A new deal for transport? - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 120

what came to be proposed was traceable to developments in the preceding years and
could be regarded as the unfinished business of the previous administration (Goodwin
2003).
In his foreword to the 1998 White Paper Prescott laid claim to this 'consensus for
radical change':
The previous Government's Green Paper [ The Way Forward ] paved the way
with the recognition that we needed to improve public transport and reduce
dependence on the car. Businesses, unions, environmental organisations and
individuals throughout Britain share that analysis. This White Paper builds on
that foundation.
(DETR 1998a Foreword)
Politically it was interesting that the new Government should want to justify its
proposals on the basis of a consensus, and not on the originality or distinctiveness of
its own prospectus. This can be read in two ways - not necessarily mutually exclusive.
The first is that the Government wanted to present itself as occupying the
political middle ground and not about to engage in the adversarial politics which had
characterised much of the previous 18 years. The Labour Party had been restructured
and rebranded as 'New Labour' in the interim in order to overcome the prospect of
permanent opposition. Along the way the socialist commitment to nationalisation had
been abandoned and the influence of the industrial trade unions weakened through
the introduction of 'one member, one vote' as the basis of the Party's constitution.
Philosophically New Labour drew upon the 'Third Way' of Anthony Giddens who
argued that it was possible to pursue market-oriented economic policies as well as
progressive social policies - the political fault-line which had previously divided Left
from Right (Giddens 1998).
A second explanation is that, despite its large Parliamentary majority, the new
Government lacked confidence that it would do better than its Labour predecessors
and survive for more than five years. Hence it wanted to claim wide support for
its proposals and certainly avoid creating enemies so as to maximise its chances of
winning a second term. Its nervousness was evident in the White Paper's sub-title
Better for Everyone - an attempt to pre-empt criticisms from the popular press that it
was 'anti-motorist'.
Despite the claimed consensus, progress was slow in bringing about practical change.
Part of the subsequent sense of disappointment - failure even - was in proportion to
the scale of the original expectations which Prescott in particular had talked up. For
example within a month of his appointment he was quoted as saying
I will have failed if in five years' time there are not many more people using public
transport and far fewer journeys by car. It is a tall order but I urge you to hold me
to it.
( The Guardian 6 June 1997)
Whilst typically strong on aspiration and intended commitment, such a statement
was unwise (since it was not grounded in any properly analysed course of action) and
became a damaging hostage to fortune.
The manner in which the White Paper was produced contained features which
came to typify the style of the new Government and which contributed to subsequent