Labor in Britain

Five years ago it was widely believed that the British Labor Party had become a permanent minority. Unable to compete with Tory affluence, burdened with an “old-fashioned” ideology, dependent on a working class doomed to long-term numerical decline, the party looked—even (or especially) to its own leaders—like a political anachronism. Some of the Gaitskellites on the right of the BLP dreamed of a new “people’s party” free of socialist commitments and trade un...