'The comprehensive defeat of the Conservatives in the General Election must be a source of satisfaction, indeed jubilation, to the Left everywhere', wrote editor Robin Blackburn in 1997, going on to give this endorsement of the New Labour programme: 'Notwithstanding a certain vagueness, New Labour's programme-'modernization', policies that favour 'the many not the few', 'national renewal' and so forth-made its own distinctive promise of a 'Ukanian' velvet revolution.' (Reflections on Blair's Velvet Revolution, NLR editorial May 1997)
And well may the NLR have endorsed Blair's programme, because the constitutional elements - the Welsh and Scottish assemblies, regional mayors, reform of the House of Lords, collaboration with the Liberal Democrats - were all developed as policies within the pages of the New Left Review - by Tom Nairn, Robin Blackburn and later taken up by Will Hutton and Tony Wright (who went on to be a key Blairite MP).
It was the NLR who reinvented Harold Wilson's tactic of side-stepping working class aspirations for social reform by offering instead 'modernisation' of the state. And it was the NLR (Robin Blackburn in particular) who framed the anti-majoritarian critique of the British parliament that it was an 'elective dictatorship' (borrowed, ironically, from the arch-Tory Quentin Hogg). These arguments against parliamentary sovereignty were of course the basis of Tony Blair's suspension of cabinet government in favour of 'sofa government', and rule by unelected political advisors. It was also the basis on which he committed Britain to participation in the war against Saddam Hussein *before* the matter was agreed by either cabinet or the House of Commons.
That the NLR should now be saying 'good riddance' to Blairism is bad faith writ large. Where is the critical assessment of their own culpability in his creepy 'velvet revolution'?