During the 1990s, Democrats in the United States and the Labor Party in the United Kingdom pursued parallel transformations. Behind the leadership of President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair, each party recast its traditional liberalism into a “Third Way” centrism that balanced government activism with reform and tilted its emphasis from economic “fairness” toward growth. Now the two parties are moving along matching tracks again, but toward a more confrontational approach that reflects each country’s shifting economic and political landscape.
President Obama and Ed Miliband, the leader of the British Labor Party, signaled the change this fall with milestone speeches in which each pledged to focus on the interlocked issues of widening income inequality, declining upward mobility, and stagnant living standards for average families. CONT.
Ron Brownstein, National Journal