A social democratic party without deep roots in the working class movement would quickly fade into an unrepresentative intellectual sect.

For some conservatives such as Peter Hitchens Jenkins' reforms remain objectionable. The main development overseen by the Jenkins Commission was the development of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union from 1977 which began in 1979 as the European Monetary System a forerunner of the Single Currency or Euro. He quickly gained a reputation as a particularly tough Chancellor with his 1968 budget increasing taxes by £923 million more than twice the increase of any previous budget to date.

Roy Harris Jenkins Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM PC (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician. A few months after becoming Chancellor Jenkins was defeated in his Hillhead constituency by then-Labour politician George Galloway. As Home Secretary from 1965–1967 he sought to build what he described as "a civilized society" with measures such as the effective abolition in Britain of capital punishment and theatre censorship the decriminalisation of homosexuality relaxing of divorce law suspension of birching and the legalisation of abortion.