How To Be A Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

by Ian Dunt

By the time centre-left parties had fought their way back into power in the 1990s – under Democratic President Bill Clinton in the US and New Labour prime minister Tony Blair in the UK – they had largely accepted the deregulation agenda. These leaders were not, as some subsequently claimed, identical to conservatives. They invested in social programmes in a way the preceding governments never had. Health and social services, which had dwindled into chronic dysfunction through lack of funding, were revitalised. But there was an acceptance of the core proposition that the market performed best when left to its own devices. Clinton summarised the approach neatly in his 1996 State of the Union address. ‘We know big government does not have all the answers,’ he said. ‘The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.’