Since the election of Tony Blair to the leadership of the Labour party in 1997 and the party's subsequent electoral triumph in 1997 after eighteen years in opposition there has been intense speculation about what the Labour party now stands for.

Since the election of Tony Blair to the leadership of the Labour party in 1997 and the party's subsequent electoral triumph in 1997 after eighteen years in opposition there has been intense speculation about what the Labour party now stands for. Does the party still have a clear set of values and beliefs which guide it in government? Can it still be described as a social democratic party? Recently Tony Blair has called his political approach a Third Way between new Right and old Labour. The essays in this book by leading authorities on social democracy and the politics of new Labour ask whether new Labour is a complete break with the Labour past and with European social democracy, or whether it should be seen as a powerful restatement of social democratic ideas in a new context.