How New Labour Policy Making Works

The best New Labour policies have always been designed for sale to liberals and reactionaries at the same time. When I was on The Observer I always made a point of asking for the Mail on Sunday half of the story whenever I was pitched a Sunday trail for a policy launch during the week ahead. Of course this briefing of journalists in advance of a government launch will no longer happen in the new era of parliamentary propriety (until the next time). But its worth applying this to the latest Gordon Brown policy document: Building Britain’s Future.

Some of this policy fits the model perfectly. The  employment “guarantee” for under 25s out of work for more than a year, which sounded like a liberal measure when it was launched in the budget, has turned into a punitive threat to remove benefits from the young long-term unemployed.

Some, however, is pure populism.