The 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is not just a time to remember that monumental event. It is also a time to reflect on the hopes and expectations that existed in its aftermath. Of course what stands out now is the triumphalism. The justifiable feeling that in witnessing the collapse of the communist idea the free-market West had proven its superiority for all to see.

Francis Fukuyama summed up this moment in his over-cited The End of History. The American scholar’s contention was not that events would no longer occur, but that in liberal free-market democracy the world had reached the desired destination of political order.

There was much in this. Certainly more than those who had never read the book could concede. The free-market had allowed for unparalleled economic growth. Political liberty had allowed governments to unleash the talents of their populations. The Soviet experiment had been an unmitigated, humanly wasteful disaster. But, of course, the stark choice of the Cold War also provided clarity and the decades that followed have provided a reminder of why such clarity is needed.

What is striking now is how short a time that post-1989 optimism lasted. The events of September 11 2001 reminded people that there were challengers to some of the most basic presumptions of the modern West. But it was the 2008 financial crash that provided the more fundamental blow to Western self-belief.

After the Cold War ended, the West had settled on a recognition that while the Left had broadly won the culture wars – capturing all the major cultural institutions – the Right had won the economic argument. Even the most morose Right-winger could console themselves with this half-victory.

Yet 2008 changed that more than we realised at the time. Although the crash was principally brought about by the insertion of a form of Left-wing social engineering into the US housing market, the resulting pandemonium ended up being levelled against the Right. It became claimed that the one thing that the Right had got right had in fact gone wrong. How happy the old Left were to pick up where they had left off in 1989.

Politicians like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell had been waiting patiently with their one, old, idea. Albeit now repackaged for a new age. This last decade saw them and their comrades fight back hard in the realm of economics. Thanks to Thomas Picketty and others, “inequality” became one of the watchwords of the era. Suddenly the fact that free-market capitalism had raised more people out of poverty than any other idea in history became unimportant.