Abstract
Debates about the economic dimensions of Labour’s foreign policies revolved in large part around the meaning and impact of neoliberalism and globalisation. For Blair’s government, neoliberal globalisation — appropriately managed to mitigate its negative consequences — was seen as having the potential to bring unprecedented prosperity and development to both Britain and the wider world. Like their Conservative predecessors, Labour continued to promote neoliberal globalisation as a central plank of its international economic agenda.1 As Blair put it, in the aftermath of 9/11, ‘globalisation is a fact. … The issue is not how to stop globalisation. The issue is how we use the power of community to combine it with justice’.2 For the government’s most strident critics, however, this agenda of promoting economic liberalisation globally fundamentally failed to combine globalisation with justice. According to Mark Curtis, for instance, Labour’s intemational economic agenda represented a ‘very frightening’ attempt to break into foreign markets and organise the global economy in ways that would benefit large TNCs and a transnational business elite, and deepen poverty and inequality across the planet.3
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Mark Curtis, The Web of Deceit (London: Vintage, 2003), pp. 207–32.
See Blair’s speech to the British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, 24 July 2003.
For example, Colin Hay, The political economy of New Labour (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); John Gray, ‘Blair’s project in retrospect’, International Affairs, 80: 1 (2004), pp. 39–48; Susan Watkins, ‘A Weightless Hegemony’, New Left Review, 25 (Jan.-Feb. 2004), pp. 5–33. For Rorden Wilkinson, Labour’s concern for development and environmental issues represented socialised neoliberalism. However, Wilkinson notes that ‘the further liberalisation of trade and investment flows are invariably presented as the key prior concern, with global social, developmental and environmental responsibility acting as subordinate if useful (electoral and popular) additions to the overall package.’ Rorden Wilkinson, ‘New Labour and the global economy’, in David Coates and Peter Lawler (eds), New Labour in power (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 138–9.
Interestingly, as John Gray has pointed out, ‘There is a certain symbolism in the fact that the prefix ‘New’ was formally dropped from Labour Party membership cards in December 2003.’ ‘Blair’s Project’, p. 48.
Gordon Brown, ‘We have much more to do’ speech to the Labour party conference, Brighton, 27 Sept. 2004.
David Coates and Colin Hay, ‘The internal and external face of New Labour’s political economy’, Government and Opposition, 36: 4 (2001), p. 453.
Philip Stevens, Tony Blair (London: Viking, 2004), p. 116.
Hay, The Political Economy, pp. 28–31.
See Susan George, ‘Winning the War of Ideas’, Dissent, 44: 3 (1997), pp. 47–53.
Hay, The Political Economy, pp. 64, 164. For evidence against this determinist perspective see Colin Hay, ‘Contemporary capitalism, globalization, regionalization and the persistence of national variation’, Review of International Studies, 26: 4 (2000), pp. 509–31.
See Matthew Watson and Colin Hay, ‘The discourse of globalisation and the logic of no alternative’, Policy & Politics, 31: 3 (2003), p. 302.
Roger Tooze, ‘Conceptualizing the global economy’, in A. McGrew and Paul Lewis (eds), Global Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), p. 235.
Tony Blair, statement to WTO Ministerial conference, Geneva, 19 May 1998. Blair had earlier defined championing international free trade as the fifth ‘guiding light’ principle of UK foreign policy. See his speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, London, 10 Nov. 1997. And, Tony Blair, speech to the British Chamber of Commerce dinner, Kempinski Hotel, Beijing, China, 7 Oct. 1998 cited in Matthew Watson, ‘Sand in the wheels, or oiling the wheels, of international finance? New Labour’s appeal to a “new Bretton Woods” ‘, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 4: 2 (2002), p. 197.
See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (London: Beacon Press, 1957).
Andrew Baker, Nebuleuse and the “internationalization of the state” in the UK? The case of HM Treasury and the Bank of England’, Review of International Political Economy, 6: 1 (1999), pp. 79–100.
See Stephen Gill, ‘The new constitutionalism, democratisation and the global political economy’, Pacifica Review, 10: 1 (1998), pp. 23–38.
Colin Hay and Nicola J. Smith, ‘Horses for courses? The political discourse of globalisation and European integration in the UK and Ireland’, West European Politics, 28: 1 (2005), pp. 124–58.
