If you think
that people fully adopt the neoliberal dominant 'religion' as the
mainstream media propaganda and other carriers of the neoliberalism
propagate, then you should re-think it.
Even in the
UK, one of the 'holy motherlands' of neoliberalism, people often
request things that could be considered totally opposite to the
neoliberal establishment.
In his book
The
Establishment: And how they get away with it, Owen
Jones writes about two polls by YouGov in the UK:
One YouGov
poll in Nov. 2013 showed that while three-quarters of voters backed
Miliband's proposals to give government the powers to set gas and
electricity prices, nearly seven out of ten Britons wanted energy
renationalized, which was not something the cautious Miliband was
prepared to offer.
Even Tory voters advocated state takeovers.
Two-thirds of the British electorate wanted the railways and Royal
Mail back in public ownership; a plurality of voters were in favour
of government powers to set private-sector rents, and more than a
thrid of the population even went as far as backing state controls on
food and grocery prices.
An earlier YouGov poll revealed that nearly
six out of ten Britons advocated a new 75 per cent tax band for those
earning 1 million pounds or more, a position even four out oif ten
Tory voters supported.
For the more
thoughtful supporters of the Establishment consensus, such finding
provoked near panic. In an editorial entitled 'There is Sadly Mass
Support for Nationalization and Price Controls', Allister Heath, the
former editor of the London business daily City A. M.,
responded to the poll findings: 'Slowly but surely, the public is
turning its back on the free-market economy and re-embracing an
atavistic version of socialism which, if implemented, would end in
tears,' he warned. 'On some economic issues, the public is far
more left wing than the Tories realize or than Labour can believe.'
The findings were 'terrifying', he added. 'Supporters of
the market economy have a very big problem,' he concluded.
'Unless they address the concerns of the public, they will be
annihilated.' It was a picture that members of the business elite
increasingly recognized, too.
Jones
concludes:
Here is the
reality of modern British politics. The views of millions of Britons
are simply not represented. Even mild shifts by the Labour leadership
away from the Establishment's groupthink trigger a frenzied response.
A narrow consensus is zealously guarded and policed. In part,
free-market globalization helps to reinforce the sense that the ideas
of the Establishment are unchallengeable. The argument goes like
this: a departure from its political tenets would provoke the wrath
of big business and capital, who would then flee the country and
bring the economy grinding to a halt.
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