British Prime Minister Tony Blair comes to Washington today for his first meeting with President George W. Bush. The press on both sides of the Atlantic, naturally, will be full of stories comparing and contrasting his strong and deep alliance with Bill Clinton with an emerging new relationship with Clinton's successor. Obviously, the powerful community of interest between the U.S. and the U.K. on a host of issues from trade to Iraq will provide Blair and Bush with a sound basis for cooperation despite their very different political pedigrees.

But don't let the happy photo ops or the real areas of agreement fool you: Blair is more committed than ever to the Third Way project -- the modernization of center-left parties around the world to meet the challenges of the Information Age -- that he and Clinton have done so much to promote at home and abroad. Just before his trip to Washington, Blair published an article in the March issue of the British magazine Prospect (published February 22) outlining the next big challenges for Third Way leaders in dealing with renewed competition from their conservative rivals (including, of course, Blair's host in the U.S.).

Early on in this important piece, Blair took on the argument that New Labour or New Democrat Third Way policies are just stolen clothes from conservatives:

[A] whole new economic agenda is before us, one that divides the centre-left from the right, and which plays to our strengths. Effective markets are a pre-condition for a successful modern economy. The question is not whether to have them, but how to empower individuals to succeed within them. What used to be socially important is now an economic imperative.

Based on this insight of a New Economy in which equality and growth must be yoked together, Blair laid out six major challenges for the Third Way:

(1) Harnessing new technologies to create wealth and meet human needs.

(2) Transforming education to re-emphasize high common standards "in the basics," and to instill "a culture of high expectations and high performance."

(3) Reshaping social policy to "cope with new patterns of ageing and poverty," developing "genuine social mobility throughout society -- entrepreneurship fostered, professions opened, opportunities created."

(4) Developing an "entrepreneurial, high-state public sector" to "boost professional autonomy as well as accountability," delivering "effective spending, not just big spending."

(5) "Renewing democracy and overcoming the alienation and disconnection from politics that is a marked feature of our times," in part through "a renewal of local civic engagement."

(6) Strengthening "international engagement" through the development of "legitimate global institutions that govern grade, finance, and the environment."

In laying out this agenda (which is strikingly similar to the agenda promoted by New Democrats in the U.S.), Blair bluntly addressed the political advantages and disadvantages of Third Way:

Who stands against us? Certainly the forces of reaction, a small "c" conservatism, rooted in old class structures and unaccountable privilege. The xenophobia of the new right feeding off fears and insecurity. The extreme greens who are anti-science fundamentalists.

With us are most of the public who always wanted an economically competent government that shared their sense of social justice. With us too are most of the dynamic currents in intellectual life -- the cutting edge work in social sciences is about the nature, limits and dynamics of cooperation, about trust and social capital, knowledge and human capital.

Tony Blair will spend much of his time in Washington offering advice to George W. Bush. But the Prospect article offers the best possible advice to Bush's Democratic opposition:

The Third Way was always intended to renew and modernise progressive politics, not find a soggy compromise between left and right. Ideas are the key; and the tide of ideas is flowing in our direction.

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