The Degenerative Tendencies of Long-Serving Governments... 1963... 1996... 2008?

This paper argues that long-serving governments suffer from degenerative tendencies. As New Labour seeks to secure its fourth successive mandate to govern, this paper will advocate a model for analysing those symptoms of degeneration. It will attempt to situate the current circumstances of New Labour within a comparative historical context. It will assess the exhaustion of one-nation Conservatism in the 1960s, the implosion of post-Thatcherite Conservatism in the 1990s and the challenge that New Labour is facing in constructing a post-Blair narrative, against identifiable symptoms of governing degeneration. It will conclude that, although the endgame of the Blair era suggested that there were embryonic signs of governing degeneration, New Labour has not matched the scale of governing degeneration that afflicted the Conservatives in 1963 and 1996. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]