For me, this post by Kevin Harris sums up what happened over the past decade, where new Labour’s lightly held good intentions met their managerialst bent and the two cancelled each other out:

“Round about 2003, the field of social inclusion and new technology became counter-productively transformed when government started putting up huge chunks of funding without much thought about what was needed in local situations, thus attracting many who were willing to spend it for them without the burden of values or the inconvenience of insights into the nature of exclusion.”