In this book we have spent some considerable time addressing the transformation of the mainstream political left. For us it is clear that the rise of the right in the 21st century is inextricably connected to the decline of the left as a serious political force.

Since the 1970s the left has stumbled from defeat to defeat to defeat. Today’s relentless conservative and liberal media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s new opposition, salvo after salvo fired out of every position across the spectrum, from The Sun to The Guardian, threaten the left’s fragile revival among the young. Today, more young people feel empathy with those suffering on the margins because, in neoliberalism’s insecure economy, they can sense that there is a genuine chance they might join them there. The economic insecurity long experienced by the old industrial proletariat is spreading throughout the social body. Many young people will start their careers in insecure and poorly paid service sector jobs. Even for graduates this is true. And with the passage of time, fewer young people are progressing into more secure and better paid work. The labour markets they hoped to enter have been exposed to job insecurity. There is little left that can be relied on. Perennial insecurity is now perfectly normal. Unless the left can engage the people in a meaningful discussion about how these stark problems can be addressed, and how the economy might be reorganised with a view to making it work for the majority of citizens, it is staring yet another defeat in the face. A yet more destructive era of neoliberal pragmatism will begin. Asset stripping will continue and hard-won entitlements will be withdrawn. All of modernity’s partial achievements will begin to break apart and crumble into the dust of history. Anger will continue to grow, and things will become tougher and tougher for ordinary men and women across the country.

The neoliberal right has achieved total ideological domination of the field of political economy, and the power and influence of reactionary right-wing populism is growing day by the day.