Neoliberalism has always had this double layer: some of the bottom feeders/journalists/new labour people may actually believe the lower layer that almost makes it sound like an ideology (the rising tide will raise all the boats etc - they've got a whole list of cliches), and attempt to convince the plebs of it. The actual powerful/thinking ones all know it's the deliberate impoverishment one and always was, even when it was called something else.

I think Mick Lynch and the other RMT bloke (ed Ramsay is it) put it well when they say, wherever it comes from, it's an ideological choice who is going to pay for the inflation, the poor or the rich - the rich own all the opinion formers/farmers so usually 'there is no alternative' to what they want to do. Imagine how popular a labour leader who said that could be (well for a few months, until they can turn them into the baddies) - but it's the old Chomsky/marr formulation: if they did think that, they wouldn't be sitting where they're sitting (ie in the shadow cabinet/nec/etc) - they aint going to make the Corbyn mistake again.