A decade ago, British politics was gripped by public outcry over MPs’ expense claims. Politicians had charged everything to the public finances, from sink strainers to pornography and even moat cleaning — a shopping list that symbolized a contemptuous political class. All major parties were up to their necks in it.

The scandal partly gained such traction because it took place amid the 2008 financial crash, as governments shoveled public money into rescuing banks felled by their own high-risk gambling. Finding out that politicians had been living it up — and sending everyone else the bill — rubbed salt into the wound.

But if this moment pushed some people to the left, this wasn’t the conclusion that most drew. The Conservatives, at that time in opposition to Gordon Brown’s Labour government, seized the moment. In their account, spending was out of control — but this was as true of money for public services as it was of MPs’ expenses or bankers’ bonuses, and all a function of Labour’s mishandling of the economy. The Conservatives made a lasting meme out of the fundamental untruth that “Labour broke the economy with high spending.” Neoliberal assumptions were thus sheltered from the threat posed by the crash.