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  • I struggle with that definition of the Blair era.

    Less support for public services? Funding and quality increased throughout that government. Seems weird to me to describe it as if it was austerity.

  • More support for the marketisation and competition, and a decreasing role of the state in the public sector, then, which I would describe as less support, and others* may describe as moving "beyond left and right" to a position in the "radical centre" where capitalism is viewed much less critically.

  • Ok. Maybe this is what particularly distinguishes me from many on this thread, in that I genuinely don't care who provides services if they are provided for a good price, and publicly funded.

    I don't really see why that is 'radical', or even actually particularly centrist, if it's a means to increasing the provision of state funded services to people overall.

    It feels needless to me to criticise more the means of provision of the service than the level. (And the right are equally guilty when they argue that the state shouldn't own anything so things being privatised is inherently good).

    I do completely agree that a lot of the time, a market solution doesn't work for things we typically want to be provided. But that's a different argument to the one you seem to be making.

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