See, for example, Tony Blair, ‘The global threat of terrorism’, speech Sedgefield, 5 Mar. 2004. For Blair, the threat of global terrorism ‘is to the world’s security, what globalization is to the world’s economy’.
Will Hutton, ‘Britain in a Cold Climate: The economic aims of foreign policy in the 1990s’, International Affairs, 68: 4 (1992), pp. 619–32.
David Currie and David Vines, ‘A global economic policy agenda for the 1990s: Is there a special British role?’, International Affairs, 68: 4 (1992), p. 600.
Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, ‘Globalization in one country? The peculiarities of the British’, Economy and Society, 29: 3 (2000), pp. 335–56.
See Michael Clarke, British External Policy-making in the 1990s (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 44–52.
Hirst and Thompson, ‘Globalization’, p. 344. The implications of these policies for the planet’s poorest states and people are discussed in more detailed in Chapter 7.
Tony Blair, ‘Facing the modern challenge: the third way in Britain and South Africa’, speech, Cape Town, South Africa, 8 Jan. 1999. See also Tony Blair, The Third Way: New Politics for a New Century (London: Fabian Society Pamphlet 588, 1998).
For details see Anthony Giddens, The Third Way (Cambridge: Polity, 1998) and The Third Way and Its Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 2000); Ian Hargreaves and Ian Chrstie (eds), Tomorrow’s Politics (London: Demos, 1998).
See Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne, ‘Good international citizenship: a third way for British foreign policy’, International Affairs, 74: 4 (1998), pp. 847–70.
Joseph Stiglitz, ‘More instruments and broader goals: moving towards the post-Washington consensus,’ WIDER Annual Lecture, Helsinki, 7 Jan. 1998.
For details see Mark Hillyard, Multilateral Agreement on Investment (House of Commons Research Paper, 98/31, 4 Mar. 1998).
See Natalie Williams, Investment Regulation and State Authority — The Reasons for the Failure of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 2003).
According to Natalie Williams, during 1997 and 1998, only 29 articles on the MAI appeared in the UK press. These were predominantly in the Financial Times and Guardian rather than the tabloids and of Ten provided little more than up-dates on the negotiations rather than analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the agreement. Ibid., p. 263.
Tony Blair, Hansard (Commons), 18 Feb. 1998, cols 1077–8.
Williams, Investment Regulation, pp. 285–6 and 290.
Wilkinson, ‘New Labour’, pp. 146–7.
Donna Lee, ‘The Growing Influence of Business in UK Diplomacy’, International Studies Perspectives, 5: 1 (2004), p. 51.
Blair’s government devoted significant — although notably declining — portions of the FCO’s annual budget to these activities. In 1997–98, the FCO spent 27 per cent of its resources overseas on commercial/inward investment activities (FCO Departmental Report 1999, p. 75). In 2000, 25 per cent was spent on the FCO’s Objective 2: Prosperity (FCO Departmental Report 2000, p. 16). This figure dropped to 19 per cent in 2001 (FCO Departmental Report 2001, p. 36). In 2002 the FCO devoted 13 per cent of its budget to BTI and a further 4 per cent on promoting UK prosperity (FCO Departmental Report 2002, p. 54). In 2003, the figure was 9 per cent on BTI and a further 4 per cent on prosperity (FCO Departmental Report 2003, p. 48). In 2004, the FCO allocated 10 per cent of its budget to UK Trade & Investment with a further 4 per cent going to promote UK prosperity (FCO Departmental Report 2004, p. 186).
Shaun Breslin, ‘Beyond Diplomacy? UK relations with China since 1997,’ British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6: 3 (2004), pp. 409–25.
Under Labour, UK firms have consistently been the largest European investors in China. In 1998, these investments were worth over $12 billion and involved more than 2000 British joint ventures. Tony Blair, speech to the CBBC conference. Similarly, when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the UK in Oct. 1999, commercials contracts worth over £2 billion were signed. Ibid., p. 418.
Rosemary Foot, Rights Beyond Borders: The Global Community and the Struggle over Human Rights in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Ming Wan, Human Rights in Chinese Foreign Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 72.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2005 Paul D. Williams
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Williams, P.D. (2005). Navigating in the Global Economy. In: British Foreign Policy Under New Labour, 1997–2005. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514690_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514690_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-24167-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-51469-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)