Why it's out with the New for Labour

(AFP/Getty)

After more than 16 years, three election victories and one defeat, New Labour is no more.

The party is to ditch the last vestige of the rebranding exercise, conceived by Tony Blair, to reach out to middle-class voters in the early 1990s. The word "new" has already been dropped from Labour's website and stationery, and is about to vanish from email addresses.

A spokesman for Ed Miliband said last night: "There is a feeling that the time has come." Dropping the label was inevitable, after Mr Miliband distanced himself from the "New Labour establishment" in his campaign for the party's leadership.

Immediately after his victory, he declared: "The era of New Labour has passed. A new generation has taken over."

The spokesman dismissed a report that Mr Miliband had dithered over the final move to consign the word to history. He said: "Ed's more interested in subjects like cuts, crime and the NHS than our email address."