
order to legitimize adaptations at a more specific ideological or policy level but
will not itself be in question.10 However, in more radical circumstances of
renewal, ideological identity is brought to the surface and problematized—and the
contingent relation between ideological and institutional identity is exposed.11
Unlike the more routine process of adaptation, where parties make ongoing
modifications to their policy agenda and to their rhetorical strategy, a process of
more radical renewal poses sharper questions concerning party identity and may
leave a party vulnerable to the charge that it has lost its true identity in the course
of seeking power.12 Equally, and correspondingly, there is a danger of losing core
support. A party leadership undertaking renewal will risk facing charges not just of
heterodoxy but of betrayal.13 And, this is not only a matter of retaining the loyalty
of party members: a party seen more broadly to have become divided or to have

13
S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

lost the confidence of a significant part of its membership is likely to be regarded

with suspicion by the electorate. This consideration is in a sense a function of the
nature of the political—in comparison with many other kinds of institutions,
political parties are more open to, and reliant upon, public exposure and scrutiny
with respect to what they stand for, which means that their institutional identity is
always potentially mediated by questions about ideological identity. For this
reason, there is a particular imperative, during a process of renewal, to find a basis
for sustaining and asserting a sense of ideological identity.
What kind of imperatives and constraints, then, do these considerations imply
for a party undergoing renewal? It would seem that the requirement must be to
effect a break and to reposition whilst simultaneously meeting the requirement of
sustaining an ideological identity. This presents a challenge given that the notion
of identity is logically related to that of continuity, as is shown in the fact that
identities, whether of individuals or institutions, are generally articulated through
narratives that invoke appropriate senses of continuity over time. Identity, in this
sense, involves an intrinsic appeal to the past.14 The requirement, then, is
simultaneously to appeal to the past and to break with it. These two requirements
need not only to be balanced but to be integrated through an appropriate rhetorical
invocation of an ideological narrative. The need is to reject the ‘old’ ideological
position associated with the party’s recent past and construct, as a basis for the
alternative, a contrasting ideological position that can also claim a provenance
sufficient to underwrite a claim about ideological identity.
This is unlikely to prove an easy task. However, the very fact that ideological
identity is generally cashed out in historical terms presents an opportunity.
Reference to a party’s history will generally reveal the fact that ideological
identity, although a constraint, is not monolithic. A party’s history will tend to
reveal a range of ideological strands which have at different times vied for
influence over its direction and have combined to make up the ideological mix that
constitutes its standpoint. It is available to a party seeking renewal to disaggregate
suitable ideological strands that can provide a basis for claiming a provenance
for the new direction being taken and which, in the context of appropriate
periodizations, can underwrite a rhetorical contrast with a recent ‘failed’ past.
In this way, it may be possible to renegotiate the boundaries to malleability
imposed by a reified ideological identity.
Two further factors are likely to play a part in renewal and to influence a party’s
search for a revised ideological provenance, factors which again are likely to be
significant for a party’s standing with the electorate generally. In seeking an
alternative ideological strand upon which to base an acceptable sense of renewal,
there is a requirement to find an ideological focus that is susceptible to
reformulation in a manner appropriate to changed circumstances15 Acts of renewal
are a response to failure but are unlikely to be considered necessary if that failure
is perceived to be explicable purely at the institutional level: where this is the case,
the logic of ‘one more heave’ is more likely to carry the day. It is where the failure
is explained at an ideological level, where the ‘old’ ideological position is
perceived to have lost its purchase in current social, political and economic

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 I deology, party identity and renewal

conditions, that radical renewal becomes an imperative. Further, in circumstances

of party competition, it will be an imperative not only to demonstrate the
pertinence of a party’s own agenda but also, by the same token, to assert
the superiority of that agenda with respect to the alternatives on offer. More
specifically, a party will wish to forge a rhetorical advantage over political
opponents by presenting its renewed standpoint as suitable to rectifying the
mistakes of those whose recent hegemonic dominance it is seeking to challenge.
Again, these considerations of contemporary relevance and possible hegemonic
advantage will have to be balanced with concerns about party identity.
In view of these considerations, we can identify four key imperatives that
pertain in a context of renewal. The selection of an appropriate ideological strand
on which to base claims of renewal will depend on its suitability

(a) to demonstrate a provenance sufficient to ground a claim to continuity of

identity;
(b) to provide a sufficient contrast, through a suitable periodization, with an
appropriately constructed past ideology that is now presented as failed or
outdated;
(c) to supply, when suitably adapted, an orientation appropriate to changed
political, social and economic circumstances; and
(d) to provide a basis for gaining a rhetorical advantage over political opponents.

The process is likely to have a significant rhetorical element—separating out and

periodizing different strands in the party’s past ideological mix. This is not to
imply that the distinctions drawn and periodizations made are therefore pure
inventions (and they are unlikely to be persuasive if they are). Rather, it will be a
matter of providing rhetorical emphasis upon these ways of interpreting the
ideological past. Equally, these moves will in part be shaped by decisions about
which ideological strands best fit new and changed circumstances.
With these points in mind, we will now move to a reassessment of the kind of
renewal process undertaken by New Labour in the 1990s. We will show that the
elements mentioned above are evident in New Labour’s assertion of a break with
its past accompanied simultaneously by an appeal to reforming traditions also
influential in the party’s past.
The question with respect to New Labour’s ideology has often been posed in
terms of whether they are really ‘new’ or are in fact ‘old’.16 Significantly, both
sides in this debate tend to deny the distinctiveness of New Labour, arguing that
they are new with respect to the party’s past in the sense that they have adopted a
broadly neo-liberal agenda of the sort associated with Thatcherism, or that they are
old in the sense of being part of a familiar revisionist strand. In what follows, and
in the light of the framework suggested above, we seek to offer an understanding
of the ideological terms and imperatives pertaining to renewal which suggests that
the process is more complicated and that a more sophisticated understanding gives
a clearer sense of how renewal may involve the emergence of something
ideologically distinctive. The ‘old/new’ distinction is undoubtedly of rhetorical

