This book has sought to argue that Britain operated a social democratic system between 1945 and 1979. This system came under strain in the mid-1970s, as the post-war economic Golden Age drew to a close. It was steadily dismantled after 1979, and has not been reinstated since. The highwater mark of British social democracy coincided with the UK's most enthusiastic engagement with Europe, from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. British social democratic leaders were the keenest to take Britain ‘into Europe’. Thereafter, but especially from 1988 onwards, the Right has wholly abandoned social democracy and turned strongly against the EEC/EU. The mainstream Left's grasp on social democracy has been tenuous, and its engagement with Europe superficial. These circumstances created the perfect conditions for the UK to vote to leave the EU, as it did in 2016. What then has the evidence shown about this argument?

It is, I would suggest, clear that Britain operated as a social democratic system in the post-war period, and did so with reasonable stability. The mixed economy, strong trade unions, and activist social policies in areas such as education and housing, were constant features of this landscape. The consequence was that, by the mid-1970s, the UK was more equal than it had ever been. Of course, this was no paradise, and there were plenty of critics of Left and Right. The Left were impatient with social democracy's accommodation with capitalism. The Right thought there was too little capitalism and too much quasi-socialism.

Of course, as we have seen, the system came under strain during the 1970s, as the simultaneous increase in inflation, unemployment and industrial militancy evidenced the end of the Golden Age. For the critics of social democracy, this was a crisis not to be wasted. To the Left, the economic downturn showed that social democrats had been foolish to seek to save capitalism from itself.