From ConHome: A Victory for New Labour?

'If we have a resounding enough mandate, we must play it safe to start with (see Lab, 1997-8) but we must then propose radical public sector reform, and not simply conform to the consensus that investment in public services is most important, and that to suggest 'cuts' is somehow a faux pas.

But we must remember that the Conservative Party is the whole reason New Labour exists - Thatcher's success forced Labour to consider generations in opposition. They had to change. The truth of the matter is, New Labour is not a political doctrine - it is an opportunistic hybrid of left and right, whose popularity, Blair and Brown believed, could consign the Conservative Party to decades in opposition. They were unprepared for government and have disappointed the millions who voted for them.

We must ask ourselves: where does New Labour go after a 2010 loss? If, by then, the public view it to have failed resoundingly, and after a 2010 election the Conservatives prove that improvement in public services can be achieved without wasting £millions, I would suggest that there is no need for New Labour to exist.

It depends upon the Party to show that New Labour has not created a new political consensus - we have to make that crucial distinction between waste and effeciency.'