nine - Christian democracy, social democracy and the continental ‘welfare without work’ syndrome

Summary

Introduction: the Christian democratisation of social democracy?

One intriguing observation – at least from a continental perspective – on the British debate on the nature of New Labour concerns what may be called the thesis of the ‘Christian democratisation’ of British social democracy. David Marquand early on suggested that Tony Blair’s aim was to found a “hegemonic people’s party appealing to every part of the nation. This may have nothing in common with social democracy, but it is the nearest thing to Christian democracy that modern British politics have known” (quoted in Huntington and Bale, 2002, p 44). Surely, the Labour Party’s new social and economic policies converged considerably towards the neo-liberal and conservative policies of the Thatcherite kind, but as Driver and Martell (1998, 2000) point out, this transformation must also be understood as a reaction to the new political reality that Thatcher had helped to create. New Labour must be understood as an “exercise in post-Thatcherite politics” as it tries to go beyond both Old Labour and Thatcherism, particularly by adopting communitarianism as an antidote to Old Labour’s collectivism and Tory individualism, culminating in an all-pervasive stress on social inclusion.

New Labour accepts but also departs from Thatcherism. Successful economies, it is argued, cannot live by competitive individualism alone. Economic success requires the government, in partnership with the private sector, to provide the underpinnings for economic growth. Despite its embrace of the market economy, New Labour’s politics are hostile to what Blair has called the ‘politics of self ‘. Communitarianism is about rebuilding the social cohesion and moral fabric undermined by years of Tory individualism and laissez-faire. Much of Labour’s economic and social policies are about communitarian inclusions. Divisions must be replaced by the inclusion of all in one nation: government for ‘the many not the few’. (Driver and Martell 1998, p 167)

We think that the adoption of a comparative perspective may help to appreciate and understand better this communitarian switch of New Labour and its distinctiveness vis-à-vis conservatism and continental social democracy, because much of New Labour’s communitarianism does seem strikingly similar to some of the central tenets of continental European Christian democracy.