Wilson himself was heir to the Attlee-Beveridge tradition of Fabian theory and Keynesian practice and showed little interest in economic (or political) innovation. Like most British politicians of every stripe he was deeply conventional and pragmatic, with a proudly myopic view of public affairs: as he once put it, ‘a week is a long time in politics.’ Nevertheless, there was a certain distinctiveness about the British Social Democratic state, beyond the insular refusal of all parties concerned to describe it thus. What the British Left (and, at the time, much of the Centre and
