Identifying New Labour’s Trojan Horse

Abstract

This book reviews the major shifts in the education sector under New Labour between 1997 and 2009, analysing selected case study policies in order to articulate dominant discourses in recent policy-making which have helped establish a particular hegemony. It illustrates how, despite their label and previous history as supporters of socialist policies, New Labour chose a rhetoric of ‘the Third Way’, heavily infuenced by the neoliberal. This dominant discourse, which with globalisation has been embraced by the majority of Western culturesⁱ, emphasises the role of the free market, the individual as consumer and the state as a regulator as opposed to a provider, with irrevocable effects on social justice. This book focuses particularly on the infuence of a neoliberal agenda in education. It explores how competing discourses of social justice and democracy have been challenged and how through the use of particular language, engagement with these ideologies has evolved and, marketed as ‘the common sense approach’, is becoming widely accepted within most state sectors in the UK.