Education researchers continue to cite Bernstein's 'Education cannot compensate for society', while Bernstein's own focus on 'in-school processes' was echoed by Michael Gove's insistence that there are 'no excuses' for low working-class achievement in schools. Bernstein's ideas illuminate the relationship, within education policy, of neo-liberalism to the social democracy Bernstein originally targeted. Moreover, as indicated by the manifesto for the 2017 general election and the subsequent 10-point charter on education, Labour's focus on a more interventionist approach to the role of the state does not seem to preclude tacit acceptance of a (Govian) knowledge-based curriculum. Given that a constructed aspiration is inseparable from that curriculum, any renewed social democracy might do more to assert the importance of contested knowledge in the UK.