Introduction

Over the past few decades, neoliberalism has achieved hegemonic status. Although it has constantly mutated and evolved to adapt to changing political conjunctures, it has become dominant not just as an elite political project but as a new common sense, or doxa (Bourdieu 2012: 313). Consumerism and the adulation of wealth and entrepreneurialism have become so firmly anchored in the popular common sense that it is hard to imagine any alternative. Neoliberalism has successfully promoted corporate and private interests over the collective via processes of deregulation, privatisation and marketisation, shifting power back to the already rich and powerful, whilst shoring up the legitimacy of its project by demonising and disciplining those who refuse to internalise the neoliberal ideal of the entrepreneurial, independent consumer.  Stuart Hall, following Gramsci, reminds us that hegemony is never complete or permanent – the hegemonic project of neoliberalism must be constantly “renewed and revised” – so, although neoliberalism itself is in crisis, the hegemonic project of neoliberalism is ongoing (Hall 2011).

There are nonetheless signs that the neoliberal hegemony established in the 1980s is currently facing similar challenges to those faced by social democracy forty years ago, notably regarding the current form of the British state, economic management, access to citizenship, the changing global order and political representation (as highlighted by Gamble 1994). Taken together, this paper argues that Britain’s current economic and political crises can be seen to constitute a conjunctural crisis whereby consent for the current hegemony has become tenuous (Jefferson 2014). It then moves on to discussing the possible responses to that crisis. Successive governments from Thatcher to Johnson respond to crisis by resorting to authoritarian populism to build up hegemony (Hall et al. 1978), further reinforcing the power of the State. Yet, I argue that the current conjuncture might provide a way of responding differently to crisis rather than through coercion, constructing consent for an alternative hegemonic project. The common theme that brings together the multiple facets of the current conjunctural crisis is that of power: the widespread feeling of powerlessness amongst ordinary citizens when faced with the power of political and economic elites. It is suggested that the question of power might be used to link together popular concerns and disparate groups, such as those regarding citizenship and representation, in order to construct popular consent for a new counter-hegemonic project led from below.

A crisis of neoliberal hegemony?

Not Dead Yet: The resilience of neoliberalism

Since the neoliberal project was launched in Britain in the mid-1970s, it has gone from crisis to crisis, but has successfully managed to exploit these moments of crisis to further its quest for hegemony. Despite the widespread belief that neoliberal global capitalism had become an entirely dominant force by the end of the 1980s with the fall of communism, it might be said that it already suffered something of a crisis: the particular brand of neoliberalism pursued by Margaret Thatcher had failed to prove economically successful, as revealed by the recession of 1990-1993 (Gamble 1994: 254), and the British Social Attitudes Survey showed that the general public had not yet integrated neoliberal beliefs about welfare and redistribution (BSA 2010). Yet, neoliberalism successfully overcame that crisis, at least temporarily, as Tony Blair presided over continued economic growth, low and stable rates of inflation and falling unemployment. Unsustainable though this economic model was (Kitson and Wilkinson 2007: 811), it allowed New Labour to shake off its old reputation for fiscal incompetence. The Blair years also ushered in a distinctive form of neoliberalism, marked by social liberalism as opposed to the social conservatism of the Thatcher years: what Nancy Fraser has described in the American context as “progressive neoliberalism”, neoliberalism “repackaged, given a broader appeal, and linked to other noneconomic aspirations for emancipation” linked to demands for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, post-racialism, multiculturalism and environmentalism” (Fraser 2019: 7).

When the 2008 financial crisis revealed the severe weaknesses of the neoliberal economic model, progressive neoliberalism played a significant role in allowing neoliberalism to bounce back, particularly as the Conservative Party under David Cameron embraced a more socially liberal agenda, notably legislating in favour of gay marriage. As in the past, neoliberalism also managed to appear progressive by claiming to promote opportunity and choice, values that have become embedded in the lived experience people have as market agents (Gamble 2019a: 10). Remarkably, advocates of neoliberalism successfully managed to gloss over the severe weaknesses of the neoliberal economic model responsible for the 2008 crash, notably the lax regulation of the banking system, the spread of financialisation and increasing levels of consumer debt and inequality. Far from posing a threat to neoliberalism, the crisis of 2008 was seized upon as an opportunity to push the neoliberal project even further (Hall 2011: 719). This was primarily done through the framing of the crisis, which precluded any profound questioning of the dominant neoliberal economic model, instead justifying a return to “business as usual” (Seymour 2010: 16–17; Clarke 2012: 49–50). The way in which the crisis was framed ultimately determined how government responded to it. Rather than present it as a crisis of neoliberalism – or even as a fiscal crisis or a crisis of growth – it was very deliberately presented as a crisis of debt to which the only proper response was austerity (Hay 2014). Had the crisis been perceived as a crisis of growth, this would have entailed questioning the neoliberal debt-fuelled growth model. As Hay explains, “the crisis of debt discourse” was therefore “paradigm-reinforcing” whereas a “crisis of growth discourse” would have been “paradigm-challenging” (Hay 2014: 72). This particular “politics of crisis narration” (Hay 2014: 64) enabled the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government to apportion blame to their Labour predecessors and their public spending profligacy, thus diverting attention from the shortcomings of the neoliberal model itself. This strategy also enabled them to “nationalise” what was in reality a global crisis, justifying swift and drastic action on the part of the nation-state (Clarke 2012, p. 50). Furthermore, it allowed them to “personalise” the crisis, associating it not with a faceless system but rather with individual citizens in Britain. The real problem was said to be one of irresponsibility: both of the previous government and of individuals that has resulted from the excessive growth of the State (Clarke & Newman 2012). Through their dependence on the State, benefit claimants had indirectly caused the crisis by encouraging the State to overspend to meet their needs (Bell 2015: 81-83).

