Alan Milburn was many years ago an orthodox Trotskyist but by the time of the first Blair Government he had made the journey rightwards.
His proposals for youth benefits look at cutting them as a means of encouraging people into work (where they can). There is dignity in labour and the ability at work to organise and change things/ Only however if there are reasonably paid and meaningful jobs to do.
Some under-25s should get fewer benefits, Milburn review to say – BBC News
I’ve seen suggestions that Milburn is a Thatcherite. Not quite. He stands in the mould of 1997 Mandelson, seeing no reason why much of Thatcherism should not be used by Labour
Thanks to Government papers released by the National Archives at the start of 2022 we do have a record of Mandelson’s vision for Labour at the time he was Minister Without Portfolio (May 1997-July 1998). Effectively this meant he was policy advisor to Blair and the papers contain a note he sent to him about what he thought New Labour should be. It read in part:
Its political genesis is a synthesis between the historical position of left and right. It is too simplistic to say it adopts ‘left’ values but is rightward in how to achieve them. It is probably more accurate to say that it has left values but is open about to achieve them and recognises that it was the right, not the left, that up to the end of the 80s was prepared to think more freely. Privatisation of certain industries or the sale of council homes or greater autonomy for schools could have been left ideas
National Archives File PREM 49/244
It might be called triangulation or it might be building the wrong hegemonic project
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