Reformulating Social Policy: The Minimum Wage, the New Deal, and the Working Families Tax Credit

Abstract

Few areas of public life were touched more profoundly or more directly by the Blair governments than the welfare state. Indeed, in a sense, re-engineering the welfare state was the very essence of New Labour. For in that domain its emphasis on going back to the party’s basic ideals but finding new policies to bring them into fruition was on full display.