New Labour and Public Opinion: The Third Way as Centrism?

The strategic shifts in Labour's attempt to dominate the center ground of British politics started under the leadership of Neil Kinnock, strengthened with John Smith, but only received its apotheosis under Tony Blair. Like Thatcherism in the early 1980s, the project continued to evolve and take concrete shape in the early years of the Labour government. In a series of subsequent speeches Blair has sought to develop and flesh out the core components of a so-called ‘third way’ approach to governance. In the words of his 1998 Fabian Pamphlet: ‘The Third Way stands for a modernized social democracy, passionate in its commitment to social justice and the goals of the centre-left, but flexible, innovative and forward-looking in the means to achieve them. It is founded on the values that have guided progressive politics for more than a century democracy, liberty, justice, mutual obligation and internationalism. But it is a third way because it moves decisively beyond an Old Left preoccupied by state control, high taxation and producer interests; and a New Right treating public investment, and often the very notions of 'society' and collective endeavour, as evils to be undone’ (Blair 1998:1)