Apologies, life has got in the way hence delay in replying to this. Before I explain about actions to be taken, I just want to say that a government that isn't left wing is going to fuck over public services, that is the nature of a right wing government (the centre moves and is currently right wing). I really don't see how campaigning for a right wing government will deliver a left wing government at any point in the future so please also explain.
So actions, We need to look at this at three levels - the short term surface stuff, the mid term effects which are as much psychological as anything and the longer term deeper things.
Short term is really about campaigning. Campaign on an issue, get enough people onside and you'll push that issue into the centre of the overton window - from radical to sensible to popular to policy. If an issue is shown to be popular enough, parties will take on their demands as policy and parties offering to meet those demands will get votes from the people who want those things. I can't imagine you will disagree with this as it's just obvious isn't it? Getting people on side to social democratic ideas and policies is the difficult bit, but that's more about the next section than this one. At the moment social democracy is in the unthinkable/radical section of the overton window so naturally many people will need showing and convincing that these ideas are in fact sensible, it is not easy to do, especially when the nominally left wing / social democratic party is arguing against you.
successes in this area include UK Uncut, who put tax avoidance on the agenda massively, though little was done about it, and local campaigns to prevent specific council cuts. It hasn't delivered a left-wing government but at least we've got a left-wing leader of a party that has a chance of being elected - it's a long, long way to go but this is a sign of progress. Last few labour leader elections a left wing candidate hasn't even managed to get nominated, now one is leader with a clear majority of the votes in the election.
Mid term is about psychology. Going back to that quote from Thatcher - "the aim is to change the soul, the method is economics". Thatcher wanted to create a more individualisitic society, and to do so she looked to setup our material, economic world in such a way that we approach it individually, rather than collectively. Individualistic patterns of thought are more closely matched with capitalism than collective patterns of thoughts, which is why you get the libertarians who have a complete denial of the existence of community (and even thatcher said there's no such thing as society, only families and individuals).
So you get rid of social housing. Social housing is a collective response to the issue of people needing decent homes. Instead you have private rental (intentionally made totally insecure to disrupt geographic communities and mean there's only one route to a secure home
and private ownership - individual responses to the issue of me needing a decent home. Other examples of this include emphasis on private motor cars over public transport, privatisation generally, attacks on trade unions, attacks on social security.
Once you setup the structures of society to direct people towards individualistic patterns of thought, they will find it harder (or less natural) to think collectively. Often in society we are in some kind of prisoner's dillemma situation where the best result for an individual is at odds with the best result for everyone. I personally feel like I really saw that comparing the ways that student activists organised against cuts and viewed the world compared to people more of my age (which is only the generation before, I'm 38) during the anti-globalistion protests - I missed Climate Camp which I think is the transition between the two. Identity politics is also part of this - very much about the individual and not about the society or communities they live in.
Social democracy is based on collective responses to problems - social housing, social security, NHS, unionisation. To see these as the sensible responses to problems you need to be thinking collectively. Yes there is individual self-interest but not for wealthy people who hold most of the power (which I'll come onto in the next section) and also because of the prisoner's dillema type situations and the promise capitalism makes that if you just work hard enough you'll get a massive material reward, and that collective responses level things out so nobody can have that reward (but also mean nobody is totally fucked over). Rawls (an American liberal philsopher, 1950s iirc) reckoned that if you asked people if they wanted an even or uneven society, not knowing what their position would be in that society, most people (everyone?) would choose the even society unless the uneven society meant everyone was better off. I'm not so sure, there's lots of people who I think would gamble on the big reward believing it won't be them that get fucked over. At the same time I think humans have evolved as social animals and as such most people don't want to see anyone completely fucked and being in the real world are aware that most people don't get that massive reward.
So campaigns need to be working for things that are collective responses to problems. I highlighted social housing because at the moment there's a huge housing crisis, especially in London and the south east. Homes are too expensive for many to buy so the thatcherite idea of a home owning society is failing because of the material conditions of the world. Private rentals are shitty and expensive. Social housing solves a problem. Getting it implemented through campaigning (as in the first section) is not going to be easy but once it starts happening it should be something that grows quite quickly as the people who move out of private housing extol the benefits of it.
The way you organise is also important - destroying our local and work communities was important to thatcher because the more that we are individualised, the more we'll think individually. Rebuilding those communities matters in a way I can't really explain except that I know how important fucking them up was to thatcher and how the denial of community by libertarians is so central to their philosophy.
We've got 40 or so years of this to roll back on. It won't be quick. But remember that in the post war period both the conservative and labour parties had broadly social democratic policies - getting back there isn't just about getting the Labour party to be a social democratic party, if we manage that it's likely the Conservative party will be too, because those policies will be in the sensible/popular range and they want to get elected. Of course the overton window might split, we live in interesting times.
The last bit is about the deeper stuff. The structures of capitalism. Wealthy people don't directly benefit from the collective responses of social democracy. People who are rich are either born into it, which tends to be into a culture of entitlement, or they chose to get rich in which case being rich is something they want, and people in either category tend to want to keep their money. These are also the people who have the greatest access to power. To get social democracy you have to convince them to give you something they don't want to give you. How? With collective responses. We have power in numbers.
To put it another way, a way I know you won't like, the wealthy people are capital. The state exists (in part) to protect capital from it's own short termism. If the working class act collectively then they can make elements of capital worried enough that they have just about dug enough of their own grave to push the state to act to force all of capital to relinquish a greater amount of the outcomes of production to the working class.
The best campaigns hit company bottom lines, this is why Boycott Workfare had successes - by driving companies and charities out of the workfare schemes.
So this is something that could be written about forever really but above is a start I guess. tl;dr? Campaign for collective solutions to problems. Make those campaigns community based and wherever possible seeking practical outcomes that can be achieved directly. The more that people think and act collectively, the more they will see collective solutions as sensible, the more they will see the advantages over individualised solutions. Get enough people seeing collective solutions and they will come into the popular range of the overton window and be likely to be enacted as policy. Put enough pressure on capital and you will get a better deal out of it.
