At No 11, It's Victorian Values Again

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Tristram Hunt argues that the Chancellor is an essentially Dickensian character

In the run-up to the 1983 election campaign, Margaret Thatcher discovered "Victorian values". The Victorian age, she decreed, had been treated very badly by years of socialist propaganda. It was not an age of Dickensian squalor, but of decent values, hard work and self-respect. Reaction from the Labour Party was swift and damning: "Victorian Britain was a place where a few got rich and most got hell," retorted the young Neil Kinnock.

But that was old Labour and this is new Labour. Seventeen years on, the Labour Party can't get enough of Victorian values. New Labour is instinctively drawn to the Victorians -- fiscally, culturally and politically. Much of the rhetoric and moral purpose of this government, from foreign policy to the New Deal, resonates with …