15
S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

significance in the process of renewal itself, but it is less helpful as a means of

characterizing the ideological outcome of that process. We will suggest here that a
party undergoing renewal is most likely to be at once both ‘old’ and ‘new’.
After looking at the context in which New Labour emerged and at the general
ideological appeal upon which it was based, we will go on to characterize the
re-shaping that took place by reference to key themes: community; rights and
duties; and equality. The reason for selecting these themes is that they have
featured heavily and consistently in New Labour’s rhetoric from the outset. In each
case, they have been used to thematize a refocused ‘social liberal’ agenda,
combining the power of the market with an enabling state, that is invoked
in contrast with more managerial, statist standpoints redolent of a more
‘old fashioned’ democratic socialism.
In dealing with each of these themes we will seek to show that New Labour
sought out an ideological provenance by reference to the closely related Ethical
Socialist and New Liberal strands of thinking influential in the early part of the
20th century and associated with figures such as Hobson, Hobhouse and
Tawney.17 We will argue that New Labour took up selected elements in these
strands as an ideological inheritance and sought to contrast them with what was
characterized as a more technocratic standpoint, more associated with a Fabian
version of socialism. We will suggest that this standpoint was seen as having been
embodied in the ‘old labour’ left, and as having offered a failed response to
Thatcherism. We will seek to show also how the ideological strands picked up by
New Labour were refashioned in a way appropriate to the perceived requirements
of a changed socio-economic context and presented as grounding an agenda
capable of ameliorating the consequences of failure on the part of previous
Conservative administrations.

The context of renewal: Developing the Third Way

By the time of Labour’s fourth consecutive General Election defeat in 1992, the
Party leadership increasingly came to the view that despite the changes introduced
under Neil Kinnock—including the Policy Review and the expulsion of members
of the Trotskyist ‘militant tendency’—the electorate still perceived the Party as
being ‘dominated by unions . . . only interested in representing the interest of the
poor . . . economically incompetent . . . and preoccupied with raising income
tax’.18 The emerging architects of New Labour, such as Tony Blair, Gordon
Brown, and Peter Mandelson, believed that Kinnock, and his successor John
Smith, had failed to persuade the voters that the Party had changed its ways. It was
in the light of this that, under the leadership of Blair, the Party actively set out to
invoke a rhetoric of ‘old’ and ‘new’.
The sense of renewal that the leadership wished to portray was one that could be
seen as consistent with the Party’s ‘true’ goals and values whilst nevertheless
distancing it from the negative associations in the public mind with the ‘winter of
discontent’, economic irresponsibility, and an oppressive and inefficient
managerial state. Blair argued that the prescriptions deriving from ideological

16
 I deology, party identity and renewal

positions must be open to modification otherwise ‘society or the economy changes

and the disciples of the ideology are left trying to fit the world to the ideology, not
the ideology to the world’.19 Similarly, Brown emphasized the need, in policy
terms, to reject ‘old shibboleths’ and to effect a ‘radical break with our past . . .
while remaining true to our values’.20 Blair emphasized a number of features of a
changed world, particularly economic globalization; the move toward a service
driven consumer society; and changed demographic patterns. More specifically,
for Blair, society had moved on to the point where ‘the vested interests of the
state and the public sector cherished and protected by the old left needed to be
challenged as much as those of capital’21
A key element, therefore, in Labour’s renewal, and one that provided a context
for the core values advanced in the rhetoric of the Third Way, was a revised
conception of the relationship between the state and the economy. One of the aims,
Blair stated, was to recreate Labour ‘as the party of new economic opportunity, not
engaged in a battle between private and public’.22 A related departure with the
‘old labour’ past was constructed in terms of a rejection of the commitment to
increasing material equality achieved through structural interventions and an
economic strategy guided by principles of Keynesian demand management.
New Labour’s aim was to distance itself from an approach that had been widely
seen as economically inefficient and insufficiently committed to individual
autonomy. As New Labour’s ‘old/new’ rhetoric developed, an alternative,
fundamentally liberal, vision emerged which rested on the idea of the equal moral
worth of individuals as the central pillar of social justice.23 This was allied to an
economic strategy that, rather than curtailing the market, sought to develop a
market/state partnership aimed at strategies of investment for growth that could
simultaneously help realize principles of social justice understood in terms of fair
provision of opportunity. It was a strategy that moved the moral value of autonomy
to the centre and, correspondingly, revised the perceived role of the state from
that of social engineer to that of an enabler, seeking to promote individual self
development (economically and morally) through a combination of targeted
investment and the forging of partnerships with the institutions of civil society in
order to create a strong communitarian framework of mutual support.24 Structural
managerial interventions gave way to those of a more targeted kind.
It was a strategy that offered a range of rhetorical advantages. It enabled New
Labour to portray itself as liberated from a past constructed in terms of ‘narrow,
timebound class or sectional interests’ redolent of Labour in the 1980s and from
the failed economic policies that were associated with it.25 It was a move on from
the ‘Bennite analysis’ that was by then seen as discredited.26 In offering an
alternative strategy for growth, resting on stability and investment, New Labour
could equally highlight a contrast with the ‘boom and bust’ policies associated, by
the early 1990s, with Thatcherism.27 Additionally, in dropping the older, more
technocratic conception of the state/society relationship, New Labour were able to
create the rhetorical space for a discourse of emancipation, autonomy and choice,
themes which had been captured by the right and allied to Thatcherite free-market
commitments.28

