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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Economic ideas and political leaders
- Part II The use and abuse of economic ideas: Keynes and his interpreters
- 5 The Labour party and Keynes
- 6 The Conservative party and Keynes
- 7 Keynesian ideas and the recasting of Italian democracy, 1945–1953
- Part III Economic forces and their significance
- Index
5 - The Labour party and Keynes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Economic ideas and political leaders
- Part II The use and abuse of economic ideas: Keynes and his interpreters
- 5 The Labour party and Keynes
- 6 The Conservative party and Keynes
- 7 Keynesian ideas and the recasting of Italian democracy, 1945–1953
- Part III Economic forces and their significance
- Index
Summary
In September 1994, during the early months of the phenomenon known as ‘New Labour’, The Independent carried the headline ‘Blair ditches Keynes’. It was reported that Labour leaders would tell a conference of businessmen and academics ‘that the party has turned its back on Keynesian economics and “the old ways of corporatism”’. In fact, Blair used his speech to insist that Keynes's legacy of demand management had never implied increasing demand ‘irrespective of economic circumstances and even at a time of inflation and high borrowing’. Real Keynesianism, in his view, represented a wider critique of the functioning of capitalism – not a call for permanent government pump-priming. Likewise, Gordon Brown stated on the same occasion that ‘I am not here to bury the real Keynes but to praise him’. This is an approach that New Labour followed in government. Blair continued to cite Keynes as an example of the beneficial influence of Liberalism on the Labour party. Brown, as Chancellor, asserted that although New Labour rejected ‘crude “Keynesianism”’, the government sought ‘to draw on the best of Keynes’ insights about political economy and put a modern Keynesian approach into practice'.
Blair and Brown's approach represents an attempt, whether conscious or otherwise, to employ Peter Clarke's useful distinction between ‘Keynesianism’ and ‘the historical Keynes’. In their opinion, the views of the ‘real’ (or ‘historical’) Keynes were misinterpreted by the economists and politicians who came after him.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Strange Survival of Liberal EnglandPolitical Leaders, Moral Values and the Reception of Economic Debate, pp. 153 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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