-
80 years before ‘97 was 1917 — I think you’re being disingenuous here.
I wasn't clear on this so I'll take it on the chin but I meant anyone now under 80 would not have seen those kinds of reforms. Basically unless you were alive in 1946 for the Attlee NHS building, the next best thing you'd have seen was Blair in 1997 for expanding and strengthening the welfare state.
I think a lot of people - not you - use the word 'neoliberal' to mean 'things I don't like'.
ReekBlefs-
Why do you think Blair strengthened the welfare state? As a doleite during part of his time in office it felt like signing on got more and more complicated.
-
Here’s a quote from Harold Wilson in 1970 about Conservative policy:
What they are planning is a wanton, calculated and deliberate return to greater inequality. The new Tory slogan is: back to the free for all. A free for all in place of the welfare state. A free for all market in labour, in housing, in the social services. They seek to replace the compassionate society with the ruthless, pushing society. The message to the British people would be simple. And brutal. It would say: ‘You’re out on your own.’
I’m not fully aware of what he enacted in power, but his rhetoric is the kind of deep cynicism of the neoliberal order that could honestly have been written yesterday with equal importance. Blair had his ideas too, but I don’t think they’re comparable to real social democratic values like this.
Domestically, Blair managed some decent things like the minimum wage and reform to the House of Lords, but his ideology was far from welfare expansionism — like Starmer, it’s a question of how to make some relatively small legal and procedural tweaks within a capitalist framework, rather than tackling neoliberalism head on.
That, alongside his pro-market reforms (BoE independence, foundation hospitals and academies), I don’t think you can dismiss his neoliberal tendencies.
-
I wasn't clear on this so I'll take it on the chin
And thanks, I thought you might’ve meant that, so I was being a bit silly too
hurricane_run
slippers
80 years before ‘97 was 1917 — I think you’re being disingenuous here.
The Blair project was typified by a modernising programme, large parts of which were a heady mix of social democracy and market ideas. They’re not totally neoliberal by any means, and that term should be kept solely for the likes of Peter Thiel and advocates of special economic zones, but there has definitely been a thread of neoliberal thought running through all UK politics for the best part of 50 years.