The trouble with British socialism

Or well, any semi-nationalist socialism.

Socialism, extremely broadly, says that one of the primary (or the primary) objectives of government should be to ensure some degree of economic equality. There has to be a bit of a caveat on this - increasing equality for the sake of increasing equality is not a socialist objective. For example, if we were to score welfare on a scale of 1 to 10, and if there were the following two choices for the socialist:

Poor - 4
Rich - 10

or

Poor - 2
Rich - 3

The socialist would choose the first option, despite the fact that the second is more equal. So really the socialist's objective is to improve the conditions of the poor - and it just happens that this means that economic equality is necessary (or so the socialist thinks). Something like a Rawlsian welfare approach, where we should judge the performance of the government by the lot of the poorest person.

Hence, we see British socialists calling for spending on the NHS, education, the welfare state, as well as legislation to increase the minimum wage, improve working conditions and empower trade unions. Socialists think that this will improve the lot of the poor (and let's suppose they're right), and thus this is what the government should do.

However, of course they're completely wrong! If what we should be concerned about is improving the lot of the poor, then spending on the NHS, education and so forth are the worst things we can spend our money on. The best, by an absolute mile, is foreign aid. Compared to the rest of the world, the 'poor' of the UK are pretty rich. £1 million spent on the NHS will do no where near as much good as £1 million spent on, for example, providing clean water sources in Africa. That will ensure far more help for far poorer people. The same applies for almost all government spending in the UK; if the definition of a good government is one who helps out the poorest in society, the most 'good' can be done almost exclusively by increasing foreign aid at the expense of domestic spending.

But do we see British socialists calling for such spending in foreign aid? No, it literally isn't on the agenda. Instead, we see them calling for more on the NHS, no cuts to education, and so forth. I can only conclude that such socialists are not socialist for reasons of morality or justice, but because such spending is good for them.