In response to their electoral losses, the “Left” in both countries began adopting New Labour and New Democrat policies, which sought to blend conservative language with their own agendas to win elections. This approach — referred to as “triangulation” — essentially sugarcoated neoliberalism.
I would argue that [Bill] Clinton and [Tony] Blair did more to consolidate and make neoliberalism seem inevitable than Thatcher and Reagan ever did. In fact, when Thatcher was asked what her greatest accomplishment was, she said it was Tony Blair. She had gotten Labour to buy into her views. Blair himself said he saw his role as building on Thatcher, not undoing her work.
The biggest privatizer in American history was Clinton; he did more to privatize than Reagan. The biggest cuts to welfare spending were Clinton’s, as was the launch of the war against crime, which led to mass incarceration, creating an underclass without actually contributing to public safety.
What you saw was neoliberalism transforming the Left, which lost the connection between inclusion and equality, between privilege and power. The Left lost its way. It treated fragmentation — social fragmentation — as inevitable. It gave up on the idea of society, the idea of a larger common good — in other words, it gave up on the idea of solidarity. We just accepted the idea that globalization and technology were immutable.
In essence, the Left adopted two key messages from Thatcher’s era: first, that “there is no alternative” to the current economic and technological realities; and second, that “there is no society” — obligations only extend to individuals and their immediate circles or “little platoons.” These ideas became central to the Third Way left.