17
S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

It was important to find a provenance for this distinctive standpoint, decidedly

more liberal but socially minded and progressive. Such a provenance was found
by an inevitably selective reference back to the New Liberals and to Ethical
Socialism.29 Blair found the basis for an appeal to the history of socialism by
echoing the Ethical Socialist assertion of ‘a distinctive socialist view of both human
nature and social morality’ and in turn was able to draw an important ideological
distinction between the ‘moral reformers’, with whom New Labour could identify,
and the ‘mechanical reformers’ who offered a much more technocratic version of
social reform.30 This could be presented rhetorically as a rediscovery of the ‘ethical
strand’ in the history of socialism which had been overshadowed by a technocratic
Marxist-influenced way of thinking, particularly through 1970s and 1980s, but
which had now ‘come into its own’.31
In citing the New Liberalism and Ethical Socialism as the key historical
reference points for New Labour, it is not necessary to assume that these
standpoints constitute a unified ideological position. There are certainly
differences of emphasis and approach between the two, and, indeed, between
each and the ideological standpoint developed by New Labour.32 At the same
time, the two standpoints do have a related history, reflecting what, until the 1890s,
was a common ideological and institutional cause.33 And the point here is that the
New Liberalism and Ethical Socialism display enough in common to have allowed
New Labour to select thematic strands in each and integrate them into a
sufficiently coherent and rhetorically advantageous ideological package.34
Importantly for the rhetorical purposes to which they were to be put, these two
standpoints arguably displayed the makings of a common ideological front against
the Fabian technocratic tradition that New Labour sought to associate with
‘old labour’ and to reject. They articulated a vision that was socially progressive,
emphasizing distributive justice and reform, whilst retaining an emphasis upon
individual autonomy, responsibility and self-development. They thus provided a
standpoint that could be presented as avoiding the kind of structuralist analysis
associated with Marxism and influential in Fabian socialism.35 This contrast had
been made evident, for example, in the disagreement between Hobson and the
Fabians over public monopolies and over managed economies versus economic
incentives provided by markets.36 Hobson had also provided an analysis of
economic policy pertinent to an economy where consumption rather than simply
production was a key element.37 Tawney could also be readily evoked as a critic of
the corrosive effects of unmediated free markets while at the same time harbouring
scepticism with respect to ‘statist’ solutions.38
The value of this tradition as a reference point was evident in Tony Blair’s explicit
claiming of it as a historically formative theme for the Labour Party. The early
20th-century reformers, he argued, were ‘both liberals with a small “l” and social
democrats, also in the lower case.’ They included such figures as Hobhouse who
‘coined the term “liberal socialism” and who shared the . . . goals of those in the
Labour Party’, and J.A Hobson, ‘probably the most famous Liberal convert to what
was then literally “new Labour”’.39 So there was a conscious and deliberate
evocation of the reformist ideas of the late 19th and early 20th century—ideas that,

18
 I deology, party identity and renewal

for Blair, persisted, ‘sometimes in the Labour Party, sometimes in the Liberal Party,
sometimes beyond party’.40 Even though they were ideas not exclusively associated
with the labour movement, they could be claimed as an inheritance especially given
that, following the collapse of the Liberal coalition after the 1916 split, it was ‘the
Labour Party that began to take the lead’.41
So Blair could claim a heritage whilst also insinuating a sense of newness: New
Labour represented what Blair termed an ‘ideological re-foundation’ of the
Party.42 The key periodization rested upon reference to early 20th-century
ideological themes that were seen to have been progressively overshadowed by
technocratic commitments which became increasingly dominant in the period
during which Labour were perceived to have performed poorly both electorally
and in office following the end of the iconic 1945 administration.43
In the light of this general characterization, key features of New Labour’s
ideological move will now be explored more specifically with respect to central
values of their ‘third way’. In each case we will show how they claimed a
provenance by selective reference to, and rhetorical use of, New Liberal and
Ethical Socialist thinking, how this provided a platform for the drawing of old/new
distinctions, and how it supplied a set of ideological reference points that could be
claimed as uniquely relevant to changed social and economic circumstances,
providing a basis for a hegemonic challenge to the Conservatives.
The significance of New Liberal and Ethical Socialist themes was recognized
by influential contributors to the ‘third way’ within and close to the Labour
Party.44 However, we will refer principally in what follows to the words of Blair
and Brown, as the two key rhetorical advocates of New Labour.

Community
One of the key themes to emerge from New Labour was that of social renewal
through reference to community development: ‘we can only realize ourselves as
individuals in a thriving civil society, comprising strong families and civic
institutions . . . For most individuals to succeed, society must be strong. When
society is weak, power and rewards go to the few not the many’.45 It was a
rhetorical theme that could emphasize strong social bonds whilst also permitting a
discourse of individual autonomy: people are not simply ‘independent separate
economic actors competing in the marketplace of life . . . [they] are social beings,
nurtured in families and communities . . . [where they] develop moral power and
personal responsibilities toward ourselves and each other’.46 Raymond Plant notes
that Blair’s communitarian rhetoric was ‘perhaps the best example of what Blair
means when he talks about reaching deep into the values of the left to ground
his ideas, given that so many socialists have placed . . . [community] at the heart of
their value framework’.47
In terms of historical provenance here, the influence of Ethical Socialism and
the New Liberalism is evident.48 Hobhouse developed an idea of community
strongly reflected in the policies and rhetoric of New Labour. He saw society
as being based upon relations of mutuality, with the state guaranteeing that

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S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

‘the means of livelihood should be shared by all members of society, and in such a
way that all should have a chance, not merely of living, but of making the best of
themselves and their lives’.49 Affording a central ideological role to the concept
of community equally engaged a discourse of citizenship: ‘[what] is required of
every man is not merely that he should be a . . . worker, but that he should fill his
place in the social order, that he should, in a word, be a good citizen’.50 Equally,
Tawney offered an ethically grounded conception of community but with an
emphasis upon individualism, voluntarism and private property (conditional on
service to the community). It was an image of the moral community substantiating
a conception of citizenship grounded in shared values that appealed to
New Labour.51 Blair found in Tawney a thinker who sought ‘a new moral
impulse’ to propel community action.52
The reference to Ethical Socialist and New Liberal thinking provided a
counterweight to the ‘statist’ character of previous British socialism.53 It was
presented by New Labour as a key lacuna in the thinking of the left through most
of the 20th century. For Brown, the left in recent times, despite its achievements,
helped create the situation where ‘the sense of community was . . .
underdeveloped [and] there was an assumption that state and community interests
were synonymous. Instead of government being an extension of community, it
often looked like a substitute for it’.54 Blair also found in this agenda a contrast
with the ‘old left’: ‘the task is to reinvigorate the notion of action by society or the
community as a whole, and not just through government but in other ways, without
reliving the mistakes of old-style collectivism’.55 So there was an appeal, once
again, to the ‘moral reformers’ like Tawney, in contrast with the ‘mechanical
reformers’.56 The emphasis on the importance of community could help overcome
the ‘grievous error of the fundamentalist left’ in the belief that the state could
replace civil society.57 Thus, instead of viewing the world though the lens of
scientific socialism with its emphasis on class conflict and economic determinism,
New Labour viewed the role of society though the lens of an ethical socialism,
with a stress on mutual development within a supportive social structure.58
At the same time, the more liberal vision of community offered by New Labour
could be presented as appropriate to contemporary society: ‘a modern idea
of community which applauds and nurtures individual choice and personal
autonomy and which recognizes the irreducible plurality of modern society’.59
Sharp contrasts could also be drawn here with the more ‘traditionalist’ versions
of communitarianism which appeared to be based upon presuppositions about
cultural homogeneity. Finally, the strategy was contextualized not only by
reference to the moral and social benefits of strong communities but also in terms
of the kind of economic regeneration that it might bring in the context of
globalization.60
Amongst the contemporary circumstances to which a renewed emphasis on
community could be made to answer were the perceived social effects of
Thatcherism. Brown argued that the individualistic culture insinuated by the free
market ideology of Thatcherism, together with a reluctance to invest in civil
society, prompted an erosion of community which now must be rectified on social,

