But what is so seductive about 1997 is that it represents an exceptionally unusual model of modernity in British political life, where the nation’s endemic post-imperial nostalgia could be cast aside as much as that of the welfare state and Labour’s socialist past. Although it is now widely criticized for being excessively “cosmopolitan,” flag-waving was always part of New Labour’s vision—the most famous image of 1997 is of Blair arriving in Downing Street to find an adoring (Party-organized) crowd waving little Union Jacks. This was in the service of a country rebranded. One of Blair’s vacuous but utterly optimistic books is titled New Britain: My Vision for a Young Country. The 2005 manifesto is called Britain Forward Not Back. 1940, 1945, 1974, and 1979 are full of haunting possibilities, roads not taken, memories transformed into monoliths. Yet the same could be said of 1997, when Labour had a gigantic electoral mandate for a transformation of Britain into a more equal, more open, more modern, less cruel country, but decided that the means to achieve all this was to trust in the sensible bankers and reliable outsourcing companies. It’s the resulting failure that has let the ghosts back in, and nobody seems able to exorcise them yet.