I hope so. Not a purist, but UK socialism mostly works for me.
Social democracy is not actually socialism.
It provides a superficial welfare state, involving some major centralised nationalised industries.
Socialism is basically democracy throughout society. And the actual basis for socialist economics is a change to the base, not an addition. In fact, socialism can operate without a state at all, well as social democracy requires a state.
In socialism, industries are owned by the local community or the workers within the workplace. A state based system involves radically decentralised nationalised industries - often energy industries are brought into democratic control.
Besides the NHS, which is actually pretty damn awesome (but could be more so), the only nationalised industries are those made so by the recession. However, they're not under workers' or community control - because the intention is to return it to the capitalist market.
New Labour has proved itself to be pretty stolidly capitalist with its rampant privatisation and capitalist-friendly policies at the expense of the taxpayer (burn in hell, PFI). It's no more socialist than the Tories.
The UK is actually a "mixed economy", which means that the economy is a combination of private and state-owned industries.
Social democracy is ultimately just an advanced form of American Liberalism. (Proper American Liberalism, not the false front the American Democrats exude to cover their capitalist-friendly "public-money-for-bourgeois-interest" campaigns. Sorry, i know you mean well. And it is at least centre-left.
