The political philosophy of New Labour

Abstract

The thesis is a study of the political philosophy of New Labour.  Specifically, the study attempts to situate New Labour in the intellectual history of the Labour Party and analyse the traditional social democratic values of liberty, equality and community in relation to the ideas and policies of New Labour.  The first half of the thesis charts the intellectual history of the Labour Party from its nineteenth century origins in the Labour Movement, through the twentieth century, up until the Budget of 2002. The second half of the thesis evaluates the political values of liberty, equality and community in response to the New Right’s political thought, various traditional social democrat perspectives and New Labour’s contemporary social democratic interpretation.

This thesis claims that New Labour is a revisionist social democratic government that believes in a positive as well as a negative conception of liberty, holds to non-strict prioritarian and generous sufficiency conceptions of equality, and advocates a belief in state-level, regional-level and local-level community in the form of a communitarian social philosophy.

In addition to this argument the thesis makes some other important contributions to knowledge.  The material gathered includes primary sources such as interviews with former Labour politicians, advisers and academics.  This information has provided new and apposite insights into the development of New Labour’s political philosophy.  Furthermore, it is understood that no previous detailed evaluation of the political philosophy of New Labour has been undertaken.

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