Review

"This book is certain to become a major reference point in the debate on the nature and significance of New Labour." --Andrew Gamble, University of Sheffield

"Richard Heffernan's book offers a comprehensive account of how a new centre-right consensus has become consolidated in contemporary British politics and about how this consensus has come to embrace New Labour. This is a valuable analysis of how political realignment can occur within a continuing party system." --Peter Mair, University of Leiden

Product Description

Labour's 1997 victory was widely credited to the party's reinvention of itself as New Labour. Richard Heffernan argues that the transformation of the Labour Party is best understood as the product of Thatcherism, and marks the emergence of a new consensus in British politics. Despite Labour's claim to be reapplying traditional values, Tony Blair's politics owe more to neo-liberalism than any traditional social democratic perspective. This wide-ranging and controversial assessment of both Thatcherism and New Labour is used to illustrate a new theory as to how the process of political change takes place in practice.