Theme: Political Economy | Content Type: Journal article

New Jerusalems? The Labour Party's Economic Policy-Making in Hard Times

Patrick Diamond

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Sara Kurfeß

| 1 min read

This paper is an historical analysis of ideational change in the British Labour Party. It briefly examines two critical phases of economic policy formation: the aftermath of the Great Depression and the MacDonald administration's implosion in 1931 until the outbreak of the Second World War; alongside Labour's experience following the 2008 financial crisis and electoral defeat in 2010 through to Jeremy Corbyn's emergence as leader. Throughout both periods, the aftershocks of financial crises stimulated a ferment of new thinking about the management of the British economy. Think tanks, universities and professionally trained economists aided the left in devising a new economic narrative and programme. For all the criticism of Corbyn's performance as leader, it was only after his victory in 2015 that a serious debate about ideas emerged within the party, more than seven years since the great financial crisis.

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Volume 96, Issue 3

Latest Journal Issue

Volume 96, Issue 3

This issue features a collection titled 'The Intellectual and Political Legacy of David Marquand', who died in April 2024, edited by Colin Crouch, Ben Jackson and Peter Sloman. In this collection, authors including Jean Seaton, Will Hutton and Hilary Wainwright consider Marquand's legacy as a great progressive thinker, his biography of Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister, and the role of socialism for Marquand. Other articles include a commentary by Deborah Mabbett titled 'Welfare reform by numbers'; Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams on 'The Vices of Values: Matthew Goodwin and the Politics of Motivation'; Helen McCarthy on 'Why the WASPI has no Sting: Gender, Generation and Pension Inequalities'; and Sam Taylor Hill, Tariq Modood and John Denham on 'Multicultural Nationalism: Saving the White Working Class from Blue Labour?' A selection of book reviews feature Edmund Fawcett's review of 'Nationalism: A World History' by Eric Storm and Samuel Cohn's review of 'Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid' by Sheilagh Ogilvie.

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