Old or New Labour?

Judging by what you know of the Labour party before and after Tony Blair, which do you think is better and looks out for the workers best? Do you support the positions of New Labour(1997-Now) or Old Labour(1893-1996)?

And do you think after this serious bruising not just against British New Labour, but also against all of the Center-left parties in Europe, will they return to their roots of opposing corporations, neoliberalism, supporting workers, protecting human rights and expanding our liberties?

UK parties 2010 and the change from Old Labour to New Labour.




www.politicalcompass.org...

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[edit on 6/15/2010 by Misoir]

Giving this thread a bump

Allah be praised! An intelligent thread topic on ATS for once. Hope it gets more replies than most of its kind are fated to. Don't hold yer breath.

Originally posted by Misoir
Judging by what you know of the Labour party before and after Tony Blair, which do you think is better and looks out for the workers best? Do you support the positions of New Labour(1997-Now) or Old Labour(1893-1996)?

Are they comparable? One hundred and three years is a long time. The Labour Party went through a lot of changes in it. It had its ups and downs: the Attlee and Wilson years were examples of the former, the long years in the political wilderness pre-1920s and the debacle of the post-Wilson 1970s and the Thatcher revolution that followed (leading to more years in the wilderness for Labour) were instances of the latter. The obloquy of being duped for so long by Stalin is also something the party finds hard to live down. The modern world would have been very different, I think, if Labour had not been part of Britain's wartime National Government, influencing that government to take a much softer line with Stalin than otherwise might have been the case.

To answer your question directly, I think Labour looked out for the workers better before 1970, both in and out of government. Politically - as the fascinating Political Compass article you link to explains - New Labour is, in terms of policy, an entirely different party, one more aligned to the middle classes than to the workers, and quite authoritarian as well as right-wing.

Mind you, it could easily be argued that today's middle classes are equivalent to yesterday's workers, and probably to the peasants of the day before too. I suppose that's all right then.

And do you think after this serious bruising not just against British New Labour, but also against all of the Center-left parties in Europe, will they return to their roots of opposing corporations, neoliberalism, supporting workers, protecting human rights and expanding our liberties?

No, I don't. As the Compass article also states, the role of workers' champion has now fallen to nationalist, exclusionary parties such as the BNP.

Once again, for a really interesting thread.

Old Labour is better, for my money.

How were those stats achieved?

Originally posted by HeavenlyDivine
Old Labour is better, for my money.

How were those stats achieved?

So you support Old Labour? I just want to know if Europeans want their old Center-left parties back or if they prefer their current Center-left parties.

I don't know how they were achieved, it was done by the guys at Political Compass, maybe you can email them.