Socialism is back in vogue, they said. You have to pivot left to garner support, they said.

The May administration listened to this prevailing narrative over the past three years, stealing Ed Miliband’s tombstone policies and implementing them. Energy price caps, crackdowns on lifestyle freedoms, and more red tap wrapped around business defined a short era of interventionist conservatism.

Champions of free markets and free people were paid lip service over the years, but their ideas rarely embraced. The solution to every problem seemed to be more state intervention. The fix for delayed infrastructure projects was more spending.

But the tables have turned. Overnight, classical liberalism has been put back on the agenda. The Johnson administration is directly challenging the common narrative, with a cabinet