Introduction

When I started writing this book, the problem was two-fold. Neoliberalism seemed a particularly destructive force, and yet there appeared no prospect of it being brought to a halt. The question was how's that to be achieved? There is now some suggestion that this question has been superseded. Has anything really changed over that time? I’m certainly not convinced, but there's another issue too. Even if we have seen the last of neoliberalism, does that really mean that something better is waiting in the wings? Looking generally at the rising conflict and uncertainty in the world and looking specifically at the scale of the extreme right vote in the UK and US in 2024, I personally, doubt it – unless we all become actors in making it happen. Let me explain.

An end of neoliberalism?

Since I started on this book, the political, economic and moral bankruptcy and anti-democratic nature of neoliberalism has increasingly been showing itself. In the US, we’ve seen an extremist president reduced to setting the mob on his own seat of government and then standing successfully to lead that government again, pardoning the offenders. Something similar has been happening in Brazil with attacks on its Congress. In the UK, a queue of short-lived prime ministers found the old right-wing game plan and its previously unstoppable rhetoric less and less effective in silencing their detractors.