First published in 1998, Driver and Martell’s New Labour has become a standard textbook for students of Tony Blair’s Labour party – an achievement given how much has been written on the subject. This timely update has revised chapters on the economy, the welfare state and public service reform. Inevitably, there is also a new chapter on foreign and European policy, covering military action in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The style is explanatory and dispassionate, showing how Iraq in particular caused huge controversy and has subsequently shaped politics in the Labour party, the UK and the international community.
The authors show that the ‘Blair doctrine’ of humanitarian intervention developed independently of the neo-conservatism that found favour in the Bush administration after September 11. It is wrong to see the UK’s position as simply ‘pro-US’ and ‘anti-Europe’. Inescapably though, the world was and is highly divided over US policy in the Middle East, and ‘given the structure of international relations established under the United Nations, it is difficult to see how the British government’s stance could be made practicable without rethinking the very doctrines under which the UN was established’.
This puts Blair’s foreign policy in the context of long-term international issues of globalisation, human rights and national sovereignty. Driver and Martell do a similarly good job of explaining New Labour’s domestic policy as a response to ‘post-Thatcherite’ Britain, though individual policies might be characterised as ‘neo-liberal’ or ‘social democratic’ in tone.