Tradition(s) Betrayed?

Abstract

Just like Blair in the late 1990s, during the 1980s Hawke and Keating endured a torrent of complaint about how they were somehow betraying their party’s historic ‘mission’. Blairism was condemned by many, of course, as Thatcherism by another name. Unions and party left wingers charged that Blair had wrenched the ‘heart’ out of Labour (Guardian, 16 August 1995, 1). Critics complained that a party with ‘a kind of freelance socialism a la carte’ but with no unifying central philosophy would ultimately fail (Guardian, 2 October 1995, 19). Some decried Blairism’s search for a ‘master plan’ or ‘grand narrative’ (Independent ,25 April 1998, 21). Others argued it was not a political system at all, but a ’lifestyle movement’ inhabited by an entire social strata, a ‘swelling middle class’ of prosperous ‘anti-elitist elitists’ who made too many compromises to have ideological bearings (New Statesman, 1 August 2000).