Philip Hammond has recently made a rather startling confession for a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer: that 'the market' is currently failing fairness tests in the distributional outcomes it is producing in the UK. However, his solution saw him quickly restored to partisan type, idealising 'textbook' market institutions and setting as the future goal returning to the way market outcomes are 'supposed to' operate. This SPERI Comment blog post highlights the continued reification of ideal-typical market constructions within Conservative Party political rhetoric. 'The market' is still capable of producing the best possible outcomes, Hammond seemed to be saying, even if the Government of which he was a key member had found it impossible to secure the conditions under which this might be so.