The economic crisis has accelerated this. Even the pro-market, pro-globalisation political centre has lurched to the left. The new consensus espouses a renewed compact of "Keynes at home and Smith abroad". Greater government macro- and micro-interventions at home are needed to stimulate recovery, reduce inequality and preserve social stability. Stronger international co-operation is needed to make this work in tandem with open markets abroad. A new generation of Platonic guardians - high-powered intellectuals and technocrats - is charged with fine-tuning this package and engineering desirable outcomes. Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Larry Summers typify this, as do recent editorials in the FT and the Economist. These are also the new incantations of Davos Man. They also reach the innards of soft centre-right opposition.

Where does this leave the votaries of limited government, free markets and free trade? Very badly placed, which is their fault. Most free-market outfits have become flabby and effete and hark back to the Thatcher and Reagan golden era. Some have soiled themselves by partisan association with a disastrous Bush administration and a Republican Party of southern-fried jocks. Nobel laureates gather to worship at the altar of dead prophets and sing hymns of praise to each other. The latter debate what Hayek said on Monday compared with what Mises said on Tuesday. Congregations recite the age-old catechism, but few outside are listening. This recalls the Keynesian-social democratic consensus in the mid-1970s.

The new conventional wisdom is wrong and dangerous. Big government will result in huge debt burdens, taxation and inflation. And the combination of big government and a new age of protectionism will deepen and prolong recession. Both will damage economic globalisation and create new international political tensions. That is why these threats must be met by effective market-liberal opposition.