I have been wondering what had happened to Alan Milburn in the Labour Party rent-a-Blairite line up. Here is the answer.
This is not the moment to examine Milburn's contribution to the statification of the NHS. But his understanding of the progression of the progressives starting with Thatcher (entirely predictably if you are a neo-conservative) is set out thus:
In the 1980s the new idea that ushered in the Thatcher/Reagan era was for power to be vested in the free market and its policy expression was privatisation. In the mid-1990s the new idea that ushered in the Clinton/Blair era was for power to be vested in reformed institutions and its policy expression was modernisation.
Now the new idea is to vest power in the citizen and the community and to make its policy expression empowerment.
Wakey, wakey, Alan. First, you have to have a banking system that works. That requires the state, and regulation. More of. Get it?