These sentiments are those of a pragmatism which has political outcomes determined by the experts who make up government task forces. It is predicated on the belief that those tensions between competing economic systems have supposedly been eradicated. And it is the language of the techno-politician accepting the world as it is. Yet tensions have not been taken out of the system. They exist between liberalism and democracy itself, namely between liberal individual rights, and democratic concerns with collective action and public accountability.
New Labour gives all the appearance of suffering from a crisis of identity.
It knows it is no longer socialist. The discrediting of socialist ideology, combined with the perceived failings of nationalisation, specifically in relation to efficiency, contributed to Labour s transition from a party concerned with the collective to one based on individualism. But it is not sure whether or not it is truly Social Democrat. Premier Blair looks to Liberal figures of the past for inspiration, while his close confidant Peter Mandelson recently asserted that pure representative democracy was coming to an end. Plebiscites, it would seem, are to be preferred to elections and the right of the people through Parliament to hold the political elite to account.