(Book Review) March of the Moderates: Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and the Rebirth of Progressive Politics by Richard Carr, R. (2019). London: Tauris, 320 pp., £20.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781788317344

Abstract

Academic debate over the political character and influences of so-called New Labour has offered a number of perspectives and principal arguments, ranging from early Thatcherite drivers of economic competence to (revisionist) social democratic policy instincts and outcomes to more peripheral progressive concerns on the constitution. Whatever the merits of these interpretations, much of the grounding of the analysis has remained very largely British in its focus. As well as the limits and potential exaggeration of polarised explanations, much of the debate and evaluation ignores international context, influences and dialogue. Similarly, New Labour’s perception of itself, as the architects of a contemporary “Third Way” not bound by traditional ideological parameters – “imaginative” application of “timeless values” in an “increasingly formless world” as Blair himself noted – has not received much in the way of comparative treatment despite its wider international reach and expressions.