In these 25 sections I have 194 numbered policies. Of these:

1. 26 pre-1994 policies have been wholly or largely carried out
2. 43 pre-1994 policies have been only partly carried out
3. 60 policies have been left unchanged from the Tories
4. 54 Tory policies have been extended even further
5. 11 policies I have insufficient evidence to decide the category

In other words the biggest category is of policies which have remained essentially unchanged since the Tories, and there are twice as many Tory policies which have been further extended by New Labour as of Old Labour policies which have been fully carried out.

Of course this analysis has not been carried out like an exact science, but I would claim as a former scientist to have done the same sort of thing there, i.e. collecting together the evidence from the literature as a necessary step with which others can then argue. There is room to argue over which policies are worth listing, over my summary of that policy (which had to be very brief for the lists above) and over the extent to which they have been achieved or reversed. New Labour’s defenders may wish to claim that some of the “old” aims contradicted one another, or that changed circumstances have made some of them untenable. But the most important thing – it seems to me – is that someone has to make a start. I am content to let others, in particular those who have known the Labour Party over this period, judge whether my analysis gives a true picture of what New Labour has done to the party’s policies.

This analysis puts New Labour far more in the tradition of 1994s Tories than 1994s Labour Party. It is perhaps most sobering of all to remember who these 1994 politicians were. The Tories under Thatcher and Major had moved their party far to the right: they could and did claim to have broken the post-war consensus on how Britain should be governed: the evidence for this is littered through the preambles to the 25 sections above. One of their ministers, Alan Clark, spoke of Thatcher's "merciless economic Darwinism". The Labour Party had been reacting to four general election defeats by reviewing all its policies and ditching those radical ones (like unilateral nuclear disarmament) which might frighten floating voters. The party was led by John Smith, a man from the traditional right of the party, though one with a strong social conscience. So in choosing more often to follow the path of Thatcher and Major than that of Smith, New Labour has placed itself far out on the right of the political spectrum as it had been known up to1994.

In 1994 we had only a vague idea of where Tony Blair would lead us. This website has been written so that Labour members need not vote from a similar state of ignorance in 2007. The information here should help them understand the implications of a vote for New Labour. Members must decide what kind of Labour Party they want and then use their votes both in the leadership elections and thereafter to get it.