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WORKING ON THE LABOUR EXCHANGE

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Steve Bell, the political cartoonist and Sussex honorary graduate, is facing a problem. Brighton-based Steve, whose work is showing as part of the Hogarth Tercentenary exhibition at the Gardner Centre, declared in the Guardian that he likes New Labour, and it makes his job rather difficult.

According to various media reports the whole nation has lost its cynical edge in the wake of Tony Blair's first few weeks in office. Dr Luke Martell of SOC, an expert on New Labour, feels that the party handled their entry into power very cleverly.

"They were obviously highly organised about what they were going to do when they got into office," says Luke. "Just by the list of novelties that they dished out every day, Labour kept the excitement going amongst a lot of people who wouldn't normally be particularly excited about a Labour victory."

He thinks the future looks bright for the new government, despite their need to get down to tackling more mundane issues. "Inevitably the Government has decided to play it cooler in the last couple of weeks," he says. "They can't keep up this momentum and dynamism and support, which they're getting out of freshness, but I also can't see any big problems for them at the moment."

Luke Martell, in collaboration with Stephen Driver of the Roehampton Institute is currently finishing off a book on the ideology of New Labour. He has been examining the shift in Labour's policy since the war and rejects the argument that New Labour is the same as Conservatism. He also rejects Tony Blair's assertion that the means, and not the end, has changed. "I think he really has given up on greater egalitarianism and redistribution - not because he doesn't believe in them, but because he feels they're not realisable. If he started raising taxes for middle income people he'd be in real trouble."

The old values have more or less disappeared, Luke Martell believes. "Looking at the phrase 'New Labour'," he says, "they really are quite new. But they're not particularly Labour any more."

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Friday June 20th 1997