Management and Community: Some Problems with New Labour

Abstract

This essay examines some tendencies in New Labour's political rhetoric, in particular its reduction of what counts as political and what counts as community. What will be argued is firstly, that the quest for managerial efficiency has functioned to reshape political discourse. This has come about primarily through the attempted removal of political control from economic and public life through the rhetoric of audit and the proliferation of executive agencies and other quangos. Secondly, I will also claim that the language of something called ‘the value of community’, despite being the primary moral principle underpinning the whole New Labour agenda, is politically virtually redundant, principally because its sphere has been reduced to the ‘voluntary’ sector. This redrawing of the boundaries of politics does not augur well for the long-term survival of the British political system: serious questions about the role of the state and the future of democracy emerge from the policies of the past five years and will be discussed briefly in the final section.