More than ten years after the crisis of 2008, neoliberalism appears to be facing another crisis – that of the global pandemic. Although this may appear to have nothing to do with neoliberalism, it should be remembered that neoliberal austerity policies exacerbated existing health inequalities and made public health systems less able to cope with the COVID-19 (Marmot et al. 2020). The pandemic has forced the current Conservative government to renege on its commitment to reducing the public debt. Government measures to support businesses and nationalise household incomes are expected to cost £280 billion in 2021, bringing the budget deficit to a peace-time high (House of Commons 2021). Yet, as Šumonja suggests, “it would be a mistake to conclude that the neoliberal era is over just on account of the “emergency Keynesianism” that governments around the world are resorting to” (2020: 2). To believe this is the case would be to assume that austerity is intrinsic to neoliberalism: it is not – austerity was simply one means of managing the last crisis of neoliberalism. Thus, rejection of austerity does not entail automatic rejection of neoliberalism. Indeed, “foul-weather Keynesianism” was initially used by the government of Gordon Brown to mitigate the worst effects of the 2008 crash (Hay 2014: 64). Even before the crash, the New Labour governments increased spending on public services – mainly on the NHS and education – by an average of 4.4% per year in real terms, compared to just 0.7% under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997 (Chote et al. 2010). Yet, under New Labour higher public spending did nothing to reduce inequalities in income, health and wealth which all rose during the 13 years it was in power (Dorling, 2010). Austerity policies merely exacerbated these as changes to taxes and benefits since 2010 have continued to fall disproportionately on the poor (Alston 2018: 18). What is more relevant is therefore not to look at government spending levels but rather at who is benefiting from government policy. Indeed, the poor always lose out under neoliberal governments, regardless of whether public spending increases or not. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. In the past decades the private sector has benefitted greatly from policies intended to reduce the role of the State in the delivery of public services, notably through a massive increase in outsourcing (House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts 2014: 3). Similarly, current government responses to the pandemic and the economic losses resulting from repeated lockdowns are likely to exacerbate inequalities between the working poor and the asset-owning wealthy (Berry et al. 2020). The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme first introduced in March 2020, under which the UK government pays 80% of employees’ salaries for hours not worked (employees on furlough), may not adequately protect the poorest workers: it has not prevented redundancies, and many workers will still experience a drop in their income, particularly the lowest-paid workers who continue to spend more of their incomes on rent and debt repayments than higher-paid workers who have been able to make savings by reducing discretionary spending (such as on entertainment and holidays) (Berry et al. 2020: 17-22). Meanwhile, under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, the government underwrites lending by commercial banks, thus protecting lenders rather than small businesses who remain fully liable for their debts. “Payment holidays” on rents, loans and utility bills are merely a means of postponing debt repayment, rather than alleviating it. As a result, “these government interventions are an implicit bailout protecting the income streams of landlords, banks and utility firms” (Berry et al. 2020: 37). Furthermore, private companies, especially those with close personal ties to government ministers, have benefitted significantly from public procurement contracts for testing and contract tracing and personal protection equipment. A review by the New York Times of over 2,500 contracts awarded by the British government, the NHS, local authorities and other public bodies from January to November 2020 revealed that there “is ample evidence of cronyism, waste and poor due diligence” (Bradley et al. 2020). Contracts worth €5 billion were awarded to companies with histories of tax evasion, fraud and corruption.

