In the dedicated pursuit of dedicated capital: Restoring an indigenous investment ethic to British capitalism

Tony Blair's landslide electoral victory on May 1 (New Labour Day?) presents the party in power with a rare, perhaps even unprecedented, opportunity to revitalise and modernise Britain's ailing and antiquated manufacturing economy.* If it is to do so, it must remain true to its long-standing (indeed, historic) commitment to restore an indigenous investment ethic to British capitalism.In this paper we argue that this in turn requires that the party reject the very neo-liberal orthodoxies which it offered to the electorate as evidence of its competence, moderation and 'modernisation', which is has internalised, and which it apparently now views as circumscribing the parameters of the politically and economically possible.In this context, New Labour enjoys an almost unique advantage: a mandate for change, reflected in its 179 seat overall majority, more fundamental than that it sought.Yet such a situation does present certain difficulties for a party whose manifesto and supporting policy documents contained, at best, a submerged radicalism couched within the rhetoric of competence, consensus and conciliation. 1The position, then, is one of opportunity and threat.Judged purely on the scale of defeat and the recriminatory ructions that currently engulf the Party, the Conservatives would appear consigned to the electoral margins for at least two terms.This provides Labour with a rare (and much-needed) opportunity to think long-term.Yet despite its best intentions, the situation is also that in which expectations of reform -and rapid reform at that -exceed both Labour's declared ambition and, in all likelihood, the capacity of a more resolutely radical government (with a clearly reforming manifesto and a mandate) to deliver.Moreover, despite the much-vaunted vibrancy of the British economy, difficult decisions face the newly incumbant administration.