Readers wanting an overview of the development of social security policy by successive Labour governments in the UK between 1997 and 2010 will be disappointed in this book; that is not its purpose (and the title is therefore rather misleading). But those interested in the politics of the intriguing period before and just after Labour took office in 1997 − when ‘welfare reform’ [sic] was being pursued determinedly by the Treasury under Gordon Brown, whilst we waited for Frank Field, as the minister ostensibly responsible, to ‘think the unthinkable’ − will find more than enough here to satisfy them. The author does not seek to hide the origins of this book in a doctoral thesis, and the proliferation of political theories may become irksome. But read this instead as a thoughtful thesis in the other meaning of the word, based on interviews with key players and an examination of relevant events and documents.

Connell's central argument is that, although Brown and Field shared some approaches in common, Field's ideas were in the end inconsistent with the wider New Labour discourse and were therefore doomed. To reach that point, the author returns to the Labour Party policy review of 1989, and continues through John Smith's shadow Budget of 1992, and the Commission on Social Justice report of 1994, to the 1997 election result, publication of the long-awaited welfare reform Green Paper of 1998 and Field's departure from government later the same year. This is a detailed examination of a decade of Labour debate on social security reform − just not the decade that might be expected from the title.

The key step change that Connell discerns is that, from the mid1990s, Labour began to link benefits with employment policy (including employability) and to see them as mutually reinforcing. Other central features shaping Labour's welfare reforms were their symbolic function as a sign of the distance the party had travelled (which grew in importance as detailed policies were increasingly shunned, to prevent the Conservatives costing them), and the fiscal restraint that New Labour believed was essential to prove its economic credentials.

So far, perhaps, so familiar for students of the recent history of social security provision – although to my mind the author fails to recognise the strength of the pressure on the Commission on Social Justice (set up by John Smith after the 1992 Shadow Budget and Labour's failure at the general election in the same year) to suggest that all benefits should in future be means-tested − and therefore the significance of its refusal to do so, and its focus instead on a modernised, more inclusive national insurance system.

But the core theme is the differences between Brown's and Field's visions of welfare reform and the reasons why Brown's was implemented whereas Field's was lost to sight. Connell convincingly argues that the different personalities, political positions and working styles of the two men were not the only factors at play. On the surface they did have values in common, such as their belief in the ‘rights and responsibilities’ approach. But they had very different views of capital − with Brown seeing it as individuals’ labour market capital and Field as ownership of pension funds and housing. Add to this their differing stances on the state, which Brown thought of as enabling and Field saw as limiting the individuals’ potential, and you have unbridgeable divisions between them. Connell argues that only Brown's views were consonant with those of New Labour. This conclusion rests on the author's view of New Labour as ‘neostatist’ rather than neoliberal, at least in this policy area.

This book demonstrates the focus of Brown's interest in social security as its role in activation and ‘making work pay’, and his willingness to cut the scope of child benefit in order to target resources on conditional means-tested educational maintenance allowances (EMAs). (If Labour had not pledged not to raise income tax, EMAs could have been paid for by progressive increases in taxation instead.) The author has an understanding of Brown's credo of ‘progressive universalism’ that does not accord with mine; and some of the details of tax credits changes in particular are incomplete. But his view that the gap between Brown and Field on their attitudes towards the contributory principle on the one hand and means testing on the other stemmed from the same cause − their different understanding of the contractual nature of ‘welfare’ they both supported − is shrewd.

It is fascinating to read this study in mid 2011, as the Welfare Reform Bill proceeds through parliament, and the Labour leader in opposition, Ed Miliband, begins to explore his party's future policy options. First, the coalition government's development of ‘universal [sic] credit’− one so-called ‘simplified’ benefit, paid in and out of work, and absorbing others − can be seen in part as a response to the complexities, confusions and chaos caused by Brown's introduction of the tax credits system on top of other benefits (whatever, undoubted, benefits it brought to many low-income families). Secondly, Ed Miliband, at one point, appeared to be considering plans for a rejuvenated non-means-tested contributory system as the centrepiece of a reformed benefits structure. (How redistributive such a system was would depend on the incidence of the risks it covered and the way it was financed, not only on the benefits it paid.) Miliband's ideas seemed closer to the Commission on Social Justice's 1994 proposal than to Field's suggested social insurance schemes managed at arm's length from the state. But all three shared a more benign vision of the ‘welfare contract’ than has recently been on offer in the UK; all three went beyond the recent emphasis on social security as a productive factor, and all three began to recognise the importance of the interwoven webs of cross-subsidy created through the social security system that can help bind society together.

It is not yet clear whether Miliband is now shying away from this. If so, this may be due to the same reasoning that Labour appears to have used in following Brown rather than Field in 1997: the reception given to the 1992 Shadow Budget persuaded Labour that voters were not willing to support higher payments in return for better benefits, and the promise not to raise income tax was in any case seen as preventing this. This calculation, of a kind fundamental to Brown's style and substance as a politician, is perhaps given insufficient weight in Connell's analysis − which otherwise provides a fascinating and forensic examination of a key period for ‘welfare reform’ in the UK.