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Okay, I'll try and outline my position here as clearly as I can. Here's what I've said previously in the thread:
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.
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.
[…] That, alongside his pro-market reforms (BoE independence, foundation hospitals and academies), I don’t think you can dismiss his neoliberal tendencies.
I'll try and say why largely through a history of economic policy:
Monetarists almost entirely rejected both fiscal and monetary intervention in the 70s because of neoliberal ideas of rational individualism and economic freedom. Therefore in policy, democratic processes shouldn’t be able to meddle with monetary policy, and money itself should be reflective of the actions of economic actors rather than pursue political ends.
In practice, they targeted a k% growth figure in the overall stock of money in the economy (the fixed money rule), which was intended to match expected GDP growth (usually 2%). The rule didn't work very well because it didn't account for the velocity of money. To factor it in you need to target inflation itself, rather than the aggregate stock of money, but the same principle still applies — money is an abstraction over economic actors, not a social tool.
There was an attempt in the 80s to reach a new consensus between neoclassical and Keynesian economics which effectively allowed government intervention using only fiscal (not monetary) policy in the short run, but all of the same rational actor models, methodological individualism, neutrality of money and monetarist-style approaches in the long run. It engages with Keynesian thought mostly through technique and dismissed social ends as a monetary problem altogether. Many of the neoclassical elements were watered down too, so markets weren’t always considered to be efficient, prices and wages are now sticky, welfare can work. A little more realistic than neoliberalism, but it's still present.
Blair and Brown come along just as the new neoclassical synthesis is becoming a thing. The models fit with Third Way idealism, so they can use short-run fiscal intervention to bolster a modern welfare state, but ultimately long-run stability in the models is determined by markets and individuals. No need to jump back into old political discussions, but also little consideration for the classic problems of political economy.
So yeah, that may not convince everyone, but there's most certainly a thread of neoliberal thought throughout in my view.
Anyway, thanks for watching my Adam Curtis documentary / coming to my TED talk. I’ll leave you with a quote from Brown in the article @ReekBlefs posted yesterday, and I won't reply about Milton bloody Friedman ever again:
Brown said Bank independence had stood up well as a concept but added: “It is going to be tested in a period of stagflation. We have got to get away from the idea that central banks are the only game in town.”
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slippers
Ok - just wasted an hour reading around this while trying to do real work
I get where you're coming from. However I read your line of reasoning as
"they were making it up on the fly, therefore it was ideological; as its a neo-lib concept, then new Labour are (in this respect) neo liberals"
But the first part of this is incorrect as its fairly well documented that it was a multi-year plan-in-secret by Blair and Brown to get inflation under control.
I think in order to label them neo-liberal or not (in this narrow regard), you'd need to understand _why _ they thought it would work. If it was a case that they'd read they theory and subscribed to it, then yes, neo-lib. However if was a more practical stance that the fed and others were independant and these economies were doing better than the UK, then I would find it less convincing.
I guess its the wider problem of, at what point do you label someone based on their actions. When the Tories take a train company back under national control or spend gazillions on social support during a pandemic most people wouldnt label them socialists (although, some do).
Actually - just browsing the thread, ReekBlefs made this point about China and trade
So, I'll give you "New Labour did something that has support from neo-liberals, and it generally worked at the time", but I'm not convinced with "New Labour were neo-liberals, or had neo-liberal tendencies"