Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- PART 1 Politics and government
- 1 The Blair premiership
- 2 Parliament
- 3 Elections and public opinion
- 4 Local and central government
- 5 Media management
- 6 The Labour Party
- 7 The Conservative Party
- PART 2 Economic and social policy
- PART 3 Wider relations
- Commentaries
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Labour Party
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- PART 1 Politics and government
- 1 The Blair premiership
- 2 Parliament
- 3 Elections and public opinion
- 4 Local and central government
- 5 Media management
- 6 The Labour Party
- 7 The Conservative Party
- PART 2 Economic and social policy
- PART 3 Wider relations
- Commentaries
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In estimating the ‘Blair effect’ on the Labour Party, particularly during the period from 2001 to 2005, one is confronted with a paradox. On perhaps the most important level, it has been wholly beneficial. The Labour Party has been in power with overwhelming (and even after 2005 certainly comfortable) majorities for over eight years. It has at long last achieved Harold Wilson's ambition of becoming the natural party of government; forming a non-Labour government still seems a distant dream to the opposition parties, even as the third term begins.
Despite this political and electoral ascendancy, the tone of much discussion of the Labour Party, including discussions between members, is anything but triumphalist. As an organisation, Labour seems to be in the process of atrophying – shedding members, short of money, internally divided and with a diminishing presence in the life of local civil society in much of the country. Labour also seems unsure of its purpose. Roy Hattersley is fond of recalling Wilson's cry to the 1962 Labour Party Conference that ‘This party is a moral crusade or it is nothing’, and shuddering at the modern implications of this statement. Internal critics frequently allege that what Blair is actually doing in government has very little to do with the core aims of the Labour Party.
In what follows, we attempt to chart the ‘Blair effect’ on the Labour Party, examining different aspects of the question in turn before placing the question more broadly in the context of the British party system.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Blair Effect 2001–5 , pp. 112 - 130Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
- 2
- Cited by