Skip Navigation


Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on May 10, 2008
Parliamentary Affairs 2008 61(3):550-557; doi:10.1093/pa/gsn019
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
61/3/550    most recent
gsn019v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Shaw, E.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

This article appears in the following Parliamentary Affairs issue: The Political Representation of Women [View the issue table of contents]

The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid his Majority

New Labour

Dirty Politics: New Labour, British Democracy and the Invasion of Iraq

Eric Shaw

P. Cowley, The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid his Majority, Politico's, 2005, 317 pp., pb, £9.99. ISBN 1-84275-127-1.

S. Driver and L. Martell, New Labour, 2nd ed. Polity, 2006, 242 pp, pb., £15.99. ISBN 0-7456-3331-5.

S. Kettell, Dirty Politics: New Labour, British Democracy and the Invasion of Iraq, Zed Books, 2006, 213 pp., pb. £14.99. ISBN 1-84277-741-6.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The historian contemplating the Blair decade may seize upon three expressions which—some might say—define the former Prime Minister's contribution to British political life: ‘New Labour’, ‘control freakery’ and ‘Iraq’—analysed, conveniently, by the three books under review.


   Control Freakery
 
In his account of British policy on Iraq, Kettell draws attention to the ‘all-pervasive strictures of party discipline’. Since most MPs are reliant on currying favour with their party for career advancement, ‘the result is to create mass ranks of MPs who are little more than docile lobby-fodder’ in the hands of the leadership' (Kettell: 17). Cowley expands a little: the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is full of ‘tame, compliant career politicians’, ‘gutless and feeble ... terrified to follow their own consciences ... led by the nose to vote for . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   New Labour
 

   Iraq
 

Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?