Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue: the Jackdaw Politics of the Third Way.

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New Labour claims that its 'third way' represents a new and distinctive approach that differs from both the old left and the Conservative right. There have been many attempts to position the third way on a left-right continuum (see Driver and Martell 2000). On the one hand, New Labour claims that it is a left or left of centre party, with the third way seen as a modernised or renewed social democracy (Blair 1998; Giddens 1998, 2000). On the other hand, it has been argued that there has been a significant convergence between New Labour and the Conservatives, resulting in a new consensus of 'Blaijorism', or perhaps now 'Hagairism'.

However, this approach is too simplistic as the picture is more complex and nuanced. First, there remains considerable debate about the content of the labels of the first and second way. Crouch (1997) claims that there have been four distinct 'Old Labours'. It is unclear to what extent Labour was ever a 'socialist' or even a 'social democratic' party, and the broad church of Old Labour includes individuals as diverse as Attlee, Bevan, Crosland and Benn. Similarly, the Conservative right is an uneasy mixture of neo-liberal and neo-conservative tendencies. There has been some rewriting of history, caricaturing the old left and the new right in order to create space for the third way (Economist 1998; Levitas 1998; Navarro 1999). Second, attempts to place 'the third way' on a left-right continuum give too much coherence to a term that defies simple description. Like Old Labour, the third way is a broad church. It is very diverse, including some policies such as the minimum wage associated with the old left and the Private Finance Initiative of the new right. Third, Crouch (1997) points out that in many ways the Labour election victory in 1997 is more similar to Conservative victory of 1951 than the Labour victory of 1945. Labour could not wish away the previous eighteen years, and was forced to build on a landscape inherited from the Conservatives. Its response was not wholesale abolition of Conservative policies, but an selective attempt to reform the reforms. Some policies such as the purchaser/ provider split in the NHS were incrementally changed, while others such as the Assisted Places scheme in education and tax relief on health insurance for elderly people were abolished. As Blair argued in the Introduction to the 1997 Manifesto (Labour Party 1997) 'Some things the Conservatives got right. We will not change them. It is where they got things wrong that we will make change.' This is more policy adaption than policy convergence. It follows that it  is meaningless to place the third way on a left-right continuum which exists in a timeless policy vacuum. Rather than comparing third way policies to what Old Labour did, such as Keynesian full employment, the more difficult counterfactual exercise is the comparison between what Old Labour might have done in today's circumstances.

Using examples from welfare reform, the complex roots of the third way are examined in terms of something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. Before this, a useful starting point is to map out some of the territory of the third way and the welfare state.

New Labour and the Third Way in the British Welfare State

This section presents a brief account of the dimensions of the third way as applied to welfare reform. For heuristic purposes, these are laid out in Table 1 and examined in more depth in the subsequent discussion. More detailed treatments may be found in Ruth Lister's article in this issue as well as Driver and Martell (1998), Levitas (1998), and Powell (1999, 2000).

Dimension        Old Left        Third Way        New Right

Approach        Leveller        Investor        Deregulator

Outcome        Equality        Inclusion        Inequality

Citizenship        Rights        Both        Responsibilities

Mixed Economy        State        Public/Private;        Private

of welfare                civil society

Mode        Command        Co-operation/        Competition

        and Control        Partnership

Social Expenditure        High         Pragmatic        Low

Table 1: Dimensions of the Third Way in Welfare Policy

Many elements of the third way were flagged up in the Commission on Social Justice (CSJ 1994), which was set up by Labour leader John Smith as a semi-official body, at arms length from the party. It rejected the approaches to social and economic policy of the 'Levellers' - the Old Left- and the  'Deregulators' - the New Right, and advocated the 'middle way' of 'Investor's Britain'. This approach features much of the discourse which was to become central to New Labour: redistributing opportunities rather than just redistributing income; transforming the welfare state from a safety net in times of trouble to a springboard for economic opportunity; an active, preventive welfare state; paid work for a fair wage is the most secure and sustainable way out of poverty; and the balancing of rights and responsibilities. An Investor's welfare state is proactive, emphasising prevention, and stressing causes rather than effects: attacking the causes of poverty rather than its symptoms, preventing poverty through education and training rather than simply compensating people in poverty (DSS 1998), and  preventing illness rather than merely curing it (eg DH 1999) The centrality of work hinges around the emphasis on a 'carrott (eg minimum wage, tax credits) and stick (reducing benefit) approach' to 'making work pay' (see Lister, this issue).

The third way rejects both the inequality of the new right and the equality of outcome which it associates with the old left. The new goal is social inclusion (eg Levitas 1998; Giddens 1998, 2000; see Lister). While Old Labour redistributed money through taxes and benefits, New Labour will redistribute life chances through employment opportunity  and lifelong learning. This concentrates on primary rather than secondary redistribution, or asset-based as opposed to fiscal egalitarianism, and seeks to tackle the root causes of poverty and inequality rather than merely compensating people for their poverty. While New Labour has been criticised for abandoning the pursuit of greater equality of income through the 'standard mechanism' of taxes and benefit levels, it has received insufficient credit for its aims of greater equality of outcome in health and education (eg reducing the health gap). It is too soon to evaluate the success of these necessarily long-term objectives, but the implication that inclusion through public services is compatable with some degree of inequality of cash income has parallels with the views of Tawney and Crosland (Powell 1995).

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The re-definition of equality is associated with the re-definition of citizenship from 'dutiless rights' towards 'conditional' or 'contractarian'  welfare'. The main conditions are connected with work obligations, but may also be found in housing, the behaviour of children and maternity benefit under the Surestart scheme (see Lister). The Queen's Speech of November 1999 signalled an intention to reduce the level of social security benefit to those who fail to complete their community sentences. All this suggests moves from patterned to process-based distributions: from what you are to what you do. Two people with identical levels of need may be treated ...

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