SO THE general election is done and dusted. What is there to be said that hasn’t been said ?

In Scotland, as in England, the Lib Dems are desolate and devastated, the Labour Party is licking its wounds, for they are many, but the Scots Nats are delighted, even euphoric.

By common consent Nicola Sturgeon has been the star of the Scottish campaign and deserves great credit for her leadership.

We now know that even if the Labour Party had won many seats in Scotland we would still have a Cameron-led Tory government in Westminster.

Harriet Harman was subjected to a form of verbal harassment when she was interviewed by James Naughtie for the BBC, who pressed her to give instant answers to what had gone wrong for Labour.

She rightly insisted that serious thinking and analysis was called for.

Others were not so reticent such as David Miliband, who asserted that the party had gone backward under his brother’s leadership and needed to appeal to the “aspirationals” — as though such a category could capture the complexities of what happened.

Ed Miliband had certainly reached out to the “squeezed middle” anyway.

The Blairite interventions of David Miliband and Peter (now Lord) Mandelson are the product of earlier struggles which were part of the problem in the first place.

There are two things that occur to me at this time. The first is the significant absence of climate change from the main parties’ narratives.

No-one with a brain in their head can ignore the seriousness of this issue, which will have real effects on our children and grandchildren.

I strongly commend Naomi Klein’s recent book This Changes Everything which deals with this matter in depth and with real authority.

The scientific consensus on what is happening is remarkable and must be heeded.

The opposition to this comes from corporations which have interests they are seeking to protect.

They peddle their mumbo-jumbo by creating a fog of ignorance. How our politicians respond to this will have consequences for the future of our planet.

Needless to say, this is a matter for international co-operation but it calls for a proactive response from the British government.

The second thing is to recognise and challenge the prevalence of neoliberal thinking that has undergirded the political practice of British governments from Margaret Thatcher through to Tony Blair and David Cameron. Klein rightly tells us that neoliberalism rests on three pillars — the privatisation of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending.

One might have expected that the 2008 financial crisis would have led to the death of neoliberalism — but not a bit of it.

Colin Crouch in his book The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism points out that “already we have seen how a crisis caused by appalling behaviour among banks had been redefined as a crisis of public spending.

“Bankers’ bonuses are returned to their pre-crisis level, while thousands of public employees are losing their jobs.”

In such ways have concepts such as the public good or the public interest been rendered “problematic.”

These are matters which impinge upon the very concept of citizenship when the talk about freedom of choice is embedded in a hierarchy of inequality.

This is something which the progressive left, whether under the flag of the SNP or Labour, needs to address by parliamentary and extra-parliamentary means.

The intensive process of competition and the creation of more and more markets in health, education and the administration of welfare remind us of how deeply the processes of neoliberalism have gone.

Yet these are human constructs and can be challenged, despite the fact that they are deeply entrenched. There is no historical inevitability about their future continuance.

This offers grounds for hope, as both Klein and Crouch insist. And, as US writer and historian Studs Terkel long ago reminded us, “hope dies last.”

But it will be a struggle. It was Richard Tawney, who in his day was more than a match for Friedrich von Hayek, one of the architects of neoliberalism, who wrote: “The plutocracy consists of forceable, astute, self-confident and, when hard-pressed, unscrupulous people who know pretty well which side their bread is buttered on and intend that the supply of butter should not run short.

“If their position is threatened they will use every piece on the board, political and economic, House of Lords, the press, financial crises, allegations of disaffection in the army, international complication, in the honest belief that they are saving civilisation.”

To them we say: “Thanks, but no thanks” — and organise accordingly.

• John Eldridge is emeritus professor of sociology at Glasgow University.