The End of New Labour?

With Gordon Brown's government in apparently terminal decline, many are declaring the end of New Labour. But an electoral defeat would not necessarily be the end of New Labour.

For many people, New Labour is synonymous with Blair and Brown, when they have gone, so will have New Labour. For others, New Labour was always about the grab for power, or the creation of a 'broad church' which could appeal to both traditional Labour supporters and the middle-English middle classes deemed necessary for a Parliamentary majority. With the end of power, and the collapse of the fragile alliance between Labour and these non-traditional supporters, New Labour is seen to be at an end.
However, this underestimates the degree to which New Labour represents a coherent political approach, and overestimates the ability of opposition within the Labour party to push alternative policies. Broadly speaking, most of the Labour party either agrees with most of New Labour's premises, or hasn't got a coherent response to them upon which to base their own.

Basically, New Labour is convinced that society has irrevocably changed in the last few decades. Society has become more diverse and less class based. People are more individualistic and more sceptical about politicians and the state's ability and right to try to solve society's problems. These changes, combined with globalisation, which for for New Labour is an unstoppable force which seriously limits the options open to governments, mean that radically new policies are required.
New Labour sees itself as the only realistic social democratic response to all this.
It believes that social democratic ideals have been focused too long on out dated approaches such as nationalisation and high taxes. For New Labour, real social democracy must now focus on giving power and autonomy to individuals, if needed by forcing them to become autonomous if for some reason they are unwilling to take this on themselves.

Hence New Labour's emphasis on flexibility, educational attainment and training, and welfare reforms. New Labour is creating the new type of citizen who can thrive in these changed times, without relying further on the state, who will be given equal opportunity to succeed, or fail.
This is what New Labour's new social democratic equality is about, social mobility and meritocracy. Moreover, their polices genuinely reflect this, the only real gap being the lack of any, minimal, redistribution of wealth from the richest to the poorest that their equality of opportunity would imply.
Sure, some, like Tony Blair, appear more enthusiasitic about this than others, who see all this in terms of what they can no longer do. But most Labour MPs would broadly agree with the premises set out above, and as yet no significant opposition within the party sems to be offering any major alternative. The best on offer at the moment seems to be a position that argues for gradual leftward drift based on creating a case for some progressive taxation and fairly populist measures around, for example, affordable housing.

In all honesty, this is probably the best (or least worst) option at the moment, but there is no guarantee that anyone advocating this will get anywhere near power in the Labour party, nevermind have the courage to push this in the face of an offensive from the right-wing newspapers.
Barring a major surprise, New Labour will be around for some time yet.