Friedrich Hayek once argued that if you put the word ‘social’ in front of a noun, the meaning was negated. Social justice wasn’t about due process; social democracies didn’t safeguard freedom.

For those on the left, who can never have enough social-isms, there is a more toxic prefix. If you want to damn something, stick a ‘neo’ in front. Nothing is quite as wicked as a neoconservative, but coming dangerously close is a neoliberal. Liberals were once generally supposed to be the squishiest of centrists. But listen to the men and women making the weather in British politics now, and you’d imagine that neoliberals were the horsemen of the apocalypse. Andy Burnham has blamed ‘40 years of neoliberalism’ for the problems faced by workers in Makerfield, and indeed beyond. The banking crisis, low growth, youth unemployment, decaying high streets: it was neoliberalism wot dunnit.

The denunciation of ‘trickledown economics’ as a neoliberal failure gets things precisely the wrong way round

The denunciation of ‘trickledown economics’ as a neoliberal failure gets things precisely the wrong way round

George Monbiot, in one of the Guardian’s most-read pieces, perhaps did more than most to define the nature of the villainy: ‘Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling… Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone.’

There is one problem with the criticisms of neoliberalism. They in no........

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