20
 I deology, party identity and renewal

economic and moral grounds.61 Blair cited Tawney’s conception of freedom in the
context of strong communities as a standpoint from which to assess and tackle the
social problems seen to be a legacy of Conservative policy in a way that, again, did
not revert to the ‘old’ statism: ‘The Third Way recognises the limits of government
in the social sphere but also the need for government, within those limits, to forge
new partnerships with [civil society]’.62 New Labour could claim the initiative
in filling the ‘social vacuum’ created by Thatcherism with ‘a reconstructed
relationship between individual and society [where] ideas about community are
found’.63

Rights and responsibilities

The issue of community was linked ideologically to notions of rights and to
responsibilities.64 For Blair, there was a need for ‘a new contract between citizen
and state based on responsibilities as well as rights’.65 Similarly: ‘today our idea of
society is shaped around mutual responsibility; a deal, an agreement between
citizens not a one-way gift from the well-off to the dependent’.66
Parallels can be drawn here with Hobhouse, who had argued that rights and
duties logically implied one another:
A right is a due seen from the point of view of the party to whom it is owed, and duty is the
same thing seen from the point of view of the party owing it. Right involves a moral relation,
and is not purely and simply the concern of the owner alone . . . rights . . . are not therefore
conditions precedent to society, but move and have their being in social life.67
Chiming further with Blair’s conception of both the community and the roles of
individuals within it, was Hobhouse’s argument that, ‘the community itself may be
said to have rights, that is, just claims upon its members and all its constituent
elements’68 In this respect, the state has the ability to demand that citizens perform
duties, and use compulsion when necessary.69 In similar fashion, New Labour
found Tawney’s emphasis on duties as well as rights an important thematic
reference.70 The connection here was made explicit by Blair, who cited Tawney’s
emphasis upon rights coupled with duties as a way of tackling social dislocation.71
Hobhouse had argued against the unconditional right to welfare in a manner
echoed in New Labour’s welfare to work programme.
It would be only the incompetent, and not also the idle, who would be allowed thus to live on
the surplus products of other men’s industry. Idleness would be regarded as a social pest, to
be stamped out like crime . . . All who could work would have to work . . . The worst way of
treating them is to allow them to drag on life in semi-idleness.72

This bears direct comparison with the words of Blair: ‘we know all too well the
effect that years of unemployment or idleness have on individuals. It demoralizes.
People come to expect nothing different . . . This is the poverty of expectation that
we must tackle.73
A key theme, emerging from the emphasis upon social responsibility, that
New Labour found reason to highlight, was the importance of contributing to the

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S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

economy through work. For both Hobson and Hobhouse, it is only through work
that the individual will be able to fully integrate into the life of the community:
‘A system which provides that all shall eat and be filled will have of necessity to
secure that all who are able-bodied shall first work’.74 Tawney noted that simply
providing benefits, no matter how generous, let individuals fall to the ‘wayside’
and that there was a real danger to the individual and society if work duties
were not imposed on the unemployed. Not to enforce the duty to work would be
‘encouraging what may be described . . . as social malingering’.75
Again, an emphasis upon individual responsibilities in the context of strong
communities provided the basis for a contrast with older more statist approaches
associated with the Fabian tradition, where the importance of individual and
community responsibility was seen to have been neglected in the light of an
exclusive emphasis on the centralized mechanisms of the state.76 A renewed sense
of responsibility was needed as a basis for more vigorous forms of civic action,
thereby avoiding the mistakes of the ‘old left’.77 Amongst these mistakes, for
Blair, was the tendency to conceive of social problems in purely structural terms,
requiring commensurately structural solutions in the form of social engineering
through state intervention, marginalizing the role assigned to individuals.78 This
could be countered by reference to the revised vision of rights and responsibilities.
Brown talked of the need to advance notions of the duties of citizenship and to
‘reject . . . the social engineering of the old left which ignores the importance of
social responsibility’.79
There was also mileage in the rights/responsibilities rhetoric by linking it with
an agenda orientated to contemporary problems. Brown emphasized the
significance of rights and responsibilities with respect to welfare reform and, in
turn, with respect to labour markets. Welfare to work and training were creating
greater labour market flexibility, a move essential in the context of globalization
and the rise of new technologies.80
New Labour emphasized investment in human capital as a key element in its
strategy: ‘Economic performance depends increasingly on talent and creativity.
And in this new economy it is education and skills which shape the opportunities
and rewards available to individuals’.81 In the contemporary context, wealth
creation depends upon markets freed from monopoly and entrenched elites and
this is achieved through appropriate regulation combined with the creation
of real opportunities: ‘government helping people to equip themselves for
every challenge these . . . [new] markets bring’.82 These themes helped the
ideological embedding of welfare to work policies and the New Deals that were
central planks of New Labour policy.
So, New Labour’s focus on renewing civil society allowed them to claim a
terrain fundamentally different from both neo-liberalism and the welfarist
associations of ‘old’ Labour’. These two poles, Blair argued, ‘are increasingly
showing their inadequacy in the new social conditions that we face, not only with
respect to the new economy but also to the related need to enhance education and
to meet the challenge of climate change’.83

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 I deology, party identity and renewal

This also again allowed New Labour to attack the individualism of the right
whilst avoiding a structuralist alternative that previously had left Labour open to
criticism. The right had found a powerful rhetorical weapon in the accusation that
Labour exonerated those incapable of exercising personal responsibility through a
structural social vision that explained deviance in a manner reducible to the claim
that it was ‘all society’s fault’.84 The revised ideological position adopted by New
Labour allowed them to claim credentials as a party ready to enforce social
responsibility and, in turn, permitted a reversal of the rhetorical initiative, with
more confident counter-attacks against the ‘irrationality of the Right when they
deny the impact of social factors on criminality’.85 This sort of criticism also lent
itself to being combined with a general accusation, chiming with an increasingly
strong popular sentiment that the Conservatives were unconcerned about the social
fabric, that their response was ‘one of indifference—to shrug their shoulders and
walk away’.86

