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² Amongst the most influential treatments are M. Bevir, New Labour: A Critique, London, Routledge, 2005; C. Hay, The Political Economy of New Labour, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1999; D. Coates, Prolonged Labour: The Slow Birth of New Labour Britain, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. For an excellent critical survey, see Leggett, W., ‘British Social Democracy Beyond New Labour’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9: 3 (2007), pp. 346–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁷ For details of this evidence see Pierson, Chris, ‘Learning from Labor? Welfare Policy Transfer Between Australia and Britain’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 41: 1 (2003), pp. 77–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ See Paul Kelly, The End of Certainty, St Leonard's, NSW, Allen and Unwin, 1992.Google Scholar

⁹ See G. Megalogenis, The Longest Decade, Melbourne, Scribe, 2006.Google Scholar

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¹¹ There are other potentially similar cases – for example in Spain and New Zealand – though in these examples the defeated parties of reform have now been returned to office.Google Scholar

¹² Keating, ‘The Labor Government 1983–1996’.Google Scholar

¹³ See Megalogenis, The Longest Decade.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The Whitlam government of 1972–75 provided the most exciting and colourful episode in Australian political history, including a substantial increase in social expenditure, an end to Australian involvement in the Vietnam war and recognition of the People's Republic of China. The administration ended when the prime minister was sacked by the governor-general, Sir John Kerr. See http://whitlamdismissal.com/, accessed 1 September 2006.Google Scholar

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¹⁹ Paul Keating, cited in Kelly, The End of Certainty, p. 617.Google Scholar

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²⁵ Although, even in New Zealand, the full force of reform was only felt with the accession of a National Party government under Jim Bolger in 1990. See Frank Castles, Rolf Gerritsen and Jack Vowles, The Great Experiment: Labour Parties and Public Policy Transformation in Australia and New Zealand, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1996.Google Scholar

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³³ Michael Thompson, Labor Without Class: The Gentrification of the ALP, Sydney, Pluto, 1999. Thompson's views are strongly contested by those who emphasize economic rather than cultural policies in explaining the ALP's loss of working-class voters.Google Scholar

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⁶⁶ Mike Brewer, Alissa Goodman, Michal Myck, Jonathan Shaw and Andrew Shephard, Poverty and Inequality in Britain: 2004, London, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2004.Google Scholar

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