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To What Extent Had Labour Moved Away from Its Roots

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To What Extent Had Labour Moved Away from Its Roots
To what extent has the Labour party moved away from its traditional roots?
The Labour party believed in more traditional principles post the 1997 reforms where Labour was rebranded as ‘‘New Labour’.’ Prior to this, the party communicated in a ‘left wing’ approach with socialist ideas. They believed in core values, where some were emphasised more than others. Equality was significant as there was expansion of the welfare state e.g. they introduced the ‘free’ health care system and taxation in favour of the working class. This also included investment in Education and Housing sectors where they proposed everyone should get substantial support. Thus emphasising the equality of opportunity as they show their commitment to the importance of choice in employment. Additionally, the core value of common ownerships as they committed to nationalisation in key industries. They were also the party of collectivism as they had a key relationship with trade unions; this aided their campaign as they gained the working class votes. Hence we can clearly state the Labour party was traditionally for the people as they had a big impact on society as they attempted to brake the gap between the classes which brought social justice- another few of the core values. These reforms were enacted in an extremely hostile economic environment, thus it was inevitably one of the most radical and ambitious government. This however changed considerably in 1997 after the general elections where Tony Blair modernised the Labour party by making it more authoritarian. This was due to the lack of faith in the members of the party who believed that the core values had to change in order for them to succeed, they found the more right-winged approach was needed, most of the other parties has transitioned from the consensus to become adversarial and Labour didn’t want to be single-handedly different in politics to its opponents. Through this, Blair enforced changes to the party’s appearance by conveying a

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