Equality
Equality was also a concept in New Labour’s ideological lexicon that underwent
a significant revision, as it was linked to a particular conception of fairness.
New Labour consistently emphasized the principle of fairness and Blair
characterized it as one of the defining values of the ‘third way’. And in this context,
fairness was seen as embodying a principle of moral equality that was explicitly
contrasted with equality of outcome, an aim regarded as ‘neither achievable nor
desirable’.87 In the course of describing the formation of New Labour, Blair stated
that ‘we learnt that equality is about equal worth not equal outcomes’.88
They were able to find a provenance here in Tawney, who argued that equality
obtains in so far as ‘each member of a community, whatever his birth, or occupation,
or social position, possess in fact, and not merely in form, equal chances of using to
the full his natural endowments of physique, of character, and of intelligence’.89
The influence here was explicitly acknowledged and claimed by Brown, who
recognized the significance of Tawney’s approach in emphasizing the need to spread
individual opportunities in order to allow for self-development and to make personal
freedom a meaningful goal.90 As such, equal worth implied ‘neither equality of
outcome . . . [nor] a narrow view of equality of opportunity’; what is needed is
‘a more demanding view of equality of opportunity’.91
A further aspect to this conception of equality for the Ethical Socialists was that
all citizens should have the opportunity not only to share in wealth creation but
also to enjoy the cultural fruits of a civilized community: ‘social well-being . . .
implies . . . all should be able to lead a life of dignity and culture, whether they rise
or not . . . whatever their position on the economic scale.92 These sentiments were
clearly echoed in Brown’s view that equality of opportunity required that all have
‘a full chance to participate in the economic, political and cultural life of
society’.93 The revision to the notion of equality provided one of the most
powerful rhetorical articulations of a break with the past. Linking opportunity to
the requirement that individuals make the most of the economic and social

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S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

opportunities supplied a further contrast with ‘old labour’ who were seen to have
been happy to further a ‘dependency culture’
Recognizing a change in standpoint, David Miliband stated that, ‘we have
never taken seriously the economics of human potential’.94 For Brown, justice
and economic success require enhancing equality of opportunity but this is not
helped by the ‘hankering after an unrealisable equality of outcomes’ that was
presented, in somewhat exaggerated form, as characteristic of some sections of
the old left.95 For Blair, similarly, there is now an opportunity and need to advance
a conception of equality resonant with that articulated by the Ethical Socialists,
and contrasting with the collectivist dogma that represented the ‘neo-
conservatism of the left’.96
A further, related, contrast with the ‘old’ standpoint related to the perception
that prioritizing the pursuit of material equality had created an agenda that actively
stifled peoples’ ambition. New Labour sought to dispel the popular feeling,
identified by Blair in the 1997 election campaign, that Labour’s impulse was to
stop people rising and the Party had, in this way, betrayed the aspirations of the
communities that they had purported to represent: ‘the left . . . has in the past too
readily downplayed its duty to promote a wide range of opportunities for
individuals to advance themselves and their families . . . at worst, it has stifled
opportunity in the name of abstract equality’.97
New Labour’s opportunity agenda could be presented as constituting a suitable
response to the requirements of the contemporary world. Simon Crine argued that
Labour needed a ‘rhetoric . . . about engineering a genuine equality of opportunity
rather than imposing a mythical equality of outcome’ and that such a rhetoric was
essential in ‘a less stratified and more mobile society’.98 Raymond Plant noted that
the tendency to seek equality of outcome was potentially economically damaging
and that ‘some inequalities may be essential for wealth creation’.99 For Brown,
promoting opportunity in the form of skills and education is not only a key to a
fairer society but also to a more prosperous economy under conditions where
‘capital, raw materials and technology are internationally mobile and tradeable
worldwide’.100 It was arguable that in the ‘industrial age’ opportunity, whilst
morally desirable, was not economically necessary; but in the new ‘information
age’ it had become vital to economic success.101 Finally, positive investment for
the spreading of real opportunity was also seen to answer to the requirements of a
more diverse and multi-cultural society.102
This dimension to their ideological profile also enabled New Labour to position
themselves against an outmoded Conservative obsession with the free market that had
blunted their ability to address problems with the social fabric. The Conservatives
could be portrayed as socially regressive and lacking in compassion, particularly with
respect to the excluded: ‘[they] paid people a few pounds in benefit and then forgot
about them’.103 And this attitude could also be seen as economically disastrous in the
context of the ‘new economy’: ‘For the Right, opportunity is characteristically
presented as the freedom of the individual from the state . . . [but] opportunities
are inseparable from a society in which government action necessarily plays a
large part’.104

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 I deology, party identity and renewal

Conclusion
Bevir argues that reference to reified ideologies cannot explain the position
adopted by New Labour and that we need to look at actual processes of ideological
influence and modification. The discussion here has shown how key players in
New Labour consciously referred back to the New Liberal and Ethical Socialist
traditions. When this is put in the context of the proposed framework, showing the
key imperatives that pertain to the process of renewal, a clearer sense of why this
ideological move was made becomes available.
This ideological framing allowed New Labour to invoke a set of historical
reference points that it could claim substantiated a provenance with respect to
the traditions of Labour as a centre left, liberal, reforming party. It also allowed
them to construct a powerful dualism of ‘old and new’ supported by a rhetorical
periodization grounded in a contrast between an earlier ‘ethical’ brand of
socialism and a later technocratic brand. This in turn was marketed as the basis
for a policy orientation that was suited to a context where the forces of
globalization rendered the aim of social engineering and state micro-management
obsolete. It proved equally a platform that provided a set of powerful
rhetorical weapons with which to condemn the opposition as outmoded, illiberal
and inept.
Of course, the kind of ideological package that results from renewal processes
of this sort is likely to contain more or less concealed inconsistencies or conceptual
instabilities, as do all ideological agendas put to work in a public context.
For example, New Labour’s emphasis upon community was ambiguous. On the
one hand it was framed in a manner designed to be consistent with a liberal and
multicultural context and was frequently portrayed as ideologically adjacent to a
contractual vision of society. At the same time, the concept of community was
deployed rhetorically as a figure that provided an alternative to the individualistic
vision associated with recent conservative thinking, as an articulation of the sense
in which the collective reaches deeply into our identity and sets an agenda with
respect to forms of social responsibility neglected under the hegemonic rule of
Thatcherism.105 However, ambiguities of this sort may be ameliorated by
foregrounding the competitive dimension of an idea in contrast with the thinking
the opposition, such as to force to the rhetorical margins a potential ideological
instability.
Similarly, invoking an ideological strand in the party’s history adequate to
ground claims to provenance, whilst at the same time presenting it as appropriate
to contemporary conditions, is always likely to do a certain amount of conceptual
damage to that original ideological formation. Arguably, this is true of New
Labour’s invocation of the New Liberalism and Ethical Socialism. Unlike these
schools of thought, New Labour placed the concept of liberty in much closer
proximity to issues about enhancing skills and opportunities, rather than to issues
of moral self-development106 Again, this is a risk that ideological strategists
necessarily run in the attempt to meet the various imperatives that attend a claim to
renewal, imperatives that will always potentially stand in a tension with one

