Getting Over New Labour

Short, sharp and essential. Karl Pike’s diagnosis of the legacy of New Labour provides what a generation has missed: a nuanced assessment of what was – at least electorally – the party’s most successful period in its history. A vital resource for anyone seeking to reach beyond factional assertion and reassess recent history to contribute to Labour’s future.

-- Jon Cruddas MP

Karl Pike’s book is a compelling and thoughtful analysis that goes beyond the usual stereotypes of the Labour movement to actually get to grips with what has and keeps driving progressive politics in modern Britain. Anyone who wants to know the why, where, what and how of the next Labour Government should read it.

-- Stella Creasy MP

The Labour Party has been on an extraordinary political journey since it lost power in 2010 and the legacy of New Labour has been at the heart of this ideological contest. Karl Pike has written a brilliant and imaginative book that examines how, across the Miliband, Corbyn and Starmer eras, Labour has tried to come to terms with its longest ever period in government. It is a timely and important intervention that poses an important question for today’s Labour Party: can it now put aside the increasingly baroque arguments about what Blair and Brown did for a new set of positive debates about what Starmer and Reeves ought to do?

-- Ben Jackson, Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford

It is a curiosity that for such an ostensibly progressive and ideas-based party, Labour has spent so much of the past 15 years looking backwards and defining itself in relation to its interpretation of the legacy of one individual – Tony Blair. In this book Karl Pike, a practitioner turned academic, examines that paradox, and how the shadow of New Labour has shaped, and distorted, the approach of successive leaders, including Keir Starmer. On every incisive page he demonstrates his deep knowledge of Labour, and provides an effective sympathetic prism through which to see all that has happened inside Labour over the past few decades.

-- Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic Editor, The Guardian

Thought-provoking.

-- Financial T