It would therefore seem that the latest apparent crisis has been seized upon as an opportunity for extending neoliberalism even further, shoring up private capital at the expense of workers. Post-pandemic, it is entirely likely that new public sector austerity policies will be introduced, especially as the British government struggles to manage the economic disruption resulting from Brexit. Indeed, following the budget announced in March 2021, the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicted that departments other than health and education are likely to face a 3% real terms cut in 2022-23 (Zaranko 2021). None of this should surprise us, given the remarkable capacity of neoliberalism for adaptation and survival, no matter what the political hue of the government in power (Bell and Christoph 2019). It is pointless to repeatedly declare neoliberalism prematurely dead. Nonetheless, neoliberal hegemony is fragile. Whilst it has so far been able to seize on crises as opportunities, it is constantly threatened by crisis and is increasingly on the defensive (Davidson 2016).

What crisis?

What crisis is this? As Hay argues, it is essential to correctly define the crisis before we can think about how to respond to it (2014). Following Clarke (2010), it is also necessary to avoid thinking of crisis as a decisive break: there is no linear unfolding of a crisis – a crisis needs to be understood as an accumulation of multiple factors over time. This means taking a conjunctural approach to understanding how different crises come together and are interconnected. The last time that crisis led to epochal change was in the 1970s when the post-war social democratic settlement gave way to a new neoliberal consensus. This involved the convergence of a number of different crises – of economic management, of the constitution, of class and social relations – into a more generalised crisis of hegemony (Gamble 1994; Hall et al., 1978). Can it be said that a similar conjunctural crisis has emerged today which has resulted in a loss of consent for neoliberal governance? This is not an easy question to ask as there are many different aspects of the crisis. I do not claim to cover them all here, but simply to draw out some key elements of the current conjuncture in the UK.

Economic crisis

As in the 1970s, the UK is suffering from a severe economic crisis. The economic paradigm of the last 40 years went unchallenged following the 2008 crash and subsequent recession as government continued to fuel debt-based growth in the financial sector, notably through quantitative easing, enriching shareholders over workers (Prieg & Greenham 2011). Even before the COVID-19 pandemic and Britain’s exit from the European Union, there was widespread consensus that another financial crisis was brewing, largely on account of the amount of unsecured debt in the international economy (Gamble 2019a: 7). In 2020, the UK suffered its biggest economic slump in 300 years, producing almost 10% fewer goods and services than in 2019 (Romei and Giles 2021). Brexit is likely to exacerbate this situation. It is estimated that, “overall, less than a third (31%) of the economy (as measured by GDP) is likely to remain relatively unaffected by both coronavirus and the long-term effects of Brexit” (Tetlow and Pope 2020: 10). Even if the UK economy does bounce back, it will remain prone to crisis if it fails to tackle its fundamental structural problems. Due to a deregulated, low-wage economy, which encourages employers to hire highly-qualified workers for low-skilled jobs, the UK suffers from productivity rates 13% below the G7 average (IPPR 2017: 33-7). Perhaps most worryingly, economic growth has become largely dependent on household spending as a result of weak private sector investment and a record trade deficit (IPPR 2017: 48). Given that the decline in real UK wages since 2007 has been the largest of all developed countries, bar Greece, Mexico and Portugal (IPPR 2017: 15), household spending can only be sustained by unsustainable levels of consumer debt (which now represents 142% of disposable income) (IPPR 2017: 48). Wage stagnation does not only compound the structural problems of the British economy but also poses significant problems of legitimacy for the neoliberal paradigm as economic injustice becomes ever-more apparent: between 2010 and 2015, average pay for directors in FTSE companies rose by 47% (IPPR 2017: 26). The economic crisis cannot therefore be dissociated from an unfolding political crisis.

Political crisis

It has become common to suggest that democracy itself is in crisis, not just in the UK, but across the world. This is largely due to trends which seem to deviate from the norm in liberal democracies: the rise of “anti-establishment” and “populist” movements apparently challenging the status quo, such as UKIP in Britain which had a significant influence on the country’s decision to exit from the EU in 2020; the decline in public trust in politicians and in the political system more generally; the loss of faith in democracy itself (Przeworski 2019). It is often thought that these trends threaten democracy, not because citizens have lost power to remove governments through elections, but simply because democracy has become a less effective mechanism for processing conflicts in a peaceful and orderly fashion (Przeworski 2019: 7-8). These concerns are hardly new. In the 1970s, the State found it increasingly difficult to process conflicts over race, gender and class, thereby discrediting the claims of social democracy to guarantee universal citizenship rights, leading to a political crisis that in turn led to the rise of a new neoliberal hegemony (Gamble 1994: 25-8). Yet these demands for recognition and expanded citizenship were not so much a challenge to democracy as a demand that democracy live up to its claims of equal representativity. Indeed, the rise of contemporary “populist” or “anti-establishment” movements which are seen to challenge democracy might be interpreted as a response to the failures of governments to live up to democratic ideals. As Mény and Surel suggest, “populism can be read as a fever warning which signals that problems are not being dealt with effectively, or points to the malfunctioning of the linkages between citizens and governing elites” (2002: 15). There is a danger of misdiagnosing the crisis if we focus only on the behaviour of citizens or on certain “extremist” politicians who are seen to threaten democracy, rather than on the political elites and how they might be undermining it. We ought therefore to adopt a ‘supply-side” narrative of crisis which locates the crisis firmly within the political system itself (Richards and Smith 2014). This was the conclusion reached in 2004 by researchers at the Constitution Unit at University College London who examined whether the decline of trust in the political system and participation in elections amounted to a crisis of democracy: they concluded that “talk of a crisis is premature” as citizens were not rejecting democracy per se but rather reacting against misconduct and ‘sleaze” on the part of politicians and the lack of political choice provided by the two main political parties (Bromley et al. 2004).

