ABSTRACT
Contemporary Third Way thinking in Britain emerged out of the worldwide reform of the centre-left that began in the early 1980s. In Britain and the United States, New Labour and the New Democrats, faced with the hegemony of radical conservative governments espousing economic liberalization, were concerned with finding a politics that would mark a break with their own parties' past and with conservative governments in office. Within and beyond Third Way thinking there are divergences over the significance of globalization and how a Third Way politics might or should respond to it. Giddens also argues that traditional attachment of left and right to radicalism and conservatism respectively were becoming less and less meaningful after a decade of Thatcherite neoliberal radicalism and in a cultural environment he calls 'post-traditional'. Giddens launches a stern attack on the inadequacy of meritocracy and equality of opportunity alone.
