Policy Responses in Britain and the Economic Crisis: The Failure of Social Democracy?

In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global banking crisis and ensuing economic downturn in most Western economies, there were understandable expectations on the left that this would sound the death knell for three decades of neoliberalism and the fetishisation of the free market. The crash of 2008 seemed to reveal the latent destructiveness and limits of economic deregulation, and the relentless pursuit, by banks and other companies, of ever larger (and quicker) profits and market share. A ‘light-touch’ economic regime which had been lauded as innovative and dynamic now seemed to be revealed as irresponsible and dysfunctional.