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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
A former Conservative MP tells how he once saw Margaret Thatcher asked what she considered her greatest political achievement. “Tony Blair and New Labour,” she replied. “We forced our opponents to change their minds.” She may have given other answers over the years but this one always rang true. Thatcher saw politics as ideological warfare.
Now, 50 years after she won the Tory leadership, her disciples see things differently. Blairism is not her greatest achievement but when the country took a wrong turn. The battle to unpick that era is now an animating agenda for both the current Conservative leadership and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
For many years the Blair administration was seen less as a consensus-shifting government than as one that simply embedded and softened the Thatcher settlement through investment in public services and social policy goals such as reducing child poverty and getting more women into the workplace.
However, today’s right wing has changed its mind. It believes Blairism defined politics for two decades with Tory leaders from David Cameron to Theresa May, and even partially Boris Johnson, accepting much of his social agenda. In the mind of the new right (I include Reform UK in this category in spite of its economic interventionism), the New Labour era shifted powers away from the executive, expanded welfare and imposed values, regulations and social protections that the right believes stifle enterprise and ushered in so-called “woke” culture.
Brexit and then the immigration debate perhaps disguised the breadth of the right’s ambition but this year’s party conferences have made explicit what perhaps seemed piecemeal. Dashing the pro-European dream was just the beginning, both an end in itself and a vehicle for bringing down the administrative and social pillars of Blair’s Britain.
Legislation that one or both parties intend to scrap or rewrite includes a litany of New Labour laws; the Climate Change Act, the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, the Constitutional Reform Act that created the Supreme Court and passed the power to appoint judges from the Lord Chancellor to a new independent commission. Also in the line of fire are the Equality Act and hate crime laws. Reform has said it will review the autonomy of the Bank of England in an echo of Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve and the wider populist dislike of independent regulators. Devolution remains unchallenged for now.
The Blair dream of 50 per cent of students going into higher education is now seen as a mistake, as is the creed of multiculturalism, the belief in multinational institutions and globalisation generally. And, of course, Blair is also blamed for the wave of immigration from eastern Europe. Tories and Reform view New Labour’s welfare policies as the catalyst for the current high levels of in-work benefit payments.
The rising salience of religious Christianity and natalism in parts of both parties has left some women fearful of a more traditionalist approach to their rights. Nigel Farage has already backed stricter abortion rules, calling the UK’s 24-week limit “totally out of date”.
In many areas there is a legitimate critique here. Even Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer accepts the UK is over-regulated, with unaccountable officials and quangos creating a democratic deficit. There is an issue with judicial activism. Welfare bills are too high. But the right’s agenda also reflects a broader desire to pare back the state’s social missions.
The new right wishes to return to the original Thatcher settlement (perhaps forgetting her early support for climate action or the single market). They argue that the Conservatives’ biggest mistake was their admiration for Blair and willingness of Cameron and others to sign up to what they saw as his liberal agenda.
There are risks in this for Conservatives who need to rebuild their coalition and who, wisely, are now focused on restoring their economic credibility. There is no path back unless they can regain the southern seats lost to the Liberal Democrats. Many of those former Tory voters quite liked the Blair era.
Blair’s social democracy offered a vision of a market economy in which growth could be tailored to global challenges and social justice, a middle route between the harshest version of the free market and socialist interventionism. There is a case that it has ceased to deliver in a low-growth economy, but without it the only alternative to the new right will be left populism.
The politics of the right is now a battle to be seen as the primary alternative to Labour. Reform clearly has the upper hand but to retain it the party must destroy the Tories as a viable option. Even a modest Conservative revival will rapidly shift calculations. But whoever prevails, this is the right’s new agenda.
There are counter-arguments to the critique of the Blair settlement. Not all regulation is bad. For all the legitimate questions about judicial activism and over-reach, do we really want to return to judges appointed by cabinet ministers? It might feel good when you are in power; in opposition not so much.
But both parties have sniffed the electoral winds and sense a country seeking a shift of direction. Even Labour is revisiting the Blair agenda, be it on university numbers or immigration policies.
Politics is a never-ending battle of ideas and the fight to deconstruct the Blair settlement is gathering momentum. Things can only get bitter.
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