Jonathan Tonge

Abstract

Assessing the ideological and policy impacts of Tony Blair is difficult, given the lack of time that has elapsed since his premiership, the ongoing outworking of the Blairite policy agenda and the apparent lack of desire of the former Labour leader to associate his name with an ‘ism’. The rejection of a firm ‘ism’ may be construed as indication of the solidity of Blair’s social democratic credentials. Social democracy has always lacked the precision of ideological ‘isms’, instead amounting to a progressive reconciliation of neoliberalism with strong welfare and social agendas, the combination of which are designed to facilitate equality of opportunity not outcome. From his election as Labour leader in 1994 until his departure as Prime Minister in 2007, Blair repudiated the old capital versus labour, neoliberal versus state control, politics in favour of a less distinguishable ideological approach which favoured neither ‘side’. Blair’s valedictory 2007 speech in his Sedgefield constituency encapsulated his centrist approach, as he claimed of the ‘old’ politics of public spending versus low taxation and of liberalism versus statism: ‘None of it made sense to me.’¹ Given this, the question begged is whether Blairism, if the term can legitimately be used, amounts to merely a pick-and-mix of the supposed best of neoliberalism and statism, or whether it represents a new, distinct form of social democratic thought, offering a novel fusion of market and state. Allied to other forms of modernisation such as constitutional reform did Blairite social democracy yield an innovative and radical policy agenda?