What was distinctively neoliberal about New Labour’s strategies? The private funding of New Labour’s flagship achievements via the Public Finance Initiative left future generations in hock for thirty years to re-pay the debt at exorbitant interest rates. Yet ‘public-private partnership’ became a required condition of all public contracts. Contracting out, competitive tendering and ‘contestability’ opened up the state to capital. Private contractors were better placed to cut costs and shed staff, even at the expense of service quality. The rising archipelago of private companies providing public services for profit was spectacular. Consultants floated in and out to ‘educate’ the public sphere in the ways of corporate business. Senior public servants joined the Boards of their private suppliers through ‘the revolving door’. Emptied out from inside, the ethos of public service underwent an irreversible ‘culture change’. The habits and assumptions of the private sector became embedded in the state.