WHAT IS COCKTAIL?
Beyond policy, neoliberalism shows up as a way of being. People organise themselves like small firms: polishing a brand, turning skills into “offerings”, treating education, health, and leisure as investments with returns. Public life shifts too: citizens become customers while success is tracked by metrics and rankings.
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Ever go to a party, a dinner, a function… and you’re bombarded by the utterly, oh-so, magnificently complex terms and discourses of the neo-liberal elite?
Well, firstly, what is neoliberalism? What is protectionism? What did Margaret Thatcher actually do? What did Aristotle actually say? What did Plato mean?
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH NIGHT OUT
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At its simplest, neoliberalism is the view that society works best when markets do most of the organising and the state sets light-touch rules. It prizes competition to lower prices and raise quality, privatisation where feasible, deregulation to open markets, free trade across borders, and individual responsibility over state provision.
Over the last four years the UK has lost 480 nightclubs, a staggering 33% decline. Clubbing culture is disintegrating. As a generation we are opting out. But why? A phrase we know very well, the Cost-of-Living Crisis: going out is simply too expensive.
According to the Malay Annals, a prince of the Palembang kingdom was shipwrecked and washed ashore on an island in the 13th century. There, he saw a creature he believed to be a lion. The prince named his new settlement after the animal, calling it Singapura — the Lion City in English.
12 years ago, Instagram was a novel tool our millennial elders used to express the uniqueness of their mason jar coffees and fairylit shrines to Tyler Oakley and Zoella. There was not a slither of thought in their minds that the generation next would be memefying their wholesome approach to social media.
““The moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride.””
Shifted Britain from “state runs it” to “state sets rules, markets deliver”: tax/monetary squeeze to beat inflation; abolished exchange controls; 1986 City “Big Bang”; mass privatisations with price-cap regulators; tougher union laws; Right to Buy; NHS internal market.
If you were a miner in South Yorkshire the decade read as loss. If you were a young broker in the City, it read as opportunity: foreign banks hiring, pay uncapped, rules simplified.
Neoliberalism gets thrown about a lot — usually with a raised eyebrow and a knowing nod. Under the jargon, it’s both a set of economic ideas and, in 2025, a recognisable type of policy-minded person. It shapes how states regulate, how firms invest, and, indirectly, why your train fare, rent, or energy bill looks the way it does.
“I doooooon’ttttt caaaaaaaare.”
Such was the response of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—or Bad Bunny, as he is more commonly known—when asked how he felt about people not fully grasping the lyrics of his new album because they are in Puerto Rican Spanish. The question was posed by Jon Caramanica, a journalist and pop music critic at The New York Times.
HOW CONTEMPORARY CULTURE CAPITALISES ON SADNESS
“Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry,” wrote Kait Rokowski, collaborative poet and author of Alight. Cue, then, the poeticization, if you will, of our mental health as 1 in 4 people experience mental health problems every year in the UK and 1 in 15 people attempt suicide.
