“The irony was that it was the failure of neo-liberalism itself during the crisis that had caused its principal exponents to cut and run to the social democratic state, both domestically and internationally, to save neo-liberalism from itself. And then, having done so, to later blame social democrats for the cost and consequences of the resulting intervention, which had taken the form of budget deficits and higher public debt arising from a classic Keynesian response to the crisis. This took a breathtaking level of political and ideological hypocrisy from the right.”