Chris Cook:

The problem for Labour was that they were led astray as New Labour when Blair, Brown and the rest swallowed the neo-liberal economic Kool Aid.

It seems to me that Blair and Brown, along with Clinton in the USA, were serving the Kool-Aid to their parties as the elixir that would return them to power, which it did. The essence of The Third Way was to embrace the goals of the wealthy elite so as to become acceptable to them as a governing party. The problem is that this destroyed the ability of their parties to provide a serious alternative to the opposition. Come the crisis, there was no real alternatives available to the electorate. Still really isn't.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."