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S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

another. How far these problems can be marginalized will again be down largely
to the tactical deployment of competitive rhetorical arguments.

Postscript
Finally, it is worth looking at the framework developed here with a view to
assessing the likelihood of a similar process of ideological renewal taking place in
the Conservative party. After a sustained period of electoral failure, many have
seen the need for the Conservatives to undergo a process equivalent to that which
saw the emergence of New Labour, a process that would allow the Party to
‘free itself from the baggage of 18 years of office from 1979 to 1997’ and to reject
the ‘red in tooth and claw individualism’ associated with Thatcherism.107
If the Conservatives were to seek a ‘new’ platform that would facilitate a
periodized distinction with a recent ‘failed’ past, an obvious reference point would
seem to be the ‘one-nation’ conservative tradition. David Cameron has made
reference to this and in doing so has also ventured on a rhetoric that would claim a
provenance that insinuates an intellectual distance between this authoritative
tradition and the more recent ideological preoccupations of the party. This has
accommodated appealing references to issues that reflect a ‘modernised’ agenda,
including environmental concerns and gender issues. It has also provided the basis
for a competitive rhetorical emphasis upon Labour’s responsibility for a ‘broken
society’—one that itself points in the direction of a more traditionalist Tory
emphasis upon repair of the social fabric and away from the discourse of
individual economic liberation associated with Thatcherism. However, the sense
of ‘newness’ that for a time appeared to be emerging under Cameron’s
leadership has been perceived by many to have stalled in the light of criticisms
from prominent figures on the party’s Thatcherite wing.108
In the light of this, and when put in the context of the framework for ideological
renewal that we have outlined, there may be reasons to think that a more robust
assertion of renewal on the part of the Conservative party is unlikely at least in the
near future. A return to the authoritative tradition of one-nation conservatism is a
discursive line that would appear to meet the criteria, identified in the framework,
of a credible provenance, of a response to contemporary circumstances (the
‘broken society’) and of providing a forceful competitive rhetoric. However, it
nevertheless faces a problem in terms of the ‘old/new’ periodization that it would
seem to imply and particularly with respect to the acceptability of such a
periodization to much of the party’s membership. This is so in that a rhetorical line
of this kind would, more or less explicitly, need to indict as outmoded and
ineffective the Thatcherite standpoint that has underwritten the ideological
positioning that the party adopted in its three most recent, and unsuccessful,
general election campaigns. It is a standpoint, however, that remains appealing to a
large part of the party membership and to core sections of business and the media.
This, combined with the iconic status that Margaret Thatcher herself has for the
party faithful, makes a claim to radical ideological renewal based upon a
combative ‘old/new’ distinction a potentially hazardous move.109 For the present,

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 I deology, party identity and renewal

therefore, the party’s leadership may well be likely to prefer to attempt a balance
between the centrist and the Thatcherite wings of the party and to hope that, with
some help from the electoral cycle, one more heave may prove sufficient.

Notes and References

1. In talking about political parties, we refer, broadly, to the model of a mass membership organization
seeking power in a democratic system. Within this, of course, there are different types of parties,
distinguished by their internal organization and mode of operation—see, inter alia, R. Gunter and
L. Diamond, ‘Species of Political Parties: A New Typology’, Party Politics, 9 (2003), pp. 167– 199;
L. Diamond and R. Gunther (Eds) Political Parties and Democracy (London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2001); A. Panebianco, Political Parties: Organisation and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988); M. Duverger, Political Parties (London: Methuen, 1954). However, while
important in the study of political parties, these particular distinctions do not compromise the broader
ideological question that is addressed here.
2. Some would argue that ideology is much less important that it once was in terms of party standpoints and
competition. It has been suggested that changes in means of communication have had the effect of
privileging the personalities of party leaders over the presentation of ideological positions and programmes
(Gunter and Diamond, ibid., p. 168). Arguably, however, personalities have always been important in
democratic politics and even if the emergence of new forms of communication have enhanced that
importance, party leaders still have to have something to say, and what they do have to say will necessarily
have an ideological direction that will be open to judgment both by the public and by their own party
membership.
3. Another example can be seen in the Conservative Party in the late 1970s.
4. M. Bevir, ‘New Labour: A Study in Ideology’. British Journal of Politics and International Relations,
2 (2000), p. 281.
5. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963).
6. Panebianco, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 53.
7. See S. Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (London: Verso, 1988),
p. 85; I. Budge, ‘A New Spatial theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria
Viewed Comparatively and Temporally’, British Journal of Political Science, 24 (1994), p. 446.
8. There may be other kinds of limits to ideological malleability derived from general cultural assumptions;
those, for example which may constrain what Michael Freeden terms the ‘adjacency’ of conceptual
elements in an ideological standpoint. See M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual
Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 70–71. That this general limiting backdrop exists
will be taken as read here.
9. See T. Jones, Remaking the Labour Party: From Gaitskell to Blair (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 147;
C. Pierson, ‘Lost Property: What the third Way Lacks’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 10 (2005), p. 145.
10. M. Seliger, Ideology and Politics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976), p. 255. Indeed, a firm
ideological standpoint may generally provide a more conducive context for flexibility with respect to policy
than does a narrower policy-focussed agenda—see B. Brock et al., Making Sense of Political Ideology:
The Power of Language in Democracy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), p. 10.
11. Budge, op. cit., Ref. 7, p. 451.
12. Cf. P. Diamond, Equality Now: The Future of Revisionism (London: Fabian Society, 2005), p. 1.
13. Seliger, op. cit., Ref. 10, pp. 252, 260; Jones, op. cit., Ref. 9, p. 133. It is arguable that renewal processes
may involve not just retaining the confidence of the membership but of managing expectations and
changing perceptions. As a result, the process may also have an effect on the demographics of the party’s
core support. But these things need to be managed though a negotiation with the views of the membership:
a party cannot simply dismiss its membership and appoint a new one. It has been argued, of course, that
parties are no longer as reliant on a mass membership as they once were. Katz and Mair talk about the
emergence of the ‘cartel party’, less answerable to the views of its membership and more on the opinions of
outside experts, think tanks and focus groups—see R. Katz and P. Mair, ‘Changing Models of Party
Organisation and Party Democracy: the Emergence of the Cartel Party’, Party Politics, 1 (1995), pp. 5–28.
However, this tendency should not be overstated. The mass membership party arguably remains important
as a means of aggregating political interests and avoiding problems of indeterminacy with respect to social
choice—see P. Whiteley and P. Seyd, ‘The Dynamics of Party Activism in Britain: A Spiral

