Running on Empty is Andrew Scott's verdict on the 'modernisation' of the British and Australian labour parties.
Since their birth, both parties have exchanged ideas and personalities. After the British Labour Party's fourth electoral defeat, future prime minister Tony Blair and his chancellor Gordon Brown came to Australia, to see what they could learn from their political colleagues' 'success'.
Now with Blair firmly in office, it is the Australian Labor Party's turn to look for guidance. Too often, these exchanges have meant learning the wrong lessons.
The result is two labour parties low on essential ideological fuel, with their sense of purpose, core support and clarity of policy in a needy state. This has been reflected in the parties' performance in office, and in electoral backlash after periods of government. It is time to reassess both parties' uncritical attachment to 'modernisation'.
Scott offers a unique and lucid analysis of the changing ideas and functions of the world's two great labour partiesplacing Tony Blair's 'New Labour' into an historical context, and challenging conventional assumptions about the future of the Blair government in Britain, and the Australian Labor Party.

Scott, Andrew, 1963-

Andrew J Scott

Pluto Press Australia

Sydney: Pluto Press

Radical Read

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Sydney, Australia, 1999

Australia, Australia

October 2001

PS, 2000

Includes bibliographical references (p. 272-316).
Includes index.

Australia's cultural cringe towards Britan does not just focus on the monarchy. Many in the ALP and the media pay undue deference to Tony Blair's so-called new Third Way. This book shows why the ALP needs to reassess its own history and examines the complex reality of how it compaes with the British Labor Party

viii, 330 p. : 22 cm
Includes index
Includes bibliographical references (p. 272-316)

2023-06-28