The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party

by Philip Gould

In May 1997, the Conservatives were ejected from British office after 18 years in power, and the Labour Party which replaced them had itself changed irrevocably. Blair's majority was the culmination of a long struggle to modernize the party, and the politics of his country. Philip Gould is a political strategist and polling adviser who has worked with the Labour leadership since the 1980s. In this book he describes its rise and explains how the transformation was achieved, at the same time exploring the changed political climate in Britain.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History

434 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 1998

Reviews

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Tories held champagne glasses, Labour people wore cloth caps. The things people associated with the Conservative Party were the things they themselves wanted; all the imagery associated with them was aspirational” (52).

"They [Conservative voters] voted Tory because of Thatcher; because the government was doing a good job; because inflation was under control; because the Tories knew how to manage the economy. Only 7% voted Conservative because they always had done [...] One working-class ex-Labour voters said 'I have changed basically because of my working position - what I want from life. I mean, eventually you want to buy a place. You want to get more of what you earn'. I wanted this voter back. Roy Hattersley did not"(87).

Philip Gould's account of the PR-ification and rightward shift of the Labour Party is of little interest to the contemporary 'general' reader. You won't find too many parallels between the current happenings and the old bust ups. The current fight in the Labour Party is about power, and has very little to do with a genuine intellectual disagreement with the Corbyn era. However, in this volume we see a concerted effort of Gould, a PR man, to flog his own services, and push the Labour Party into Mandelson, Blair, and Campbell's view of what the 1990s should look like - technocratic capitalism with a human face. Out with the grey haired trade unionists, in with the sharp suited media apparatchiks, spinning their way onto the TV screens of the Mondeo Man.

Whilst Gould does emphasise the failures of the European Left in the 1980s (e.g. the abandonment of Marxism by the German SPD, a redefining of 'socialism', the fall in electoral success of Eurocommunist and democratic socialist parties in the West, and the catastrophic Labour loss of 1983) and need for the Labour Party to reform to prevent its extinction, he errs in the other direction when it comes to the 1990s. Latin America's Pink Wave, France's Socialist Party, and the backlash against neoliberalism isn't really acknowledged by Gould very much. Instead, heaps of praise are poured on the Labour comms team yelling at each other in Millbank Tower, and their slow and steady abandonment of the principles which the party were founded on.

Also, he does underestimate the extent to which the Conservatives lost the election, rather than Labour winning.

The old ideals of democratic socialism via the ballet box weren't really destroyed, the Left went down without much of a fight. The Soviet Union inspired few outside of the techn

The role of comms and a proper PR team is very interesting, but it almost certainly transformed politics for the worse (‘spin’, vapid opinion polling, and short-sightedness of policy aims, etc).

The class structure of Britain was clearly changing through deindustrialisation and technological advances, but the view that because tradesmen’s kids became office workers made them middle class seems to me a confusion between form and substance. Maybe I’m being too dogmatic here, but that’s always been my view around the idea of the supposed ‘death/decline of the working class’. Also the role that finance capital played in Britain at this time is ignored, probably because every other mainstream commentator overlooked it at the time.

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[Andy Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant indblik i kontraktpolitikkens ophav. Et must read for enhver med enten politilogisk interesse eller bare med forsmag for politisk strategi - også i forhold til DK, hvor mange har ladet sig inspirere.

[Brian Mcleish · Rating 5 out of 5]

The definitive book on the creation of New Labour.

[Maeve McCormack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very readable exploration from an insider telling the story of the creation of New Labour. Particularly worth reading for its analysis of what drives voters given the current political context.

[Marlon Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

its extremely new labour

[Héctor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philip Gould trabajó como analista y consultor estratégico para el Partido Laborista desde mediados de los 80 hasta 2010. Como especialista en encuestas y Focus Groups fue uno de los estrategas más destacados del New Labour (junto a Mandelson o Campbell). En este libro cuenta su experiencia en el partido a lo largo de tres campañas electorales: las derrotas del 87 y 92 de Kinnock y la victoria de Blair del 97. Especialmente interesante es tanto el funcionamiento de las campañas pero sobre todo cómo van introduciendo poco a poco los cambios que darían lugar al New Labour de Blair. Gould era un "modernizador" radical, cuyo único objetivo era acabar con el viejo laborismo estatista y sindical, el dominio de los sindicatos en el partido y machacar a la izquierda "Bennita" así como recuperar a unas clases medias cooptadas por el thatcherismo. Independientemente de que uno esté de acuerdo o no con el New Labour, es una lectura clave para entender esa posición es una lectura clave para entender cómo se va forjando esa visión y cómo Tony Blair acabó consiguiendo en 1997 la mayor victoria de la historia del partido laborista y, al mismo tiempo, ser sin duda alguna lo que una venenosa Thatcher definió, ríete tu de Gramsci, en 2002 como "su mayor legado".

