New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (Hardcover)

"No society can ever prosper economically or socially unless all its people prosper, unless we use the talents and energies of all the people rather than just the few, unless we live up to the ambition to create a society where the community works for the good of every individual and every individual works for the good of the community," says the British Labour Party's dynamic new leader, Tony Blair.In New Britain, we read in Blair's own articulate words how to improve the standard of living of all Britain's families; how to base a new social order on merit, commitment, and inclusion; how to decentralize British institutions of political power; and how to expand Britain's leadership in foreign affairs. } New Britain presents Tony Blair on all the major debates of British public life: from nationalized health care to crime prevention, from the welfare state to monetary policy, from religion to family values, from individualism to isolationism, from taxation to trade unions, from NATO to Northern Ireland, from community rebirth to economic growth. After seventeen years of Conservative Party rule under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, a change in Great Britain's leadership appears imminent. In Blair's Stakeholder Nation, government works in partnership with private and voluntary sectors to harness the pawer of the market to serve the public interest.In New Britain, we read in Blair's own articulate words how to improve the standard of living of all Britain's families; how to base a new social order on merit, commitment, and inclusion; how to decentralize British institutions of political power; and how to expand Britain's leadership in foreign affairs. } Tony Blair has nothing to hide. In this unique insight into his values, instincts, and priorities he sets out his political vision:If you want to know how he will steer Great Britain with regard to taxation, the minimum wage, the single currency, the National Health Service, education, the ownership of the railways-you will find it here.If you want to know what he means by "socialism," "solidarity," "Christianity," "community," "duty," "equality"-you will be able to read his definitions and his explanation of how those terms acquired the importance he gives them in his political vocabulary. If you want to know what the future he wants to promise his children or which of his political acts most impressed them-you can discover Blair the father here, too.More than a declaration of convictions and beliefs, this book is an invitation from the man who now dominates the British political scene to know his thinking, to see how it has developed, to understand what plans he has for a revived, reinvigorated Britain.