A misdiagnosis of the crisis is likely to lead to a misguided response. We should not regard the rise of populism as a cause of crisis, but rather than the symptom of a deeper malaise in our contemporary democratic systems. This is not a crisis of democracy per se but a crisis of the neoliberal paradigm in which it works. Contra vocal critics of populist trends such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair, it makes no sense to fight populism with “progressive centrist” politics (Blair 2018). This is to ignore the failure of those same “centrist” politics to live up to the liberal democratic ideas they claim to promote. As Sandel argues, that liberal tradition is meant to demonstrate neutrality when faced with conflicting opinions and to act in the public interest, i.e. in the interests of the majority (Sandel 2018). Yet, that neutrality is impossible in practice when trust is placed in the market to determine the public interest, as is the case with technocratic liberalism that is ill-equipped to tackle moral issues regarding growing inequalities of wealth and power and the decline of self-esteem that they may entail. Neutrality means ensuring that corporate interests are made subservient to the public interest.

So, what exactly is the nature of the present political crisis? In many ways, the current situation in the UK resembles what Gamble identified as a crisis of the authority of the State in three main areas: economic management, citizenship rights and representation (1994: 25). The economic crisis in the UK is not yet overtly linked to a challenge to the authority of the State as in the 1970s when wages stagnated, while inflation and unemployment rose. As highlighted earlier, the crisis narrative following the post-2008 recession largely enabled the Coalition government to impute blame to their Labour predecessors, deflecting blame from the neoliberal economic model. In the last general election, it seems that the Conservative Party managed to win votes in traditional Labour-voting constituencies because they were perceived to be more competent economic managers (Mattinson 2020; Labour Together 2020: 63-65). Nonetheless, an economic crisis is bubbling beneath the surface and risks spilling over into a political crisis as the injustices of the current system become increasingly obvious.

The current crisis of representation is perhaps more evident. In the 1970s, it was claimed that some groups, notably trade unions, were over-represented to the detriment of other groups. Today, there is a feeling amongst the majority of the electorate that they are not adequately represented by their political representatives. In one survey, 72% of British people interviewed agreed with the statement, “Our government does not prioritise the concerns of people like me” (Cameron and Young 2017). If we accept that neoliberalism is a class project (Harvey 2007; Davidson 2018), this is not just a general sentiment or a political accident, but rather a deliberate policy goal. The very aim of neoliberal governments is to promote the interests of commercial elites “against the general efficacy of democratic practices and institutions” (Gilbert 2014: 30). This is because effective democracy is about empowering the collective whereas the logic of neoliberalism is about promoting market relations as the model for all types of social interaction as a means of realising individual freedom (Gilbert 2014: 70-71). As a result, democracy has become something of a façade – “fake democracy” (Fenton and Freedman 2018) or “post-democracy” (Crouch 2004) – behind which real power is exercised by an unaccountable elite. Democratic elections give people the illusion of choice but, as many have come to understand, there is no real point in voting as the same regime remains in power. As Davidson puts it, political “debates… have the quality of a shadow play, an empty ritual in which trivial or superficial differences are emphasized in order to give an impression of real alternatives and justify the continuation of party competition” (Davidson 2016: 625). Of course, it might be argued that democracy has never really functioned in the public interest. Yet, in the recent past the advent of social democracy through the welfare state gave at least the impression that the contrary was true (Gamble 2019b). Under neoliberalism, liberal democracy has been pared down to its defence of entrepreneurial freedom, human rights and basic political freedoms such as free elections, whilst the defence of equality has been largely eliminated, despite the rhetoric of “progressive neoliberalism” (Mouffe 2018: 14).

