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The culture of resistance to capital has, for some, mutated into a culture of revolt against globalization, migration and human rights. How we got here is not just a story of neoliberalism's economic failure, but the collapse of a narrative. In turn, the paralysis of the left lies not in its failure to advance economic criticisms of free market economics, but in its failure to engage properly in the narrative battle the ultra-right is waging. [...]
If life for working-class people felt better in the 1990s than the 1980s, it was because both credit and cheap Chinese goods offset the primary problem: stagnating wages. That globalization and financial deregulation are essentially positive for working people became the overt message of social democracy.
Neoliberalism unleashed numerous structural transformations. The principal ones were: the offshoring of productive industries; the restructuring of corporations into a 'value chain' of smaller companies; cutting taxes to shrink the state; the privatization of public services; and the financialization of everyday life. [...]
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[...] Blair and Gordon Brown staked everything on financialization. Deregulation of the credit market would allow even the poor to take part in the asset-price bubble. The booming finance industry would generate high tax revenues, which would be redistributed to the working class through welfare payments, in-work tax credits, revived spending on the NHS, and mass access to university education. On the eve of the financial crash up to seven million people, one third of all households, were receiving some form of payment from the state.
When the finance system collapsed, so did this finance-based ameliorative project of social democracy. In its place came austerity. [...] And as the safety net broke, so did consent for inward migration.