I agree there's much to be unhappy about with New Labour beyond the famous headlines of Iraq & tuition fees. However the caveat has to be that all Governments make mistakes, often big mistakes, and the longer you're in Government the more mistakes you make. Whether due to lack of judgement, undue concern about winning votes, poor party culture, whatever, this is a truism of every Government in history. The only way to avoid making decisions in Government is to stay in opposition. Even the best teams concede goals and lose matches. That's why a lot of people chalk off the legitimate critiques of New Labour's failings as ideological, because its sometimes based on the idea that we could have a Government that does no wrong, which is pure fantasy. What really matters is the overall balance. If the good comfortably outweighs the bad, you're probably looking at a good Government.
People end up disagreeing over New Labour not because its advocates think it did no wrong, but because the argument slides into the paradigm of New Labour good vs New Labour bad. New Labour's supporters then end up defending its bad decisions because New Labour's detractors argue that the bad decisions outweigh the good. We're all guilty of defending 'our side' in debates in such a way. But this means that neither side is really critiquing the policy itself, instead it becomes a proxy for a different debate. Neither side wants to concede the point, even if they actually might agree, because it would undermine their larger argument.
In order for people who liked and didn't like New Labour to successfully debate a New Labour policy they'd have to begin with the acceptance that whether each policy was good or bad makes no difference to the overall judgment of New Labour in the round. ID cards alone aren't enough to make Labour a crap Government. The minimum wage alone isnt enough to make it a good one. As long as both sides are using it to justify a larger point, there's no common ground for a debate.
