^aSchool of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, 40–42 Great North Road, Newcastle NE1 7RU, UK

Abstract

This paper seeks to consider the New Labour project using insights drawn from a growing literature on temporality. The paper first explores New Labour's partisan and complex mobilisation of memory. It is argued that the disarticulation of the party from its past was integral to the notion of the Third Way and initially served to recast the identity of the party. However, as New Labour evolved the mobilisation of memory shifted to generate support for its contentious programme of modernisation. New Labour also held as distinctive and as politicised a view of the present as it did of the past. Its construction of its present is explored, particularly its claims to present a measured response to a new hyperactive economic, social and political epoch and its record in accelerating the speed at which politics is conducted. The paper concludes by identifying how these constructions of past and present converge and offer explanation for the difficulties in identifying the legacy of Tony Blair, and more broadly the absence of teleology in the New Labour project.