I’m still trying to put my finger on what exactly so many people found so offensive about the Tory think tank ‘scrap Liverpool’ report on urban regeneration published yesterday. But at least it offers us a clear illustration of the mindset that dominates the intellectual wing of what is soon to be Britain’s governing party.

For the denizens of Hayekville, there really is no such thing as community. The authors cannot seem to fathom why anybody would want to stay in a place where they have lived all their lives, and can trace their family back generations, when they could simply head south and launch their own biotech start-up or qualify as a Chartered Financial Analyst instead.

Human beings are thus reduced to what Marx called ‘abstract labour’. Or, in neoclassical terms, they become nothing more than a simple factor of production that must subject itself to factor mobility if it is to reach market-clearing equilibrium.

One way or another, this has been a monumental own goal for the political right. Hopefully it will prove the first of many.