I am always very curious of hugely enthusiastic New Labour supporters. Happy to share my own opinion, but what are the achievements you laude them for, and what failures are they to be weighed against?
Off the top of my head: saving the NHS from decades of under-investment; introducing the National Minimum Wage; putting in place a huge school repair programme; ending the Troubles in NI; writing off the debts of poorer countries; Scottish devolution; and, for the majority of their term at least, fiscal stability and consistent economic growth.
The other side of the coin is, of course, the Iraq War. We needn't debate that, because we'll surely violently agree, but let's not pretend the Blair/Brown partnership didn't lead to many positive things for the UK. It did.
Introducing tuition fees is also firmly on the "other side of the coin", for many people that I speak to. And for me personally, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is a huge misstep with ongoing repercussions.
Like the other commenter, I think that his interventions in the NHS were potentially short-sighted and ultimately more damaging than they were worth. It feels to me that rigorous performance metrics and PFIs contributed - along with subsequent under-funding by Tory governments - to running it into the ground.
I will concede however that the minimum wage and Good Friday Agreement are big wins!
New Labour more than doubled the NHS budget in real terms, and maintained that level over time [1].
Having worked in both environments, it's not particularly important to me whether work gets done by a private or a public entity, the most important thing is that money is spent efficiently. If the public sector is spending public money then efficiency usually means ensuring that pointless work is stopped, and that staff who have become ineffective are shed. If the private sector is spending public money then efficiency usually means hawk-like contract negotiations are required to prevent a good chunk of the cash from being siphoned off by middlemen.
