North Atlantic drift

Since the early 1990s welfare reform has been at the heart of the Centre-Left’s search for a new political middle way between post-war social democracy and Thatcherite Conservatism. For Tony Blair, welfare reform was key to establishing his New Labour credentials – just as it was for Bill Clinton and the New Democrats in the USA.1 In government, Labour’s welfare-to-work programme has been the centrepiece of this welfare reform drive – and of Labour’s attempt to mark out a new ‘Third Way’ for the Centre-Left. But some (for example, Cammack, in chapter 8 of this book) see New Labour’s US-influenced welfare reforms as marking a consensus, not a break with the New Right. This chapter examines whether a policy strategy based on social exclusion and pushing ‘work first’ can sustain a commitment to egalitarian social democratic values, something on which Goes (see chapter 6) casts doubt. While I acknowledge the continuities between Labour and Conservative approaches to welfare reform, I argue that there are important social democratic elements in New Labour policy which cast doubt on a straightforward ‘neo-liberal convergence’ thesis.