Closely linked to this crisis of representation is that of citizenship rights. In the 1970s, this took the form of a conflict between those seeking the extension or the denial of civil, political and social rights to all citizens (Gamble 1994: 25-28). Today, a similar conflict is being played out, often framed in terms of so-called “culture wars” between progressives and traditionalists, most starkly illustrated by the debate over immigration. The Windrush scandal revealed in 2018 exposed the failure of the British State to fully incorporate British citizens who came to the UK from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1973. Many of these people, who did not carry British passports, found themselves considered as illegal immigrants and deprived of basic citizenship rights such as access to healthcare as part of the hostile environment policy spearheaded by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary from 2010 to      2016 (Goodfellow 2020). The affair did provoke an apology from the British government, but it has not reversed the policies that led to it, failing to resolve the tensions between the rhetoric of equality and the reality on the ground. This has led to challenges to the British State from grassroots movements such as Black Lives Matter. The State has also faced challenges from right-wing extremist groups who contest any efforts to broaden citizenship rights.

Another aspect of the present political crisis is the looming constitutional crisis, which was of course also present in the 1970s. Whilst the civil conflict in Northern Ireland has been de-escalated, the future of the political union between the four nations of the UK has never looked so uncertain, particularly in the wake of Brexit. Even within England, the pursuit of what Jessop has described as Thatcher’s “two-nations project” has split the country between those who have been able to participate in popular capitalism (via home and share ownership) and those who have not, and also reinforced the north–south divide due to the focus on the financial and service sectors (Jessop 2017: 4).

Perhaps taken individually, these different challenges to the British State might not represent a full-blown crisis but, taken together, they might be seen to constitute a conjunctural crisis whereby consent for the current paradigm, while not withdrawn, has become tenuous. To borrow Jeremy Gilbert’s term, it is “disaffected consent”, meaning that there is “a general acquiescence” to the neoliberal project, “a degree of deference to its relative legitimacy in the absence of any convincing alternative, and a belief that it cannot be effectively challenged” (Gilbert 2015: 29). Such weak consent may not be enough to maintain hegemony in the long term. The ruling elites’ response to this situation is the same as its response to the more overt challenge to the hegemony of social democracy experienced in the 1970s, that is, to resort to coercion. As Hall et al. so eloquently explained in Policing the Crisis, when hegemony can no longer be maintained via consent, the State shifts to coercion, but it seeks to gain consent for that coercion by constructing moral panics about social problems to which law and order come to be seen as the only possible solution – this is “legitimate coercion” around which a new hegemonic bloc can be constructed (Hall et al. 1978: 317–323). Hall would later refer to this as “authoritarian populism”, highlighting the instrumentalisation of popular fears and anxieties from below for political ends (Hall, 1988). It is therefore important to refute the assertion that “the most visceral opponent of liberal democracy is populism” (Diamond 2019: 278): in its neoliberal guise, liberal democracy has repeatedly used authoritarian forms of populism to build up consent for its hegemonic project. This is a trend evident in the UK from Thatcher, though to Blair (Bell 2011), to Cameron (Bell 2015), and now Johnson.

Responding to the crisis

Authoritarian populism

As the neoliberal state sought to forge hegemonic consent through coercion, it repeatedly helped to manufacture moral panics about gay people, “welfare scroungers”, migrants, young people, irresponsible parents, anti-social behaviour, knife crime and terrorism, in an attempt to be seen to be making efforts to provide physical security to the population at large when its efforts to provide social security were found wanting (Garland 2001; Wacquant 2009; Bell 2011). In response to these moral panics, there has been widespread criminalisation as the penal net has been cast increasingly wide to catch an array of behaviour not previously covered by the criminal law. Beyond the criminal law, the British state has increasingly resorted to more subtle forms of authoritarianism by the exercise of “soft power” which is more diffuse, exercised via the intermediary of a number of different State and non-State actors, and less overtly coercive, dressed as it often is in the language of individual empowerment (Bell 2015). As Bruff argues, authoritarianism does not only take the form of “brute coercive force” but is also evident in “the reconfiguring of state and institutional power in an attempt to insulate certain policies and institutional practices from social and political dissent” (2016: 114). Insulating neoliberal governments from dissent involves securing consent though more or less subtle coercive practices.

