Social Democracy reviving in the UK?

I just got back from an interesting conference in Newcastle (UK) organised by the Institute for Public Policy Research, and presided over by Matthew Taylor as his last big act before going to direct policy at number 10. (Actually I got back a week ago, but pressures of work and technical set-backs have kept me silent till now). Basically it was a ‘looking for a new big idea’ kind of gathering for New Labourish types – IPPR had asked a bunch of academics to present their thoughts and findings about meritocracy, social mobility, and equality of opportunity, and a bunch of politicians, policy makers, and representatives of domestic NGOs to engage with them. I confess that I anticipated a kind of dialogue of the deaf, but it wasn’t like that at all. The academics (including John Goldthorpe, John Roemer, Stephen Machin, Adam Swift, Michael Hout) made brief, pertinent, and not-dumbed-down presentations; and the in-session and out-of session discussions were to the point and thoughtful. Gordon Brown gave a talk on the first afternoon with which I, very much not a New Labour person, was very impressed. He seemed not only to have a coherent, worked out view, and a straightforward comfortableness with the language and concerns of traditional social democracy, but also to have read and understood all of the preparatory readings. (Apparently he called up John Goldthorpe the previous Thursday to ask him about some of the technical points in Goldthorpe’s paper). My brief was to respond to the minister for school standards, David Miliband’s, speech on why the government is focussing its attention on teaching and learning more than on admissions and funding. Again, I was impressed by the thoughtfulness and reasonableness of his presentation, and the care with which he distinguished issues of what should ideally be done and what is feasible given political and constitutional constraints; though, fortunately, disagreed with enough to make it worth debating him. One large disagreement among the attendees was the extent to which a society should try to reward ‘merit’ financially. Again, though, whereas I’d assumed on going in that I’d be in a minority with Swift and Roemer against meritocracy, it was striking how soft the support for meritocracy was in all the discussions, and how well disposed Brown was, for example, to prioritizing the interests of the least advantaged.
Cynics will dismiss my impressions as the consequences of either being over-susceptible to politicians charm, or (more likely) jet lag, and in another couple of weeks I’m sure I shall relapse into my own negativity. But the fact remains (as Americans I’ve described the conference to keep saying) that such a conference, in which senior elected politicians discuss the work of serious left-wing academics on their own terms, in the presence of senior policy-makers, is utterly unimaginable in the US.
All the papers for the conference, by the way, are accessible here at Ippr.