The Changing Politics of Social Policy

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with ‘normative social policy’ – the values and principles that shape attitudes to social welfare. It examines recent attempts by Britain’s major political parties to reassess the values that underpin their ideological approaches to the welfare state in the light of the extensive social, economic and political changes of the past twenty-five years. After establishing the importance of the normative dimension for a fully-developed understanding of contemporary social policy, the chapter moves to a brief account of the Conservative Party’s efforts to alter the values that informed ‘Keynesian’ assumptions about the role of the welfare state. It then looks at the major political parties’ current approaches to social policy, as witnessed in their 1997 general election manifestoes. Striking similarities between the manifesto commitments of the two major political parties suggest that the Conservatives have been successful in forging a new ‘consensus’ about the principles that should imbue contemporary attitudes towards welfare, if not about the precise policy details. The bulk of the chapter focuses on the impact of these normative changes on the Labour Party’s welfare ideology and asks whether ‘New Labour’ has effectively abandoned its egalitarian approach to the welfare state. Suggesting that the party’s efforts to retain a sense of social justice in its deliberations about the future role of the welfare state are likely to be compromised by the acceptance of key elements of Conservative social policy, the chapter concludes with a brief prognosis for the welfare state under the New Labour government.