The concept of fatalism and New Labour's role in tackling inequalities

In the past, the focus for Labour administrations' responses to inequalities within the UK has been an anti-poverty strategy. Prime Minister Tony Blair has introduced a fresh perspective on such an analysis by drawing much wider relationship issues, as well as structural ones, to define the problem and therefore come up with the solution. The sound-bite summary of these issues is social exclusion. This expansion of the definition of the problem does have implications for health policy and health workers. The past focus dating from Beveridge (1942) on dealing with disease alone is deemed as a deficient approach. Social exclusion thinking links health into every aspect of the inequalities agenda, in order to deal with the basic problem of 'fatalism'.