I don't think anyone on this site has ever expressed views that you could really say were "socialist" or "Marxist", in any real sense. I think a lot of quite specific political monickers have been turned into blanket terms, which is a shame (for instance, "liberal", "conservative" etc. have lots of connotations, whereas "Marxist" or "Nazi" or whatever refers to a pretty specific manifesto of views, give or take).

I always preferred Gummo anyway.

I wasn't referring to you in particular Beavis, more to people in general. I'm not sure what Stoneburg's political views are, I know he works for the green party (?) in Sweden, which I suspect would more environmentalist than socialist, but who knows. Anyways, he hasn't really gone into detail about his personal politics, that I've seen (but you may very well be right!).

In terms of 1st world politics, I'd say Britain is somewhere in the centre-left at present. Countries like America and Australia would sit a little way to the right on most issues, Canada, France, Italy and maybe Germany maybe a tiny bit to the right, and countries like Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark having (broadly speaking) more left-leaning influence in political life and legislation. Britain's likelihood of having any real Socialist influence in politics really disappeared when Tony Blair and a number of younger politicians came to the forefront of the british Labour party (originally, our working class/workers party, one of the two main parties in the UK in the last century, and which has gone in varying directions but which, for the most part, has strongly supported trade unionism, activism in the working class, and nationalisation of major areas of industry such as power and transport).

In the 70s and 80s, there was a long running climate of polarised politics in the UK, with Thatcher's conservative party pursuing a reasonably right wing agenda of privatisation (selling off state-owned concerns to private bids from business), which had some measured success in reducing waste and tax-burden in many vital services and industries in the UK, but also some radical "modernisation" of the taxation system (making it more regressive, esp. the Poll Tax) and restructuring of the economy which many argue has allowed for greater long term economic stability and other key benefits but which also lead to widespread unemployment, disquiet and poverty in many areas of the country, some of which still exists (one generation on) today. The opposition Labour Party during this period (lead by Neil Kinnock and especially the totally unelectable Michael Foot, who was very left-wing) were committed to keeping many areas of industry nationally owned and having more progressive taxation policies, and had some ideals that I think could reasonably be linked to socialism (although they weren't a socialist party as they did not believe in RE-nationalisation of things, or of central government controlling the major means of production in Britain; Foot had some socialist roots, though).

In this period, then, we had a real dichotomy and debate between the main two parties (another source of debate has always been how integrated with Europe we should be, although this has become slightly blurred on party lines and isn't really related to the socialist/conservative/left/right thing). Blair's vision, however, was to turn Labour into a more social democratic party barely on the left of the centre ground, which believed in improving a select number of public services (notably health and education, which I believe have some elements of national ownership in the USA too) with higher levels of funding (paid for by higher taxes but with a progressive, rather than regressive, flavour), greater ties with big business than any previous Labour government, continuing (in many cases) Thatcher's policies on privatisation. This recipe has been electorally highly successful, but really doesn't have much (if anything) in line with socialist doctrine. Socialists believe in the nationalisation of the major means of production, state redistribution of wealth, and government control of key industry components. The current Labour party (and the british electorate) supports none of this - indeed, several industries have been privatised under labour (the railways have become entirely privately run, a policy underway under the previous conservative government, as have other areas such as air traffic control, many elements of the postal service etc) and they have no interest whatsoever in re-nationalising or re-centralising any areas of private interest.

The lack of success of the Labour party in the 70s, 80s and early 90s (in the face of a Conservative government which was, at times, widely unpopular) demonstrates the british electorate to be widely untrusting of parties with links to socialist doctrine, and generally unsympathetic to the idea of increased government influence in daily life (this has been seen recently, too - the current govt ARE quite keen on legislation which brings government greater legal influence in modern life, and have been keen on some policies which have lead to many people, as in america with the post-9-11 legislation, to decry the "nanny state" and the fact that the government has, in essence, more powers to pry into what people are doing; however, none of this has any links to socialism as a doctrine, and would better be described (as in the US) of central government taking a more pro-active view on certain areas of law and order and social responsibility). Blair's party have also largely severed their strong links with unions and been more receptive to big business interests, making them no longer the elected representatives of the industrial working class, a group which has largely shrunk in the UK, and making the unions much weaker as an influence on political life. Also, Brown (Blair's chancellor, who will be the next PM) reduced some of the government's control of economic policy by giving the Bank of England (hmmm, hard to explain but basically a more independent, private-sector orientated body) control of interest rates (previously set by the government), which strikes me as a VERY un-socialist thing to do.

On the whole, the upshot of Blair's success in consecutive elections, and the fact that (increasingly) the key middle-class voters in Britain are more socially, environmentally and politically aware (as well as being less racist/discriminatory, and more focussed on areas such as the education of their kids and their health and wellbeing, since extreme poverty and how the economy is run have become less important issues now that a very low % of brits are living way below the poverty line, and the economy and british business have been largely successful under this administration), is that EVERYONE now wants to occupy the blair centre ground. This means there isn't so much of a choice in british politics now, which will be a bad thing when the political ground shifts again in future, as it did under thatcher and as it's done again under blair. Basically, a right wing, ultra-conservative party (like Thatchers) would have no chance of being elected (the Conservatives have tried that trick twice, to a lesser extent, with leaders in the last ten years and been soundly beaten both times), and a left wing party with strong nationalisation/trade unionism ties would be an anachronism with no means of gaining widespread popular support. So we're stuck with two parties battling it out for a tiny scrap of centre ground, and with previous non-issues such as foreign policy, the environment and law & order becoming major areas of argument, with both parties trying to go for a slightly different tack but not really offering a clear "left/right" option.

Basically, the british electorate has more or less shown in the last quarter century or so that it is strongly opposed to parties with strong trade union links and heavy state control, both of civil areas and of industry, but also (more recently) strongly opposed to parties with regressive taxation and slashed public spending at the cost of areas like health and education, as well as being broadly anti-war and increasingly concerned with more "trivial" political areas like civil liberty, the environment and foreign policy. So there's basically a clear message their for where our parties' priorities should lie, and (as should happen in a good democracy), they've moved that way. As I say, though, the only concern is that they've now ALL jumped that way, and, due to our political system (a first-past-the-post, non-proportional system similar to america whereby the party with the majority form the government and no-one with a minority vote has any say in it), less electable or minority views (such as socialism and right-wing conservatism/neo-conservatism) have become marginalised, which may be bad in the long run (at least until the political landscape changes once more).

So, the point I'm making is that Britain (no more than any other first world country) DOESN'T really have socialist tendencies - all the main tenets of socialism are broadly unpopular in electoral terms, and no major political parties have any sort of socialism-influenced politics any more. Britain has fewer right wing interest groups than the USA, and weaker trade unions/working class/ethnic minority groups than many countries in europe, making it for the most part a nation that's electorally and politically ruled by the white middle class, and their whims and interests. On the whole, that's fairly "centralist", with mildly conservative macroeconomic policy (as far as my limited understanding goes) and mildly liberal social & welfare policy, with a hotch-potch of various other ideas mixed in.