BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
B L A I R’ S B R I TA I N ,
1 9 9 7 – 2 0 0 7
Tony Blair has dominated British political life for more than a decade.
Like Margaret Thatcher before him, he has changed the terms of political
debate and provoked as much condemnation as admiration. At the end
of his era in power, this book presents a wide-ranging overview of the
achievements and failures of the Blair governments. Bringing together
Britain’s most eminent academics and commentators on British politics
and society, it examines the effect of the Prime Minister and his administration on the machinery of government, economic and social policy
and foreign relations. Combining serious scholarship with clarity and
accessibility, this book represents the authoritative verdict on the impact
of the Blair years on British politics and society.
is Master of Wellington College and the co-founder of
the Institute of Contemporary British History. He is a prominent commentator on British political leadership and the leading author on Tony
Blair, having written or edited five books on him including The Blair
Effect 2001–5 (with Dennis Kavanagh, Cambridge, 2005).
B L A I R’ S B R I TA I N ,
1 9 9 7 – 2 0 0 7
E D I T E D B Y
A N T H O N Y S E L D O N
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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© Cambridge University Press 2007
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of
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without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2007
ISBN-13 978-0-511-36781-6
eBook (NetLibrary)
ISBN-10 0-511-36781-3
eBook (NetLibrary)
ISBN-13 978-0-521-88293-4
hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-88293-1
hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-70946-0
paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-70946-6
paperback
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D E D I C AT I O N
This book is dedicated to
Dennis Kavanagh for twenty years’
partnership, inspiration and friendship
C O N T E N T S
List of contributors
xi
Preface
xvii
Politics and government
1
The Blair premiership
3
2
Parliament
16
3
Elections and public opinion
35
4
Local government
54
5
Central government
79
. . .
6
The Constitution
104
7
Media management
123
8
Tony Blair as Labour Party leader
143
9
Social democracy
164
vii
viii
Economics and finance
10
The Treasury and economic policy
185
11
New Labour, new capitalism
214
12
Transport
241
13
Industrial policy
273
Policy studies
14
Law and the judiciary
291
15
Crime and penal policy
318
16
Immigration
341
17
Schools
361
18
The health and welfare legacy
385
19
Equality and social justice
408
20
Culture and attitudes
436
21
Higher education
468
’
Wider relations
22
The national question
487
ix
23
Ireland: the Peace Process
509
24
Europe
529
25
Development
551
26
Climate change
572
27
Foreign policy
593
28
Defence
615
Commentary
633
Commentary
639
Conclusion: The net Blair effect, 1994–2007
645
Bibliography
651
Index
666
C O N T R I BU TO R S
Ian Bache is Reader in Politics at the Unive
rsity of Sheffield. His publications include: The Europeanization of British Politics (co-editor, Palgrave
2006), Politics in the European Union, 2nd edn (co-author, Oxford
University Press, 2006) and Europeanization and Multi-level Governance:
Cohesion Policy in the European Union and Britain (forthcoming, Rowman
and Littlefield).
Michael Beloff, QC, is a Master of the Bench and Treasurer-Elect of Gray’s
Inn. He is Senior Ordinary Appeals Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey
and Guernsey, and was previously a Deputy High Court Judge and Recorder
of the Crown Court. He was the first Chairman of the Administrative Law
Bar Association and is President of the British Association of Sport and
Law. Between 1996 and 2006 he was President of Trinity College, Oxford.
Vernon Bogdanor is Professor of Government at Oxford University,
Gresham Professor of Law, a Fellow of the British Academy and Honorary
Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies. He has been an adviser
to a number of governments, including the Czech Republic, Hungary,
Kosovo, Israel and Slovakia. His books include, The People and the Party
System: The Referendum and Electoral Reform in British Politics, Multi-
Party Politics and the Constitution, Power and the People: A Guide to
Constitutional Reform and Devolution in the United Kingdom. He is editor
of, amongst other books, The British Constitution in the 20th Century and
Joined-Up Government. He is at present completing an interpretation of
what he regards as our new British Constitution. He is a frequent contributor to TV, radio and the press.
Nick Bosanquet is a health economist Professor of Health Policy at
Imperial College. He is consultant director of the non-party think-tank
REFORM and recently acted as independent chairman of a review of
health services in Cornwall. Publications include (with Professor K.
Sikora) The Economics of Cancer Care (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
xi
xii
In 2007 he served on the Government Advisory Committee on a reformcancer strategy.
Michael Clarke is the Director of the Royal United Services Institute,
having formerly been, since 1995, the Professor of Defence Studies at
King’s College London and the founding Director of both the Centre for
Defence Studies and the International Policy Institute at King’s. He is an
adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee.
Philip Cowley is Professor of Parliamentary Government at the
University of Nottingham. He is author of The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid
His Majority (Politico’s) and joint editor of the Developments in British
Politics series (Palgrave).
Nicholas Crafts is Professor of Economic History at Warwick University.
He previously taught at several other institutions including LSE and
Oxford. His research has focused on long-run economic performance in
the UK from the industrial revolution to the present day and the international historical experience of economic growth.