27
S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

of Demobilisation’ British Journal of Political Science, 28 (1998), pp. 113 –137. Members also, of course,
contribute significantly to party finances.
14. Panebianco, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 58.
15. Cf. W. Leggett, ‘Social Change, Values and Political Agency: The Case of The Third Way’, Politics,
24 (2004), pp. 12–19.
16. This is shown in the fact that ‘those debating the nature of change within the contemporary party have . . .
employed a cautious ‘new Labour’, an assertive ‘New Labour’, a wholly qualified ‘“New Labour”’, or . . . a
sceptical ‘“New” Labour’—S. Fielding, The Labour Party (London: Palgrave, 2003), p. 3.
17. A. Vincent, ‘New Ideologies for Old?’, Political Quarterly, 69 (1998), p. 55.
18. Fielding, op. cit., Ref. 16, p. 3.
19. T. Blair, Socialism (London: Fabian Society, 1994), pp. 4– 5.
20. G. Brown, ‘A Modern Agenda for Prosperity and Social Reform’, Speech to the Social Market Foundation,
London, 3rd February 2003.
21. T. Blair, Tony Blair: In His Own Words, P. Richards (Ed.) (London: Politico’s, 2004), p. 61.
22. T. Blair, ‘A Battle We must Win’, Fabian Review, 105 (1993), p. 3.
23. T. Blair, The Third Way (London: Fabian Society), p. 3. See also the Labour Party, General Election
Manifesto (London: The Labour Party, 1997).
24. See S. Buckler and D. Dolowitz, ‘Can Fair Be Efficient? New Labour, Social Liberalism and UK Economic
Policy’, New Political Economy, 9 (2003), pp. 23–38.
25. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 19, p. 4; D. Miliband, ‘The Politics of Economics’, Fabian Review, 104 (1992), pp. 7–9.
26. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 22, p. 3.
27. G. Brown, ‘The Servant State: Towards a New Constitutional Settlement’, Political Quarterly, 63 (1992),
pp. 394 –403.
28. Hall, op. cit., Ref. 7, pp. 227–230.
29. We are not suggesting that figures such as Blair and Brown sat down and read the work of the New Liberals
and Ethical Socialists and then attempted to adapt them and put them into practice. For the most part, the
influence of ideas at this level upon politicians is likely to be indirect, channelled through networks of
advisors, think tanks, party intellectuals and so-forth.
30. T. Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p. 239.
31. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 21, p. 83.
32. Undoubtedly, New Labour have been selective in what they have taken and claimed as their provenance.
It is certainly arguable that key differences can be identified between New Labour’s standpoint and those of
Hobhouse, Hobson or Tawney—see Buckler and Dolowitz, op. cit., Ref. 24, pp. 315–317; B. Clift and
J. Tomlinson, ‘Tawney and the Third Way’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 7 (2002), pp. 315–331;
M. Freeden, ‘True Blood or False Genealogy? New Labour and British Social Democratic Thought’,
in A. Gamble and A. Wright (Eds) The New Social Democracy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999). The point here,
however, is not to attempt a direct identification between New Labour and those earlier traditions but to
show how they adopted selective thematic resonances from those traditions in the context of the imperatives
pertaining to renewal.
33. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 8, p. 457.
34. It is certainly the case that both of these standpoints display a debt to the 19th-century idealist liberal
philosopher T.H. Green. See T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and other
Writings, P. Harris and J. Morrow (Eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
35. Marxism and Fabian socialism are of course radically different but elements of each were rolled into a
constructed sense of a past ideological tendency characterized in terms of Blair’s contrast between moral
and mechanical reform mentioned above.
36. Clift and Tomlinson, op. cit., Ref. 32, p. 323.
37. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 8, p. 200.
38. R.H. Tawney, History and Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 254 –256; Clift and
Tomlinson, op. cit., Ref. 32, p. 328.
39. T. Blair, Let Us Face The Future (London: Fabian Society, 1995), p. 11.
40. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 15.
41. Blair, ibid., p. 15.
42. Jones, op. cit., Ref. 9, p. 147.
43. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 3. This periodization might in part explain the fact that another ideological strand
that arguably has echoes in New Labour’s position—that of the ‘revisionism’ of the 1960s most closely
associated with the ideas of Tony Crosland—does not generally figure in their rhetoric. It is as if ‘the party’s
hierarchy perceived that proximity to revisionist social democracy damaged its cause’—Diamond, op. cit.,
Ref. 12, p. 10). In part there may be ideological reasons for this—Crosland’s position arguably retained

