Coming to terms with the market: accounts of neoliberal failure and rehabilitation on the British Right

Abstract

Critique of “neoliberalism” is generally thought of as a preoccupation of the political Left. Here it will be argued that the British Right has also been developing a distinctive critique of neoliberalism and its failure, whether they thought about it in these precise terms or not. This represented an attempt by Conservative intellectuals to grapple with the enduring legacy of Thatcherism in the party. The objectives of this paper are threefold. Firstly, it will examine the contours of a distinctively Conservative description of neoliberal society by drawing on the work of Jesse Norman. Secondly, it will explain and contextualise their account of neoliberal economic failure and a possible avenue to its rehabilitation. And, thirdly, it will explain why this rehabilitation was itself a failure through a critique of Norman’s attempts to read Hayek through Burke. It concludes by observing that what civic forms of conservatism fail to offer is a thoroughgoing examination of functions that markets are unable to perform.