The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland, published in 1956, is regarded as by some distance the most influential book in post-war British Labour Party thinking. It was the seminal work of the 'revisionist' school of Labour politics.

The Tory campaign manifesto tried to sound as Laborite as possible and the Labor manifesto tried to sound as Tory as possible. This political osmosis, familiar in U.S. politics, is relatively new to Britain. Unless the Tories can break out of the "me-too" pattern and wake the voters to a sense of Britain's economic and political perils, it is hard to see how the Tories can win.