John Curtice is Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University. He was codirector of the British Election Study from 1983 to 1992 and has been a coeditor of the British Social Attitudes series since 1994. His previous
writing includes (as co-editor) Labour’s Last Chance? and (as co-author)
The Rise of New Labour.
Paul Fawcett is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Political
Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, and a
Visiting Student at the Political Science Program, Research School of
Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Lawrence Freedman is Professor of War Studies and Vice-Principal
(Research) at King’s College London. Among his recent books are the
Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Deterrence and The
Transformation of Strategic Affairs.
Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies in the University of
Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford,
and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a
columnist in The Guardian, a regular contributor to the New York Review
of Books, and the author of eight books of contemporary history and political writing including, most recently, Free World: Why a Crisis of the West
Reveals the Opportunity of our Time (Penguin, 2004).
xiii
Stephen Glaister, CBE, FICE, FTRF, FCGI, is Professor of Transport and
Infrastructure at Imperial College London. He has been a member of the
Board of Transport for London since July 2000. He has been adviser to the
Rail Regulator, various government bodies and an adviser to Sir Rod
Eddington on his Transport Study, 2006. He has published widely on
transport policy and also on utilities regulation.
Richard Heffernan is a Reader in Government at the Open University and
presently a Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame. He is the
author of New Labour and Thatcherism: Political Change in Britain
(Palgrave Macmillan) and lead editor of the Developments in British
Politics series (Palgrave Macmillan).
Dennis Kavanagh is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Communications
at Liverpool University. He has co-authored and co-edited a number of
books with Anthony Seldon, and his most recent books are The British
General Election of 2005 (2005) and British Politics, 5th edn (2006).
Kunal Khatri is a graduate of the University of Oxford and LSE. He has
since worked in the House of Lords as a researcher on climate change and
energy policy, and is currently working as a senior researcher to Anthony
Seldon on his forthcoming biography of Tony Blair, Blair Unbound.
Raymond Kuhn is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of
London. He has published widely on the politics of the British and French
media, including the single-authored works Politics and the Media in
Britain (2007) and The Media in France (1995). He is currently working on
a new book on media policy in France in the digital age.
Iain McLean is Professor of Politics at Oxford University. He has previously worked at Warwick and Newcastle upon Tyne, and has held visiting
appointments at Stanford and Yale. Born and brought up in Edinburgh,
his recent work has touched on the Scottish Enlightenment ( Adam Smith,
Radical and Egalitarian, 2006) and Unionism in the United Kingdom
( State of the Union, with Alistair McMillan, 2005).
Richard Manning has been Chair of the Development Assistance
Committee of the OECD since June 2003. Before that, he spent his career
in the Department for International Development and its predecessor
agencies, and served as one of its Directors-General from 1996.
Frank Millar was appointed London Editor of the Irish Times in
December 1990. The author of David Trimble: The Price of Peace (Liffey
xiv
Press, 2004), he was named Irish Print Journalist of the Year for his coverage of the negotiation of the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
Tim Newburn is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, and Director
of the Mannheim Centre of Criminology, at the London School of
are Plural Policing (edited with Trevor Jones, Routledge, 2006); The Politics
of Crime Control (edited with Paul Rock, Oxford University Press, 2006);
Policy Transfer and Criminal Justice (with Trevor Jones, Open University
Press, 2007); and The Handbook of Criminal Investigation (edited with Tom
Williamson and Alan Wright, Willan, 2007). He is currently President of
the British Society of Criminology.
Philip Norton (Lord Norton of Louth) is Professor of Government and
Director of the Centre for Legislative Studies at the University of Hull. His
publications include twenty-six books and over a hundred book chapters
and journal articles. He is President of the Politics Association and VicePresident of the Political Studies Association.
Neill Nugent is Professor of Politics and Jean Monnet Professor of
European Integration at Manchester Metropolitan University. Amongst
his recent publications are The Government and Politics of the European
Union, 6th edn, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and European Union
Enlargement (editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). He is Visiting Professor
at the Centre of European Integration at the University of Bonn and also at
the College of Europe in Bruges.
John O’Leary is a freelance journalist and education consultant. He
edited the Times Higher Education Supplement from June 2002 until
March 2007 and was previously Education Editor of The Times, having
joined the paper in 1990 as Higher Education Correspondent. He edits
The Times Good University Guide, which has been published annually
since 1993, and the Guide to the World’s Top Universities, first published in
2006.
Ben Page was named one of the ‘100 most influential people in the public
sector’ by The Guardian newspaper. He is Chairman of the Ipsos MORI
Social Research Institute. He joined MORI in 1987 after graduating in
Modern History from St John’s College Oxford in 1986. He has worked
closely with ministers and senior policymakers across government since
1992, working with Downing Street, the Cabinet Office and many departments and local public services.
xv
Robert Reiner is Professor of Criminology in the Law Department,
London School of Economics. His most recent books are: The Politics of
the Police, 3rd edn (Oxford University Press 2000); (ed. with M. Maguire
and R. Morgan) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 4th edn (Oxford
University Press, 2007); Law and Order: An Honest Citizen’s Guide to Crime