Tony Blair’s former pollster Philip Gould has updated his book The Unfinished Revolution. Here he explains why

Governing is another country. In opposition the map may be murky but the destination is assured. The campaign team are bound together by a glue of shared purpose that guides and exalts them as they strive to reach the summit and leave their pennant there. Once arrived, as President Clinton’s campaign manager James Carville wrote, you breathe only for an instant the pure oxygen of victory, because at the very moment of campaigning success the journey of power begins.

Governing is different. The sense of shared purpose remains but is more opaque and disputed. Events and circumstances intervene, tiredness sets in, relationships unravel, the daily grind of responsibility becomes wearing. The public grow impatient, politicians frustrated, the media fractious. Slowly the glue of shared endeavour dissolves. You are in another place, no longer sharing the same map. The real question is: how much change can you achieve before your moment ends?

The Unfinished Revolution, which was first published in 1998, was about the road to a New Labour victory, to the largest majority in modern times, to a time in May 1997 when all seemed possible. The new section I have written is about the long grind that followed, the compromises it involved, the issues of integrity that constantly arose, the sometimes unendurable stress that government entailed, and of course, and most importantly, the extraordinary changes that are only possible if you gain and retain power.

At no point will the dust quietly settle over New Labour. This was and always will be a controversial government. There will be endless revision and reinterpretation – about Iraq, about delivery and change and how much was or was not achieved, about Labour’s economic record, equality, immigration, and the nature and success of public sector reform.

For a government criticised so often for its timidity and lack of boldness, the legacy of New Labour could hardly be more discordant. It has not, like so many other governments, slipped quietly into the long night; everyone has a view, angry and heartfelt. Some are passionately supportive, believing that New Labour is the only way to succeed; others believe just as passionately that we stood for nothing and achieved little. Few are neutral about New Labour.

There are many reasons for the feelings of anger: the huge and unrealisable hopes released by Labour’s majority, the massive issues that New Labour confronted, the strength and power of so many of the leading characters. But at the heart of the government’s capacity to unsettle is the potency of the New Labour idea, an idea that was subversive to both left and right. To the left because it appeared to be turning its back on a hundred years of Labour history and ideology, to the right because it demonstrated that Labour had discovered how to unlock the door to real, sustainable, repeatable power. New Labour threatened both the sanctity of Labour’s past and the security of a conservative future.

What I have tried to do in the new edition is to reach as much of the truth as I can beneath the fog of opinion and received wisdom that surrounds the New Labour government, the debate effectively a dance of shadows in which people take aim at non-existent targets. I am not neutral in this, I am a passionate participant. I am Labour, New Labour, and an unashamed supporter of Tony Blair. I am also by instinct a loyalist, and this is not a time in my life or career when I will turn my fire on friends and colleagues with whom I have worked for a generation.

But I do want to try to get to the truth. By truth I do not mean revelation or exposure, nor the apportionment of blame and recrimination. There is no future for Labour, or for Britain, in the politics of disparagement, in which to hold one point of view you need to denigrate the holder of another.

Of course we need dispute, conflict, disagreement: that is the anvil of progress. But we must always be open and fearless, understanding not just our own truth but the truth in others. If you stop doing this, if you are blind to the merits of those you oppose or the arguments you disagree with, then you start to die intellectually, and if you are a political party you begin the long – or sometimes not so long – slide to electoral defeat. You only win power if you face up to the reality which has kept you from it, and you only sustain power if you renew. And renewal involves honesty, curiosity and courage. It is about being open to the uncomfortable. It is about compassion, forgiveness, and the humility to realise that none of us can be right all of the time, that we are all in our way flawed.

I have written now because I believe I have a responsibility to do so, and because this is a part of the story not yet told. I wrote initially for the next generation of Labour (and not so Labour) supporters who grew up with New Labour but who may not feel they fully understand it, and may perhaps have lost faith in it. It is, I suppose, a letter from my generation to theirs. I want people to know what has been achieved, and what can be achieved again. The revolution is never finished.

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Philip Gould was a polling adviser to the Labour party. This is an excerpt from his book The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever, which is published by Abacus on 22 September 2011. Progress readers can purchase a copy at the reduced price of £14.99 plus free P&P by calling 01832 737525 quoting reference LB145