As many seem to imagine that a Labour government under Corbyn could be different, we reprint an article on the 1964-70 Wilson Labour government. Since there is an even smaller state-capitalist sector now than in those days, Lord Lever’s comments towards the end are even more pertinent. At the end, just substitute “Corbyn” for “Kinnock”.

‘As in all recent elections … [the Labour Party] played down any claim to stand, as a socialist party, for a radically different form of society … it asked the voters to say that it could administer the mixed economy and welfare state better than the Conservatives’.

No, this is not David Butler’s comment on the next year’s general election but on that of 1959. In the event, the voters judged that the Tories could run capitalism better than Labour. But after a further five years of Tory rule they changed their minds and in October 1964 a Labour government under Harold Wilson came into office.