[Alexander Gardiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating to read a book about the transformation of Labour and the discipline and focus it took to win in 1997. So many of the issues remain. Corbyn was our contemporary 1983. The issues of tackling the insecurities of working people and their families remains the same, the desire to make them better off and rebuild a sense of community. Some of the strategies are the same, but lacking the optimism or the quality of the top team and advisers. The challenges of populism, disinformation and toxic social media make it all the harder, but this book should still be a manual for the Labour movement and those determined that ‘things can only get better.’

[Graeme Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sat on my shelf unread for a long time, but I ended up enjoying it much more that I thought I would. A fascinating account of the long road to victory for the Labour Party in 1997, with plenty of nuggets of campaigning wisdom. Written in 1999, the title has become ironic over time - Blair’s revolution remained unfinished, as the promise of his program was compromised by Iraq and other terrible choices. And we’ve been left with Brexit and a Labour Party that again seems lost. Perhaps we need another revolution.

[Dan Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emotional roller-coaster. A hopeful account of the labour campaign strategy from 83 - 2010. Contains great self critical analysis throughout as well as some great anecdotes to understand the key players. Very easy read.

[Matthew Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this a really good read. Philip Gould has an accessible and direct style of writing, and an obvious, passionate commitment to what he was doing in politics. One thing that makes his account of New Labour especially interesting is that he is focused on the electioneering side of things rather than the policy side (most accounts focus on the latter). It probably also helped my enjoyment of the book that I am broadly in sympathy with his views and what he was trying to do.

The thing I liked most about this book, however, is not so much to do with Philip Gould's politics as his relationship to the academic subject of philosophy. He describes how his discovery of the work of Georg Hegel at University gave him an intellectual framework for understanding politics that he could call on repeatedly throughout his time in public life. I find this very interesting because I had a similar experience (although not with Hegel, with whom I had only modest contact; my guru was the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty). I like the way Gould uses the Hegelian concepts of the dialectical unfolding of history to outline and defend nicely balanced positions on the various political/policy issues.

For instance, he is, like his hero Tony Blair, committed to a politics that aims to transcend the traditional distinctions between Left and Right. Now, the whole idea of "going beyond Left and Right" could quite easily become just a vacuous soundbite, or else some weird abstract metaphysical doctrine. But Gould's down-to-earth, historically-rooted (i.e. Hegelian) way of fleshing the concept out saves it both of these fates. In a nutshell, all the slogan does, according to Gould, is to persuasively project the idea that the Labour Party should be open-minded about policy and methods; or, to put it another way, that it should be ideologically flexible. Understood this way, a sincere commitment to transcending left/right distinctions is perfectly compatible with an intention to govern Britain from the centre-left for as long as Labour is in office.

Besides it being good to know that our leaders are actually somewhat less philistine than we sometimes like to think, I also like the fact that Gould was able to assemble his world-view without having to study at Oxford or Cambridge. Coming from a lower-middle-class background myself, I find it particularly encouraging that someone else from a similar background feels able to bring an unabashedly intellectual approach to public life. I think such an approach is particularly valuable in politics because, as Tony Blair remarks in his memoirs, deciding how to run the government is ultimately an intellectual (rather than an emotional) business.

[angelica winborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a brilliant book - fascinating depiction and first hand account of the evolution of Labour marketing throughout the Thatcher and Major years, and how New labour transformed the modern political scene with its consumer-orientated, focus group-esque politics. It is a book that is about the turning point within the Labour movement at the turn of the century and the great minds who made it happen. Gould is an engaging writer and his account is brilliant - highly recommend

[Jonathan Downing · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thorough account both of Labour's campaigns from 1983 through 2010, but also of Gould's personal experience and politics from childhood until his death.