Here:
Martin Kettle (Labour has created a new situation. It may not survive, 25 September) distorts the meaning of the term social democracy to suit his argument about divisions in the party.
The idea that New Labour or Blairism is or was social democratic is laughable.
Mrs Thatcher herself declared triumphantly that the ascendancy of Tony Blair was her greatest legacy, and he famously invited her for tea at Downing Street in a mutually admiring gesture.
Blair pressed privatisation, deregulation, outsourcing, PFI, demutualisation and more in fealty to the market and the global corporate world.
Social democracy, by contrast, was democratic western Europe’s postwar response to communism, with public ownership of the utilities and sectors of manufacturing, the establishment of welfare states, the sustaining of full employment by state economic management and redistributive taxation on an unprecedented scale.
In Britain, Labour and Conservative governments built millions of council houses for all who needed them.
My great friend and comrade Jeremy Corbyn’s plans are relatively modest by comparison, though to be welcomed.
Clem Attlee, Harold Wilson and even Jim Callaghan were well to the left of Jeremy in objective terms – genuinely social democratic, although I hope Jeremy will over time go further in leading Labour to restoring what has been destroyed by Thatcher and her successors.
The real division in the Labour party has been between the true “social democrats” and those who are the children of neoliberal ideology, the division between Keynes and Beveridge on one side and Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman on the other.
Kelvin Hopkins MPMartin Kettle (Labour has created a new situation. It may not survive, 25 September) distorts the meaning of the term social democracy to suit his argument about divisions in the party.
The idea that New Labour or Blairism is or was social democratic is laughable.
Mrs Thatcher herself declared triumphantly that the ascendancy of Tony Blair was her greatest legacy, and he famously invited her for tea at Downing Street in a mutually admiring gesture.
Blair pressed privatisation, deregulation, outsourcing, PFI, demutualisation and more in fealty to the market and the global corporate world.
Social democracy, by contrast, was democratic western Europe’s postwar response to communism, with public ownership of the utilities and sectors of manufacturing, the establishment of welfare states, the sustaining of full employment by state economic management and redistributive taxation on an unprecedented scale.
In Britain, Labour and Conservative governments built millions of council houses for all who needed them.
My great friend and comrade Jeremy Corbyn’s plans are relatively modest by comparison, though to be welcomed.
Clem Attlee, Harold Wilson and even Jim Callaghan were well to the left of Jeremy in objective terms – genuinely social democratic, although I hope Jeremy will over time go further in leading Labour to restoring what has been destroyed by Thatcher and her successors.
The real division in the Labour party has been between the true “social democrats” and those who are the children of neoliberal ideology, the division between Keynes and Beveridge on one side and Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman on the other.
Labour, Luton North
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