7 Twenty-first-century rapprochement

On May 1, 1997, Tony Blair and his New Labour Party won the British
general election with 43.2 percent of the vote, against 30.7 percent
for the Conservatives and 16.8 percent for the Liberal Democrats.
Coming from a distance, the Labour Party won more seats than ever
in its history. It progressed in every region and in most social groups,
among the less fortunate and the young in particular.^1 After eighteen
years in opposition, the British left was finally able to form a strong
and legitimate majority government. This was, however, a new left.
A New Labour government, Blair had promised, would define a new
course, away “from the solutions of the old left and those of the
Conservative right,” and focused on “what works.”^2
Tony Blair was not alone. A few years earlier, in 1992, Democrat
Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States with a com-
mitment to “reinvent government” and restore the responsibility of
citizens and a sense of community. “The change I seek and the change
that we must all seek,” Clinton had explained in October 1991, “isn’t
liberal or conservative. It’s different and it’s both.”^3 In October 1993,
Canadians replaced the Conservatives, in power since 1984, with the
centrist Liberal Party, led by Jean Chre ́tien. In continental Europe,
social-democrats were also coming to power, in one country after the
other. At the June 1997 European summit in Amsterdam, ten out of
fifteen member-states sent social-democratic or socialist prime ministers
(Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands,

(^1) David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh,The British General Election of 1997,
2 Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997, pp. xi, 244, and 255.
Tony Blair, “Britain Will Do Better with New Labour,” Introduction toNew
Labour Because Britain Deserves Better, New Labour Manifesto, 1997
(www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1997/1997-labour-manifesto.shtml).
(^3) Bill Clinton (1991), quoted in Jon F. Hale, “The Making of the New
Democrats,”Political Science Quarterly, vol. 110, no. 2, Summer 1995,
207–32, p. 226.
166