Market-driven politics - Neoliberal democracy and the public interest

Colin Leys, Verso, 280 pages, paperback, £12.00

Colin Leys has written a detailed and accessible account of how the marketplace is invading the public sphere and he has a lot to say on how turning public services into commodities transforms and degrades them. He identifies national and global trends which threaten democracy and the choice of real political alternatives.

The book also includes two informative case studies on public service broadcasting and the NHS. The chapter on the creeping privatisation of the NHS is tentative, whereas recent developments seem to allow more certainty (with privately run clinical services in new diagnostic and treatment centres and a planned extension of public-private partnerships to all community health service provision, for example).

But overall this is a very timely analysis containing plenty of useful empirical material.