Most recently, the rise of the so-called “culture wars” in Britain has provided a further opportunity for the neoliberal State to secure consent via populist immigration policies and nativist nationalism. It is widely asserted that British people are now divided more along lines of values and cultural attitudes than class or economics.     David Goodhart summed up this divide as that between the “Anywheres” and the “‘Somewheres”, with the former purportedly defining their identities with educational and career success and being “confident with new places and people”, and the latter having “ascribed identities” “based on group belonging and particular places”, many of whom have lost out economically and feel that their views are marginalised in the public conversation (Goodhart 2017: 2-3). The “Anywheres” are said to welcome change, embrace meritocratic views on race, sexuality and gender, and prioritise individualism over community and tradition. The “Somewheres” are said to be nostalgic for the past, to be social conservatives, and show strong attachment to community and nation (Goodhart 2017: 15-16). Those in favour of multiculturalism are thus pitted against those who favour stricter immigration controls; the moral liberals against the moral conservatives; the intellectual “liberal elites” against the “common sense” of ordinary people. This is a view that is shared by Goodwin (2020) (Eatwell and Goodwin 2018) and others (Mounk 2019) and is widely thought to explain both the vote in favour of Brexit in the 2016 referendum (Goodwin and Heath 2016) and the collapse of Labour’s “red wall” in the 2019 general election.

It is undeniable that cultural divides do exist: many opinion surveys show that people defined as working class tend to be more socially authoritarian than other classes, an attitude than can at times spill over into opposition to immigration (Evans & Tilley 2017; Gest 2016; Mattinson 2020; Labour Together 2020: 48-50). However, the extent of the divide between social attitudes is sometimes exaggerated. An Ipsos MORI poll revealed that there is actually broad consensus about the key problems facing the country, notably with regard to public services and immigration (2020). Lawrence suggests that the “culture wars” between Labour’s “different social constituencies are not as deep-seated and insuperable as many suppose” – even if the working classes who have traditionally voted Labour demonstrate less liberal attitudes with regard to issues such as crime or immigration, “it does not follow that they are instinctively illiberal in their world view” (Lawrence 2020: 32). Even if these divides are as wide as some suggest, it must be recognised that they are driven at least as much by economics as culture. As one survey exploring the attitudes of older working-class white male Brexit voters suggests, fears about immigration are primarily motivated by concerns regarding immigrants accessing welfare funds or competing for jobs (Bromley-Davenport et al. 2018). Similarly, Mattinson, in her survey of residents of “red wall” areas in the north of England following the 2019 general election, found that immigration was a salient issue primarily because the arrival of immigrant groups in deprived areas appeared to coincide with their economic decline – it was therefore easy to scapegoat migrants for the problems of unemployment or access to public services experienced by local people (2020). McKenzie’s ethnographic research amongst working class “Leave” voters suggests that if these people expressed concerns about race or migration, this was primarily to do with their sense of abandonment and isolation from mainstream political parties who did not appear to be taking their financial struggles seriously (2017). All of this suggests that the idea of a full-blown “culture war” in Britain is largely exaggerated.

Yet, it is politically convenient to for the British government to highlight value-based divisions rather than focus on the real divisions of wealth and power that may be driving them. The choice presented to the British people becomes that between two value systems rather than a choice between Right and Left, or between neoliberalism and a socialist alternative. In focussing on values, the government has invoked authoritarian populist strategies. It has adopted a tough points-based immigration system which effectively bars unskilled migrants from seeking citizenship, in the hopes that this will reduce the number of migrants coming into the UK. This allows it to appeal to nativist nationalist sentiment according to which “native” British people should have priority access to jobs and services. It also appeals to nativistic nationalism via its promotion of a particular version of history which celebrates its colonial past and should not, in the words of Boris Johnson, be “embarrassed to sing old songs about how Britannia rules the waves” (Johnson 2020). To ensure that history is not “rewritten”, or Britain’s history not “edited” “to make it look more politically correct” (Johnson 2020), the government is prepared to invoke the full force of the law. In September 2020, the Department of Education’s official curriculum guidelines advised schools not to use any material that might be regarded as advocating an “extreme political stance”, such as a desire to overthrow capitalism (Busby 2020). In January 2021, the Communities secretary announced that it will introduce legislation to give ministers a veto over possible future decisions by local councils to remove controversial statues, such as that of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston that was toppled by protesters in June 2020 (Jenrick 2021). In February 2021, in the name of protecting “free speech”, the Education Secretary announced that a “free speech champion” could be appointed to take legal action against universities or student unions who refuse to give a platform to controversial speakers, leading to concerns that this will effectively allow government to control academic freedom and institutional autonomy (BBC 2021). In March 2021, a new policing bill was introduced, proposing 10 years’ imprisonment for defacing a statue.

