Swapping the Third Way for a Third Term?

The 2005 British General Election on Thursday may seem to some voters as a step back in time. Just as it was in the 1997 election, in which Tony Blair first swept to office on the back of a euphoric landslide victory, the Labor party is the unbeatable favorite while the opposition Conservative Party is in deep disarray.

But it's wrong to think that British politics has remained stuck in a time-warp since the late 1990s. Many things have changed, including the government that is running, and is likely to continue running, the country. It may still be a Labor government in name but much of the ideology associated with that name has been abandoned.

To chart the change, one must start with that first landslide victory. That heady summer of 1997 was filled with buzzwords cultivated by the bright young things on the left. The Labor Party had been remade in Blair's image of New Labor and socialism, a word and concept rendered unutterable by consecutive Tory governments, had been replaced by The Third Way, a path between right and left which would allow market driven politics to be combined with social idealism.

Blairite masterminds had developed a strategy that would appeal to the traditional socialists and social democrats on the one hand and the advocates of Thatcherite free-market conservatism on the other.

Courting Middle England and the working class

The Third Way promised the electorate a combination of conservative market orientation with the social idealism of the Labor movement. In place of arguments about the age-old 'tax and spend' approach, the Third Way would deliver improved public services while lowering taxes. While keeping the working classes sweet, Blair was also courting Middle England. It worked beautifully.

Once in power, it was revealed that Blair's vision didn't end there. At the end of the 1990s, 13 of the EU's old 15 member states were run by center-left governments. The British prime minister saw this as an opportunity to remake Europe in the New Labor image and with the continent wrapped up in the good feeling of sweeping decades of conservatism aside, Blair set about spreading the Third Way. He found willing participants in Lionel Jospin in France and Giuliano Amato in Italy. But few were more convinced at the time than newly elected German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democrats (SPD).

Schröder joins wave of center-left optimism

The Social Democrats came into power in 1998 after 16 years in opposition to Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Schröder, a former chairman of the radical Social Democratic Student Association, fought and won the election on his pledges to bring economic stability and development to Germany and to increase domestic security and continuity in foreign affairs.

A charismatic young leader, Schröder was quick to associate himself with Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton as one of the "new breed" of center-left leaders who were driving their countries away from conservative governments which had been led by the likes of Kohl, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It didn't take long for Schröder to be seduced by the Third Way.

In June 1999, Schröder and Blair came together to write and publish the center-left manifesto "Europe: The Third Way / Die Neue Mitte." The leaders of Great Britain and Germany were now working together to advocate a change to the traditional policy instruments in areas such as the concept of social justice, the role of the state, the balance between individualism and collectivism, and entrepreneurial spirit. It was an alternative model to the old labels of right and left and one that fitted the atmosphere of optimism which hung over Europe as the new millennium dawned.

Please continue reading to find out about the Third Way's demise

Right wing governments made a comeback

Slowly, however, the Third Way balloon deflated. Attitudes across Europe changed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and subsequent elections in Europe brought back conservative governments on the back of immigration and security issues. Soon Blair and Schröder would be members of a very exclusive club, the dwindling center-left.

Both Schröder and Blair managed to secure second terms, keeping the number of center-left governments in Europe at five. But both had fought their second elections with very different approaches to their first.

Blair was re-elected before Sept. 11 in 2001, but if he had waited until after the attacks, he may still have got in. Labor had drifted, or more correctly been steered further towards the right in its first four years in government under Blair.

Blair moved further right on former Tory support

His reforms of the legal system -- which some claimed cruelly curtailed civil liberties, the privatization of air traffic control, the encouragement of private investment in the public services, the imposition of commercial management on institutions such as the rail system and the competitive ethos on hospitals and schools could have been policies implemented by a conservative government. Indeed, while Labor lost staunch support over such policies, Blair continued to court the middle classes and picked up votes by attracting disillusioned voters who had abandoned the Tories.

In Germany in 2002, Schröder narrowly avoided being booted out by adopting a hard line against the preparations for war in Iraq and then still had to rely on a good showing by his Green coalition partners to get the majority he needed to form a new government.

While Tony Blair seemed to have found the right amount of blue to mix with his red, Schröder was a mixture of colors and messages. High unemployment and an ailing economy had forced him into considering an overhaul of the social welfare system -- which went against his Social Democrat beliefs -- while the growing storm of war had forced his hand in standing against the right-wing fervor of the 'coalition of the willing.'

Second terms saw the Third Way floundering

By their second terms, both Blair and Schröder were drifting further from their Third Way vision. As a possible third term beckons for Blair, and with Schröder eyeing a third election in 2006, do they still stand on the Neue Mitte four years down the line?

Blair's support for the war in Iraq, his siding with a republican president in the United States and increased curbs on civil liberties as part of justice reform all point to a stronger swing to the right since the last election.

Election 2005 sees Blair blue and unabashed

This time around, apparently liberated by his decision not to run again after these elections, Blair is giving barely an inch on the more conservative parts of his agenda. Under his leadership, Labor have abandoned public ownership and have made no secret of the desire to rely on competition and the private sector rather than state funding to supply public services, all things the 2005 election policies endorse.

Schröder, on the other hand, seems to be heading back to the left as a state election in the industrial heartland of North Rhine Westphalia looms on May 22. The SPD seems to be scrambling to revive their left-wing credentials in a bid to avoid being booted out of one of the party's traditional strongholds.

Schröder and comrades signal left

The SPD have been seen to be riding to the defense of industry recently in response to this threat, with Schröder and SPD chairman Franz Müntefering advocating the outlawing of suggested "short-term" investment tactics -- people "making quick money and moving on."

Müntefering even prompted satirists to portray him as a friend of Marx and Lenin after a speech in April which all but officially dumped the neo-liberal ways of the Neue Mitte in favor of social responsibility. More evidence of a return to more leftist ideals comes in the form of the SPD's sudden passion for a national minimum wage.

With Blair leading to the right and Schröder leaning to the left, in terms of securing a third term for their parties, the Third Way looks like the path which will remain less trodden.