Introduction: Blair, Brown and New Labour’s Foreign Policy, 1997–2010

Abstract

Hindsight rarely delivers definitive answers, but now New Labour’s period in government has drawn to a close it is an apt moment to step back and ask what the party achieved across its suite of domestic and foreign policies from 1997–2010. Any investigation into this topic needs to be stimulated by more than academic curiosity because it reaches to the heart of helping us understand both the ‘New Labour project’ and the painful realities of Britain’s position in the contemporary global arena. As the above words from Tony Blair in 1997 indicate, New Labour was rarely modest about its achievements or its potential to make Britain fit for life in the twenty-first century. Having been in power for just six months, Blair triumphantly proclaimed that the government had helped make Britain ‘great’ again after what he routinely depicted as years of drift, delay and decline during the John Major years, 1990–1997. His government pledged to build on that new-found confidence in the nation’s greatness to fashion a new understanding of Britain’s place in the world. This meant re-visioning everything from what it meant to be British to how Britain should deal with other nations and international organizations on the world stage. New Labour’s thinking on how to achieve its lofty ambitions for British foreign policy was predicated on two overlapping concepts.

Britain is once again a great place to be. It has new optimism, confidence and self-assurance about its future. What it needs now is to turn that spirit into a clear definition of national purpose, not just what we want for Britain in itself, but the direction of the nation and how it deals with the outside world.

(Blair 1997e)