Like the Thatcher government before it, Johnson’s conservative government has found appeals to nationalism in particular to be highly effective ways of securing consent, helping to create political unity that has been lost through the pursuit of socially-divisive policies (Davidson 2008). Indeed, given the disconnect in terms of economic issues between the current Conservative Party and those who voted for it in 2019, focusing on cultural issues may be a savvy electoral strategy (Bale et al. 2020). It is certainly a good way of baiting the Labour Party to test if it will declare itself to be on the “right” or the “wrong” side of the culture war, thus avoiding any serious debate over policy. All this suggests that, despite the conjunctural crisis it faces, neoliberal hegemony may well remain secure – and even be consolidated – as authoritarian populism is once again successfully invoked to achieve popular consent. Following Gramsci, to mount a serious attack on this hegemony, it will be necessary to wage either a “war of manoeuvre” or a “war of position” (Gramsci, 1971). The former involves a rapid, decisive change in the balance of power, which seems very unlikely in the present circumstances (Worth 2018). However, given the extent of the conjunctural crisis we are currently facing,     conditions are ripe for a war of position, waged slowly over a long period of time to establish new ways of thinking and political action capable of vanquishing neoliberalism (Massey and Rustin 2013: 203-4). What might a new response to the current crisis look like and how might consent be constructed for an alternative hegemonic project? I do not pretend to provide a blueprint here but rather concentrate on a key theme that such a project might be built around.

Popular Empowerment

If there is one common theme that brings together the multiple facets of the current conjunctural crisis, it is that of power: the widespread feeling of powerlessness amongst ordinary citizens when faced with the power of political and economic elites. The 2020 Ipsos MORI poll cited above revealed a sense of disconnect between the public and politicians as survey participants expressed a desire to be more involved in political decision-making and to have increased transparency and more accessible information about key policies (2020: 13). In much of the work that has been done into understanding public opinion in Britain in the wake of Brexit, the sense of disempowerment is palpable (e.g. Bromley-Davenport et al. 2018; Mattinson 2020). The state of post-democracy favoured by neoliberalism has not gone unnoticed by citizens, even though they may not articulate their concerns in this way. A sense of disempowerment can of course lead people to support nationalism, as it appeals to that desire to “take back control”. Yet, as suggested above, this merely exacerbates the problem as attention is diverted from the real causes of disempowerment inherent in both the British constitutional model and its particular variant of neoliberalism. It is, however, possible, to address this sense of disempowerment and to seek to genuinely empower citizens in ways which will enable them to gain real control over their lives.

The neoliberals understood very well the innate human desire for empowerment, advancing their project behind a discourse of individual freedom. Thatcher notably promised to ensure that power was no longer “tilted in favour of the State” and “to restore the balance of power in favour of the people” (Conservative Party 1979). In doing so, she was tapping into genuine concerns about the expansion of the State into multiple areas of private life. Stuart Hall, writing in 1984, understood very well that the state had become “problematic”, “a gigantic, swollen bureaucratic force, swallowing up almost the whole of civil society” (Hall 1984: 24), whilst other left-wing academics worried that whilst “we seem to need things from the state… what we are given is often shoddy or penny-pinching, and besides, it comes to us in a way that seems to limit our freedom, reduce the control we have over our lives” (Mitchell at al., 1979: 2). In practice of course, state power was by no means limited under neoliberalism, and indeed the State extended its authoritarian reach even further than had been the case in the late 1970s. Neoliberalism’s failure to deliver individual empowerment is one aspect of the current conjunctural crisis that may be exploited. This might be done by genuinely empowering citizens through economic and political democracy, reducing both the power of the State and that of corporations with which it has formed so close a relationship (Miliband 1990: 58). Empowerment here is understood in a very different way than it was by the neoliberals. It is understood as capacity for resistance to existing power relations. It is necessary to think “about processes of resistance and spheres of contestation that exist within social relations and how such contestation is articulated and rendered as socially and politically possible (or impossible) in relation to state power”. (Coleman et al. 2009: 14).

Economic democracy entails moving beyond vertical power structures in order to involve ordinary citizens in decisions about how the economy should be run. This may notably entail the nationalisation of the banking sector, a step which Mitchell and Fazi believe could provide the opportunity for democratic control by ensuring that bank governance includes “representatives of unions, community and social movements, and elected officials” to ensure that the wider societal goals of banking can be met (2017: 258). For Andrew Cumbers, economic democracy should be based on three key pillars: (1) the recognition of individual economic rights via the creation of a universal basic income to give people the basic resources necessary to make meaningful life choices; (2) diverse forms of democratic and collective ownership of companies and services in a mixed economy that would shift the balance of power from managers and shareholders by giving individual workers more say over how their labour is used, and consumers more control over how public services are run; and (3) the cultivation of a more democratic and deliberative political economy, for instance by involving citizens in participatory budgeting, allowing them to determine how public money is spent (Cumbers 2020). The aim is to move beyond both the Labourist model of workplace democracy and the statist model of nationalisation whereby individual workers, consumers and citizens were in practice often excluded from decision-making processes which were concentrated in the hands of a small elite.  

