U.S. PresidentBill Clinton (left) meets with Prime Minister Blair (right) in November 1999, with the American leader being a close political partner given their mutual Atlanticist views and shared emphasis on the Special Relationship.
Politically, Blair has been identified with record investment into public services, an interventionist and Atlanticist foreign policy, support for stronger law enforcement powers, a large focus on surveillance as a means to address terrorism and a large focus on education as a means to encourage social mobility. In the early years (circa 1994–1997), Blairism was also associated with support for European integration and particularly British participation in the European single currency, though this waned after Labour took office.
The term is used in particular in contrast to Brownite, to identify those within the Labour Party who supported Gordon Brown rather than Blair. However, with Blair and Brown typically in agreement on most political issues[2] (from Iraq to public sector reform), some commentators have noted that "the difference between Brownites and Blairites [...] is more tribal than ideological".[3] This is believed to stem from a personal disagreement between Blair and Brown over who should run for the leadership following the death of John Smith in 1994. Though Brown was originally considered the senior of the two, he waited until after Smith's funeral to begin campaigning, by which point Blair had gathered too much momentum to be defeated.[4] However, in his book Whatever it Takes, Steve Richards offered an alternate view: that there were significant disagreements between the two about relative poverty, the level of public spending and the potential for choice in public services.[5]
Mr Blair will doubtless do his duty and lavish praise on Labour's glorious past. But, in truth, Mr Blair has always displayed a marked ambivalence towards Labour history. His greatest achievement in opposition was to get the party to ditch their historic commitment to nationalisation, and to water down its traditional links with the unions. At times he has even hinted that the very foundation of the Labour Party was a mistake, since it divided "progressive" politics and led to a century dominated by the Conservatives. Mr Blair knows that all this makes many of his party faithful deeply uneasy.[6]
Blair's tenure is known for an expansion of LGBT rights, such as the introduction of civil partnerships. Blair told the LGBT organisation Stonewall that "what has happened is that the culture of the country has changed in a definable way" and that "it's a thing that doesn't just give me a lot of pride, but it has actually brought a lot of joy". Blair has also stated that he got up off his seat and danced upon seeing the first civil partnership ceremonies on television.[7]
The Daily Telegraph stated in April 2008 that Blair's programme, with its emphasis on "New Labour", accepted the free-market ideology of Thatcherism. The article cited deregulation, privatisation of key national industries, maintaining a flexible labour market, marginalising the role of trade unions and devolving government decision making to local authorities as evidence. He also sought a closer, better relationship with Europe, and considered joining the Euro currency, but Gordon Brown was not in favour.[8]
Blair privately called Thatcher "unhinged", a description that later became public knowledge.[10] Blair criticised the Thatcher government's record on poverty and made that a key issue for Labour economic policy. He made the goal to eradicate child poverty in Britain within 20 years based on the fact that one-third of British children were in poverty post-Thatcher compared to the 9% rate in 1979 (although these statistics are disputed).[6]
In a 2001 speech to a Conservative election rally, Thatcher called New Labour 'rootless and soulless' saying at least Old Labour stood for certain principles, that respected them, and also said Blair does not truly believe in liberty. She also claimed the Labour government would give up the British pound to join the Euro.[11]
In his 2010 autobiography, A Journey, Blair remarked:
In what caused much jarring and tutting within the party, I even decided to own up to supporting changes Margaret Thatcher had made. I knew the credibility of the whole New Labour project rested on accepting that much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change. The way she did it was often very ideological, sometimes unnecessarily so, but that didn't alter the basic fact: Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period.[12]
Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister after Brown's long tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Although viewed in the media as somewhat personally close, Blair later wrote in his autobiography A Journey that a "maddening" Brown effectively blackmailed him while he was in 10 Downing Street. Blair accused Brown of orchestrating the investigation into the Cash-for-Honours scandal and stated that the personal animosity was so strong that it led him to frequent drinking, a big change for Blair. Blair also has told journalist Andrew Marr that as their years working together went on, co-operation became "hard going on impossible".[13]
Why did Labour lose the 2010 election? The answer to that, I'm afraid is obvious. Labour won when it was New Labour. It lost because it stopped being New Labour...Had he [Brown] pursued New Labour policy, the personal issue would still have made victory tough, but it wouldn't have been impossible. Departing from New Labour made it so. Just as the 2005 election was one we were never going to lose, 2010 was one we were never going to win – once the fatal strategic decision was taken to abandon the New Labour position.[14]
Impact on the Labour Party
The Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was seen as a departure from Blairism, and a return of Old Labour, and was described as a 'return of the 1940s Labour Party' by The Guardian, with its emphasis on re-nationalisation of energy, water, and railways and massive public investment in housing and the NHS. Jeremy Corbyn was critical of Blair's involvement in Iraq and voted against it at the time, garnering much support particularly from the youth vote. Labour increased its vote share by over 9% in 2017, costing Theresa May her majority in Parliament, but with the party split by Brexit policy and identitarian infighting, it lost the 2019 election to Boris Johnson's Conservatives.[15]
Since the election of Keir Starmer as Leader of the Labour Party in 2020, some in the British media [who?] have noted the ideological shift from the left back to the centre, allowing comparisons to be drawn between the current policy platform of the Labour Party and its Shadow Ministers (some of whom served in the cabinets of Blair and Brown) and that of New Labour.[16]
^Heppell, Timothy (2013). "The Fall of the Brown Government, 2010". How Labour Governments Fall: From Ramsay MacDonald to Gordon Brown. The Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 141–149. ISBN978-1-137-31421-5.
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