28
 I deology, party identity and renewal
a technocratic spirit, and a commitment to increasing relative equality of outcome, with which New Labour
did not wish to be associated. More than this, however, claiming an influence here would prove awkward
with respect to their preferred periodization, where the ‘authentic’ reformist spirit was to be found further
back, prior to the period of ascendancy enjoyed by Fabianism.
44. See for example A. Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1998),
p. 79; S. Crine, ‘Basildon, Brixton and Opportunity’, Fabian Review, 104 (1992), p. 8; Commission on
Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 326.
45. T. Blair, ‘New Politics for a New Century’, The Independent (21st September 1998).
46. T. Blair, Speech to the Singapore Business Community (8th January 1996).
47. R. Plant, ‘Ideology’, in A. Seldon (Ed.) The Blair Effect (London: Little Brown, 2001), p. 564.
48. A key reference for Blair personally here was to the theologian MacMurray, whose work ‘seemed to make
sense of the need to involve the individual in society without the individual being subsumed in society’—
Tony Blair, cited in P. Stephens, Tony Blair: The Price of Leadership (London: Politico’s, 2004), p. 31;
cf. P. Mandelson, The Blair Revolution Revisited (London: Politico’s, 2002), pp. 32 –33. The significance of
MacMurray to Blair is arguably to be seen in the light of the latter’s own Christian convictions, something
which also might explain why MacMurray did not feature widely in the broader rhetoric of New Labour.
Blair’s press secretary, Alistair Campbell famously responded to a journalist’s inquiry as to the Prime
Minister’s religious beliefs with the words ‘we don’t do God’.
49. L.T. Hobhouse, The Labour Movement (London: Fisher Unwin, 1912), p. 13.
50. Hobhouse, ibid., p. 28.
51. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 32, p. 157.
52. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 30, p. 239; G. Brown, Fair Is Efficient (London: Fabian Society, 1994).
53. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 32, pp. 151, 162.
54. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 27, p. 396.
55. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 22, p. 3.
56. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 30, p. 239.
57. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 4.
58. Cf. D. Pels, ‘Socialism Between Fact and Value: From Tony Blair to Hendrik de Man and Back’, Journal of
Political Ideologies, 10 (2005), pp. 145– 163.
59. T. Blair, Speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research, London, 14th January 1999.
60. T. Blair, Speech at Napier University, 3rd December 2004. This was a theme that, in the 1990s, enjoyed
something of a resurgence and New Labour were able to link their thinking in with popular exponents of a
new communitarianism, notably Amitai Etzioni, as well as to influential academics such as Michael Walzer
and Michael Sandel—see Brown, op. cit., Ref. 20, p. 4.
61. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 27, p. 398.
62. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 14.
63. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 30, p. 110.
64. S. White, ‘Rights and Responsibilities: A Social Democratic Perspective’, in A. Gamble and A. Wright
(Eds) The New Social Democracy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 166 –179.
65. T. Blair, Speech: Progress and Justice in the Twenty-First Century, London, 13th June 2003; G. Brown,
Speech: Civic Society in Modern Britain, London, 20th July 2000.
66. T. Blair, Speech to the Labour Party Conference, Brighton, 2nd October 2001.
67. L.T. Hobhouse, The Elements of Social Justice (London: Allen and Unwin, 1922), p. 37.
68. Hobhouse, ibid., p. 41.
69. Hobhouse, ibid., pp. 63– 69.
70. Pierson, op. cit., Ref. 9, p. 153.
71. T. Blair, ‘Our Citizens Should Not Live in Fear’, The Observer (11th December 2005).
72. Hobhouse, op. cit., Ref. 67, p. 37.
73. T. Blair, Speech: Bringing Britain Together, London, 8th December 1997.
74. Hobhouse, op. cit., Ref. 49, p. 16; J. Hobson, Problems of Poverty (London: Methuen, 1891), pp. 1–15.
75. R.H. Tawney, Equality (New York: Capricorn, 1961), p. 161.
76. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 32, p. 162.
77. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 22, p. 3.
78. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 71.
79. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 65, p. 3.
80. G. Brown, The Mais Lecture, London, 19th October 1999.
81. D. Blunkett, ‘Opportunity for All’, DfEE (2000).
82. G. Brown, Speech to the Labour Party Conference, Brighton, 1997.
83. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 21, p. 191.

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S teve B uckler and D avid P. D olowitz

84. M. Thatcher, Interview in Woman’s Own Magazine, 23rd September 1987.

85. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 30, p. 247.
86. Blair, ibid., p. 200.
87. G. Brown, ‘Why Labour is Still Loyal to the Poor’, The Guardian (2nd August 1997).
88. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 66.
89. Tawney, op. cit., Ref. 75, p. 106; see also, Hobhouse, op. cit., Ref. 49, p. 37.
90. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 53, p. 3.
91. G. Brown, ‘Equality—Then and Now’, in D. Leonard (Ed.) Crosland and New Labour (London:
Macmillan/Fabian Society, 1999), pp. 41 –42.
92. Tawney, op. cit., Ref. 75, p. 112.
93. G. Brown, ‘Tough Decisions’, Fabian Review, 106 (1996), p. 3.
94. Miliband, op. cit., Ref. 25, p. 8.
95. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 93, p. 1.
96. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 21, p. 87.
97. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 3. See also P. Gould, ‘The Land that Labour Forgot’, in A. Chadwick and
R. Heffernan (Eds) The New Labour Reader (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), pp. 39–42.
98. Crine, op. cit., Ref. 44, p. 8.
99. Plant, op. cit., Ref. 47, p. 12.
100. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 53, p. 1.
101. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 93, p. 1; see also T. Blair, Speech: ‘Britain—The Best Place for Inward Investment’,
London, 22nd June 2000.
102. A. Johnson, Speech to the Ethnic Employment Taskforce (London, 23rd November 2004).
103. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 87.
104. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 3.
105. Blair, op. cit., Ref. 30, pp. 299 –300.
106. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 32, p. 161.
107. S. Jenkins, ‘He Looks Like a Man Who Will Be PM—But Not in One Month’, The Guardian (4th October
2007).
108. A. Rawnsley, ‘Wherever You Look, They’re Suffering from Blurred Vision’, The Observer (11th October
2007).
109. Any renewal process based on ‘old/new’ periodizations risks offending against some iconic figures, events
or standpoints. In the case of New Labour, the discourse of renewal, based on a distinction between ethical
and technocratic approaches arguably contained or implied an incidental indictment of the approach taken
by the 1945 Labour government, widely held to be responsible for the introduction of the National Health
Service and certainly somewhat iconic in the culture of the party. However, time matters in these kinds
of cases. The Attlee government was sufficiently temporally distant to be forced into the margins of
ideological debate and the architects of New Labour made few references to it. The much more recent
phenomena of Thatcher and Thatcherism are less susceptible to burial in history.

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