The hopes for German Social Democracy, which were voiced at the beginning of the discussion, should not become too high. The SPD is currently split between a course which will continue to bleed them by a thousand cuts, by joining the government coalition, and the alternative of committing seppuku with one clear cut across their stomach, hoping for reincarnation in the future, by rejecting that coalition and going into new elections. They are traded around 16% now, not much more than the right wing AfD or the Greens. To become more populist, as Mason seems to advise, is no alternative because it is not in their character and therefore will always be beyond belief for the voters.

In addition to the points mentioned in your comment, I would like to add two other points which were not really touched in the discussion, although they are highly important for Britain and beyond.

Number one, the web of tax havens centered around the City of London Corporation and the crown dependencies and current and former colonies, which almost nobody in the UK seems to want to touch. Implementing a debt based “Radical Social Democracy” with such a network of tax havens and matching laws and rules is like trying to fill a bucket with water which has lots of holes in its bottom. Also, this network, in cooperation with U.S. and EU based ones, impovers and corrupts most of the countries of the world, adding fuel to migration and wars.

The second one, touched a bit by Anthony Barnett in regards to Scotland and Northern Ireland, is the question of decentralisation and local government. A centralized “Radical Social Democracy” would probably fail because old capitalist cronies like banks will be just replaced by new socialist ones profiting from construction contracts and similar. “Power to the Cities and Counties” should be the parole here.

On another level, I found the discussion itself very good, well balanced and an interesting format, well worth to spend time on during a quiet Sunday afternoon. Thank you for that!

Also highly disappointing was that Mason was allowed to get away with his ‘neo-Bevanite’, ‘imperialist Labour’ bullshit without challenge at the end. At least he’s honest and coherent one might say – if one wants to retain capitalism and social democracy then – as in their post-war incarnation – one needs to retain imperialism (or neo-imperialism) and war! In my view nothing betrays the truth about self-professed leftists as much as as their attitudes towards imperialism and towards war! Imo Mason needs to be seriously called out on this nasty aspect of his ideology and belief system.

The latter point relates to my biggest disappointment about this discussion/debate – although the topic was ‘can radical social democracy save us?’ it did not include anyone openly or clearly standing outside this political economic paradigm to challenge the arguments, claims and suppositions made. No dispute that the aim should be – and indeed has to be – to save capitalism from itself; no one there to challenge this aim as the horizon, no one to seriously talk about the inherent nature and contradictions of capitalism and social democracy; no one to challenge the proposed reformist strategy. Given this absence I feel it might be useful to mention a few relevant, interesting essays that appeared on Jacobin recently: ‘The Keynesian Counterrevolution’ by Mike Begg (see https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/02/keynes-general-theory-mann-review), ‘The Left in a Foxhole’ (see https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/02/keynes-keynesianism-mann-economics-review), ;Beyond Social Democracy by Marcel Liebman and Ralph Miliband (see https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/01/social-democracy-socialism-ralph-miliband).