Postscript

On May 11, 2005, I attended a conference about “Europe’s Global Role” at The Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. As a graduate student in international political economy preparing to write my doctoral dissertation on how economic ideas translated into economic policy in postwar Britain, I was especially interested in the first panel, “Britain between America and the European Union.” The panel was chaired by Phil Gordon and consisted of three distinguished speakers: Anatol Lieven from the New America Foundation, Gerard Baker from the London Times, and Charles Grant from the London-based Centre of European Reform. Less than a week earlier, Tony Blair had triumphantly returned to 10 Downing Street for the third consecutive time after yet another general election victory for his Labour Party. Tory leader Michael Howard duly resigned, setting in motion the fourth leadership contest in the Conservative Party in just eight years. ¹ In addition, the British economy in 2005 – combining healthy growth rates, low inflation, and unemployment well under 5 percent – was the envy of Continental Europe. Chancellor Gordon Brown, Blair’s inevitable successor as prime minister, openly boasted about presiding over the longest economic expansion in the country since records began. These reasons combined made it difficult, if not impossible, to see an end to New Labour’s hegemony over Westminster and Whitehall. To borrow Macmillan’s phrase, the country in 2005 “had never had it so good.”