“Free stuff for everyone”: that’s how Labour’s manifesto pledges – for broadband, childcare, dentist check-ups, maternity and paternity pay, education and prescriptions – have been portrayed by centrist and rightwing political commentators. It’s a radical manifesto that offers a genuine opportunity to transform society and accelerate social mobility, so how to best undermine it? To frame us all as consumers engaged in a transaction.

The 'scroungers versus strivers' philosophy has become deeply embedded after a decade

It goes like this: Labour announces a policy, that policy is trashed as a giveaway – unfeasible, irresponsible and reminiscent of communist Russia. It was the same in 2017. Then, as now, this form of political storytelling has trickled down to voters, and is now parroted so frequently that the Tories can just sit back and benefit. Even those voters who have benefitted from quite a bit of “free stuff” themselves – student grants, dentistry, milk, library books – will decry Labour’s “free stuff” “giveaway”. In this sense, the free-stuff narrative is one of the Tory party’s most successful pieces of political messaging.

The free-stuff narrative is dependent on several distinct mechanisms. Firstly, it is reliant on the idea that it was Labour, and not the global financial crisis in 2008, that caused the country to tumble into recession, and therefore that party cannot be trusted with the economy. This has proved a potent myth, which, in the form of Liam Byrne’s infamous “I’m afraid there’s no money” note, is still doing the rounds as a meme all these years later. It ensures that whatever Labour offers can immediately be dismissed as reckless, irresponsible spending.

Secondly, the free-stuff narrative is reliant on the Overton window shifting towards discussions about the unviability of the welfare state, statements which once would have been unconscionable. To expect those services and schemes that we, the general public, used to take for granted as free at the point of use is now a sign of entitlement. Though we pay our tax and our national insurance, somehow this has ceased to be relevant. To expect well-run, universal basic services has come to signify a “something for nothing” culture, as opposed to the normal functioning of the social contract with a post- Beveridge welfare state – where you pay in via tax and national insurance and in return can reasonably expect certain benefits (which, by the way, aren’t actually free at all).

This shift, and its results – a kind of social amnesia regarding the welfare state and its priorities – has proved convenient for a government that has spent much of the last decade running down public services.

Thirdly, the free-stuff narrative is dependent on the not-unrelated notion of personal responsibility. The “scroungers versus strivers” philosophy has become deeply embedded after a decade, to the point where even children are not immune from it. When Margaret Thatcher abolished free milk for primary schoolchildren in 1971 as education secretary there was widespread uproar. Now, when Labour suggests bringing in free meals for primary school pupils (in a climate where frontline teaching staff talk of dipping into their own pockets to feed malnourished children), critics speak of parents’ responsibility for keeping their own children nourished. “Why should I pay to feed the children of the feckless?” seems to be, these days, a mainstream response.

Then there’s the generational aspect. Younger voters are accustomed, by now, to being portrayed as entitled brats who don’t know they’re born, and the free-stuff narrative plays into this. It is patronisingly suggested that young people are idiots lured in by promises of free sweets, which Corbyn will probably use baby boomers’ houses to pay for. Not only is this line hypocritical of those who parrot it – all of whom benefitted from the welfare state in one way or another – it serves to create more generational division.

Lastly, there’s the nationalistic myopia that has increased under Brexit. This has seen the country look away from its social democratic European neighbours, who might otherwise act as progressive inspirations for another way of doing things, and towards a Trumpian America, where the free-stuff narrative has been long established. With this has also come the US’s virulent opposition to the prospect of a healthcare system free at the point of use, and its deep mistrust of – coupled with an economic interest in – our NHS.

This is not to say that Labour’s spending commitments should not be questioned and costed, that journalists and voters shouldn’t ask how the party intends to pay for its manifesto pledges when it gains power. Such questions are essential in a democracy. Yet it is also important to ask: to what extent we have become so indoctrinated that so many of us have started to perceive such pledges as an irresponsible giveaway bonanza instead of the seeds of a well-funded, operational welfare state?

People are no longer able to believe that another society is possible. Mark Fisher defined capitalist realism as the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it. “Over the past 30 years, capitalist realism has successfully installed a ‘business ontology’ in which it is simply obvious that everything in society, including healthcare and education, should be run as a business,” he wrote.

There’s something truly sad in all this: an internalised belief that, to borrow internet parlance, we don’t deserve nice things. That the usual state of affairs is to slave away to prop up a profoundly unequal economy without feeling we deserve anything in return. To not to have to rely on the state is framed as independence, resilience and personal responsibility – but this air of independent, resolute detachment is deeply limited. The state isn’t a monster that you have to keep feeding, with the monster refusing to keep its side of the bargain. It’s supposed to work for all of us. Has our collective imagination been so crushed that we can no longer envisage what that might look like? Not a society that exploits and oppresses us, but one that nurtures and supports us?

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist