Where other books are either highly partisan dismissals or appreciations of the Third Way, or dull sociological accounts, this book gets behind the cliches in order to show just what is left of Labour party ideology and what the future may hold. New Labour has changed the face of Britain. Culture, class, education, health, the arts, leisure, the economy have all seen seismic shifts since the 1997 election that raised Blair to power. The Labour that rules has distanced itself from the failed Labour of the 70s and 80s, but the core remains. Labour remains gripped by its own past - unable and unwilling to shed its ties to the old Labour party, but determined to avoid the mistakes of which lead to four electoral defeats between 1979 and 1992. Cronin covers the full history of the party from its post war triumph through decades of shambolic leadership against ruthless and organised opposition to the resurgent New Labour of the 90s that finally took Britain into the new millennium.

How the history of liberal order and democratic politics since the 1930s explains ongoing threats to democracy and international order   The liberal democratic order that seemed so stable in North America and Western Europe has become precarious. James E. Cronin argues that liberalism has never been secure and that since the 1930s the international order has had to be crafted, redeployed, and extended in response to both victories and setbacks.   Beginning with the German and Japanese efforts in the 1930s to establish a system based on empire, race, economic protectionism, and militant nationalism, Cronin shows how the postwar system, established out of a revulsion at the ideas of fascism, repeatedly reinvented itself in the face of the Cold War, anticolonial insurgencies, the economic and political crises of the 1970s, the collapse of communism, the rise of globalization, and the financial crisis of 2008. Cronin emphasizes the links between internal and external politics in sustaining liberal order internationally and the domestic origins and correlates of present difficulties. Fragile Victory provides the context necessary to understand such diverse challenges as the triumph of Brexit, the election of Trump, the rise of populism, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The World the Cold War Made examines the Cold War and its lasting legacy. Cronin explores the creation and structure of the post-war settlement; its successes, failures and adaptions; and the eventual coming apart of the post-war order in the 1980s and early 1990s. Cronin argues that the current state of the world must be understood against the backdrop of the post-war order that until recently governed, prevented or distorted political and economic change.
He shows how this legacy has allowed some nations and industries to grow but has blocked others' paths to economic development. At the same time, he states that the end of the Cold War has removed powerful external constraints on the political choices of nations, allowing previously disenfranchised people the freedom to chart distinctive paths into the next century that are more responsive to their own histories.