The British Economic Miracle:
New Labour and the economy
Andrew Gamble
Abstract
For much of the last forty years Britain was perceived to be in decline and the UK model of capitalism to be failing. The unsuccessful modernisation programmes in the 1960s and 1970s led to a different turn of policy in the 1980s under the Thatcher Government, which sought to reconstruct the older UK liberal model, drawing inspiration from the US rather than from Europe. The Thatcher Government helped create conditions for a new political economy to emerge in Britain after 1992 which has provided a sustained period of economic growth and financial stability. Its reforms were consolidated and extended by the Blair Government. The article will discuss the historical trajectory of the British economy in the postwar years, and the choice between Europe and America. It will examine why the UK model is once again claimed to be a success, and whether it is sustainable.
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British post-war history has been dominated by decline. The English model of capitalism in the nineteenth century appeared to sweep all before it, and made Britain the most modern economy, the economy which Marx believed showed to others the image of their own future. But in the twentieth century and particular in the third quarter the British model came under widespread attack ...