Activity

[...] Actual markets do not work that way. They do not work mysteriously by themselves, or ‘clear’ at their optimum point. Only by bracketing-out the relative wealth of buyer and seller can they be called ‘fair’. No ‘hidden hand’ guarantees the common good. Markets often require the external power …

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 re…

New Labour believed that the old route to government was permanently barred. It was converted, Damascus-like, to neoliberalism and the market. And, buying in to the new managerial doctrine of pubic choice theory taught by the US Business Schools, New Labour finally understood that there was no need…

Ideology is always contradictory. There is no single, integrated ‘ruling ideology’ - a mistake we repeat again now in failing to distinguish between conservative and neoliberal repertoires. Ideology works best by suturing together contradictory lines of argument and emotional investments - finding …

Still, the old had to be destroyed before the new could take its place. Margaret Thatcher conspired in a ruthless war against the cabinet ‘wets’ and simultaneously plotted to break trade union power - ‘the enemy within’. She impelled people towards new, individualised, competitive solutions: ‘get o…