Running on Empty: 'Modernising' the British and Australian Labour Parties

Running on Empty is Andrew Scott's verdict on the 'modernisation' of the British and Australian labour parties. Since their birth, both parties have exchanged ideas and personalities. After the British Labour Party's fourth electoral defeat, future prime minister Tony Blair and his chancellor Gordon Brown came to Australia, to see what they could learn from their political colleagues' 'success'. Now with Blair firmly in office, it is the Australian Labor Party's turn to look for guidance. Too often, these exchanges have meant learning the wrong lessons. The result is two labour parties low on essential ideological fuel, with their sense of purpose, core support and clarity of policy in a needy state. This has been reflected in the parties' performance in office, and in electoral backlash after periods of government. It is time to reassess both parties' uncritical attachment to 'modernisation'. Scott offers a unique and lucid analysis of the changing ideas and functions of the world's two great labour parties—placing Tony Blair's 'New Labour' into an historical context, and challenging conventional assumptions about the future of the Blair government in Britain, and the Australian Labor Party.