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I find this discussion really interesting - I'd not have thought Blair was what people mean by neoliberal (and it seems I'm not alone in that) but there are obviously lots of people who do think that's a fair description. I'd agree he doesn't reject capitalism but if he's neoliberal, how broadly is that really defined? Which countries could really be said not to be neoliberal by that definition?
andyfallsoff-
North Korea
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I mainly think he was part of a neoliberal period, so singling him out isn’t completely right in all honesty, particularly when there were clearly worse actors than him. I think his failure as a representative of the left is that he succumbed to it rather than offered a transformative project.
His more recent attempts in swaying political opinion are a continuation of that agenda though, and I can’t comfortably grant the same leeway now the political context has changed.
As for non-neoliberal ideas in the modern age, there aren’t great examples of nations, but there are great examples of specific policies: housing in Vienna (or even Singapore), worker’s rights in France, worker councils in Germany, direct democracy in Switzerland, or, hell, even the Conservative policy on employee-owned companies (notwithstanding the issues with it). I’m sure many others are kicking about too.
Otherwise you have to go back in time to the New Deal and UK welfare state.
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how broadly is that really defined
It’s a relatively contested term in academia partially because of its broad nature. It’s just a weird grab bag of stuff to be honest, and even Friedman and Hayek were fairly arbitrary with their reasoning.
(The link @hurricane_run posted earlier is worth a read)
hurricane_run
slippers
Here’s a quote from Harold Wilson in 1970 about Conservative policy:
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.