The myth of popular capitalism was allowed to take hold largely because the Labour Party itself abandoned the politics of redistribution and public ownership, and embraced Thatcherism. Public attitudes on class, inequality and welfare didn’t fundamentally change in response to 18 years of Tory rule - in fact, the evidence is that they moved to the left somewhat. However, the Labour Party has a decisive ability to shape popular attitudes because of its relationship to working class voters, the trade union movement, and its hegemony over most forces left-of-centre. New Labour shifted public opinion to the right on, eg, redistribution, welfare and race, far more successfully than the Tories did. Even so, it was unable to shift opinion to the right on everything. For example, its privatization agenda was never popular, and 67% of people favour renationalising all public utilities privatised in the last 25 years. The point, though, is that the politics of abandoning and de-emphasising class, prevalent among the centre-left in the New Labour era, has been built on myths prepared by the Right. It was supposed to enable the renewal of social democracy with the possibility of an electoral coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats - such was the aim of Labour’s right-wing ‘modernisers’. But far from consolidating a progressive twenty-first century coalition, it has led to the profound degeneration of social democracy, the entrenchment of reactionary social policies to cope with the fall out from rising inequality, crackdowns on civil liberties to contain protest movements, and ultimately the emergence of a shabby ConDem coalition that could - if the Orange Liberals have their way - realign British politics further to the right. Reinstating class as a central heuristic and organising principle for the left is vital.