The governing principle of New Labour's approach to social policy is the fastening of duties to rights. New Labour asserts that the bond between the taxpayer and the welfare recipient can be restored only by reconstructing welfare as a mechanism that reconnects the ‘socially excluded’ to the mainstream via ‘character’ improvement. This rights/obligations connection has been reflected in the attachment of new requirements to the receipt of cash benefits and in a preference for the provision of services in kind rather than payments in cash. In this article it is argued that New Labour's ‘one-sided’ account of the affinity between ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’—stripped of the ‘New’ Liberal notion of entitlement to a share in the ‘collective social surplus’—undermines social rights. The transfer to services ‘in kind’ restricts individual freedom and, as its neoconservative genealogy indicates, the rights/ obligations discourse opens the door to the use of stigma to enforce obligations.

‘A property owning democracy’ has been at the centre of Conservative Party social policy since Noel Skelton coined the phrase in 1924. The idea has been underpinned by contrasting the independent, hygienic, suburban homeowner with the urban, managed, flat‐dwelling, high‐density council tenant. No Conservative‐led government has left office with a homeownership rate lower than when it came to power and the right to buy has enabled this growth to be maintained. However, in 2005, homeownership started to decline and this drop has continued into the Coalition government's term of office with more households now exiting owner‐occupation into the private landlord sector than entering owner‐occupation from private renting. The ‘reinvigorating’ the right to buy is an attempt put a ‘property owning democracy’ back on track but, should it fail, the Conservative Party may turn to more radical policies such as sale on vacant possession of ‘high value’ local authority and housing association houses.

No abstract

Tony Blair's adoption of the catchphrase 'the Third Way' to précis New Labour's policy orientation allowed him to distance 'New' Labour from 'Old' Labour and to appropriate many of John Major's modifications to Thatcherism, albeit framed within a new political language. This article sets out the basic similarities and differences between the social policies of the Major and Blair governments, arguing that, although the policies have been presented within different discourses, there has been a marked similarity in policy content, with Major espousing Third Way policies if not Third Way rhetoric. Indeed, towards the end of his second term of office, Blair started to go beyond the Third Way and towards Margaret Thatcher's favoured model of spirited competition between public and private suppliers.

No abstract