This article contends that the implementation of government policies is mediated principally by the state, the economy and social class but that these have all changed so markedly since 1945 that education can no longer be seen as having the reforming role attributed to it in the postwar years. The continued assumption that it does means that, were policies based upon Labour's characteristic pedagogic project to be implemented in government, they may well lead to disillusion. This would only contribute to, rather than help resolve, the crisis of social democracy in the British Labour Party.