Herbert Morrison, the deputy prime minister throughout the Attlee government, was both the literal and ideological grandfather of New Labour. Peter Mandelson, the faction’s third man alongside Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is his grandson – and ideologically, Morrison was a centre-left politician from the party’s social democratic wing.
He was also the author of one of our most misunderstood quotations: “Socialism is what a Labour government does.” He wasn’t claiming socialism as the mission statement of the administration, but rather arguing that anything which broadly met Labour’s aims could be seen as socialism.
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