Book Review: Britain and Ireland: The Politics of New Labour
| DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12016_97 |
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| Author | David S. Moon |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
responded effectively to varying favourable or unfa-
vourable circumstances can then be assessed.
The book would be of interest to students or
academics, particularly in the field of opposition or
leadership studies, but also to those with an interest
in the development of post-war British politics more
generally.
Elizabeth McEnhill
(University of Huddersfield)
Cameron and the Conservatives: The Transition
to Coalition Government by Timothy Heppell
and David Seawright (eds). London: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2012.268pp., £60.00,ISBN 978 0 230 31410 8
Britain’s first post-war coalition government is likely
to create a cottage industry in assessments of the new
administration. This volume of essays on the Con-
servative Party’s return to power is one of the first.
Loosely structured around the major themes of Bul-
pitt’s notion of statecraft – specifically winning elec-
tions and governing competently – the book provides
an overview of public policy, electoral performance
and party management during the coalition’s first year
in office. The politics of deficit reduction looms large
throughout, touching upon questions not only of eco-
nomic policy but also social policy, ideology and gov-
ernmental cohesion. Other policy areas covered
include immigration policy, foreign policy and Euro-
pean policy.The book also discusses relations between
the centre and the Celtic nations, Conservative mod-
ernisation, feminisation and electoral opinion.
Although not ostensibly about the Liberal Democrats,
the junior coalition partner is never far from the
discussion throughout.
Recent years have seen an increase in edited volumes
on British politics, mainly flowing from conferences
and workshops.The strength of these books is that they
bring together an array of authors with different per-
spectives who can offer early appraisals of new govern-
ments. Their weakness is that these appraisals may be
premature. The Conservatives enjoyed a fairly serene
first year back in office but their second year has turned
out to be much rockier, with the phone-hacking
scandal, a double-dip recession, a botched budget and
heavy losses in the local elections. None of these devel-
opments is covered in this volume. There is always the
risk that such books will quickly look dated. Books that
offer retrospectives of governments over a longer time
period, especially after they have left office, are less
prone to these problems.
A further drawback with these collections is that the
policy chapters often end up being very descriptive,
recounting events and decisions, but light on analysis.
Perhaps that is related to the greater inclination of
political scientists to focus on party competition than
on public policy.That tends to characterise this book,
although the policy chapters are certainly informative.
However, the best chapters are the final four, which
deal with coalition cohesion, Cameron’s style as prime
minister, Labour in opposition and possible future
developments in party alignments. Each is more ana-
lytical and less descriptive.
Overall, this volume offers a useful if unavoidably
incomplete first impression of the Conservatives’ return
to government. It is bound to be supplemented with
many others.
Thomas Quinn
(University of Essex)
The Politics of New Labour by Andrew Pear-
main. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2011. 281pp.,
£15.99, ISBN 9781907103254
Andrew Pearmain’s interesting book is structured in
two parts.The first, ‘Gramsci and His Legacy’, looks at
the specific legacy of his writings in Britain. The
second, entitled ‘Critique of New Labour’, seeks to
undertake ‘a Gramscian analysis’ of New Labour via a
focus upon ‘ideologies, cultures, interests and principles;
terms that Gramsci himself would have deployed to
gain an intellectual hand-hold on the phenomenon’ (p.
19). But this is not a workon Gramsci’s political theor y
per se. Readers without a detailed knowledge of Gram-
sci’s substantive ideas will not gain one. Instead, this is
a work of first, history and second, analysis – the two
elements broadly mapping on to the aforementioned
parts.
The first part offers a clearly written history of the
uptake and influence of Gramsci’s writings in Britain’s
Marxist intellectual sphere – New Left Review, the
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), the euro-
communists clustered around the journal MarxismToday
and so on – through to the revisionists surrounding
Neil Kinnock’s leadership and what would become
New Labour. Sections of this intellectual history are
BOOK REVIEWS 287
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)
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