Economic democracy would necessarily be underpinned by political democracy. This means ensuring that citizens are properly represented and that they are provided with adequate opportunities to participate in political decision-making processes and have their voice heard beyond local and national elections. As highlighted above, liberal democracy in its current guise is failing to allow citizens to feel that they are adequately represented. This situation is only exacerbated by the British majoritarian first-past-the-post system. Recent changes to constituency boundaries made by the conservative government via the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 risk diluting representativity even further by increasing the number of seats likely to be won by the Tories (Pickard 2020). Furthermore, certain populations are likely to be locked out of the voting system altogether as the government rejected cross-party amendments to the Act that would have facilitated the automatic registration of young people on the electoral register, boosting the representation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities (Tyler 2021).

Genuine democracy means coupling liberalism with equal rights to political representation and participation. This entails making democracy more responsive to public demands. Deliberative processes, such as those instituted by citizens’ assemblies, are gaining increasing attention (OECD 2020), but there is a danger that these processes are often led from the top down with discussion topics predetermined in advance by political leaders (Courant 2019). Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the propositions that emerge will actually lead to concrete policy change (O’Leary 2019). As Stuart Hall reminds us, there is always a risk of “participation without democracy” (Hall 1981: 15). It is therefore essential to include citizens in discussion about how more representative and meaningful participatory democratic processes might be instituted in the first place, perhaps by involving them in a Constitutional Convention, notably proposed by the Labour Party in their 2017 and 2019 general election manifestoes (Renwick and Hazell 2017). Contrary to a Royal Commission on the Constitution, currently mooted by the conservative government, which would essentially be composed of elite voices, ordinary citizens could be directly involved in “an open, pluralist and democratic process” (Pearce 2021).

Providing citizens with real opportunities to get involved in democratic processes – or at least to see that such processes are being instituted even if they are not directly involved – may be a way of constructing a new hegemonic bloc. Indeed, “democracy” is a useful hegemonic signifier, capable of rallying together diverse publics to a much greater extent than opposition to the slippery and often misunderstood concept of neoliberalism (Mouffe 2018: 30).

Building a new hegemonic bloc

As Clarke notes, blocs “need to be assembled and articulated”. He sees the current bloc supporting the Johnson government as uniting around his (and the media’s) successful “appeals to sentiments of loss (in its several varieties), dislocation and abandonment” (Clarke 2020: 126). Indeed, promises to “get Brexit done” appealed to a desire to restore a sense of British pride largely based in the imperial past, as well as to a demand that the people’s voice as expressed in the referendum be heard. Invoking democracy might not appeal so much to this sense of loss, but it could certainly appeal to sentiments of dislocation and abandonment, enabling people to feel they have some control over their own problems. Thatcher successfully assembled a “bloc of interests around the themes of anti-statism, anti-collectivism and anti-socialism”, creating a new common sense about the causes of society’s ills (Gamble 1994: 182). Today, it might be possible to organise people against concentrations of power, not just in the State, but also in corporations, which might be presented as the source of social, political and economic ills. Of course, such a focus might lead to a rejection of liberal democracy and feed populism which, as highlighted above, might take on an authoritarian guise and paradoxically end up strengthening elite power. However, it might also open up a path towards the assemblage of a new hegemonic bloc capable of exploiting the conjunctural crisis and offering a genuinely democratic alternative to current neoliberal concentrations of power. To do so, it is necessary to build a broad alliance between disparate groups or, as Mouffe suggests, to create a “chain of equivalence” between multiple democratic demands (Mouffe 2018: 35). This might be a means of uniting people beyond traditional class boundaries, generational, racial or cultural divisions, allowing these disparate groups to articulate their demands for more power and recognition through the signifier of democracy. A common demand for power and recognition entails recognising rather than crushing plurality, accepting that a shared interest does not have to be bound together by a shared identity or homogeneous culture (Gilbert 2014: 116), as is often the case with populist movements of the right. What Nancy Fraser describes as “an inclusive politics of recognition” (2019: 11) must underpin any attempt to create a new hegemonic bloc capable of challenging the status quo.

Conclusion

Of course, the construction of hegemony requires much more than the construction of a popular political movement or hegemonic bloc – it also entails the development of a coherent programme of policy backed up by intellectual doctrine (Gamble 1994). A hegemonic bloc can certainly be mobilised from above around a pre-defined political programme, as is most commonly the case. Yet, an alternative hegemonic bloc can also be mobilised by bringing people together to contribute to the development of new policies capable of addressing the current conjunctural crisis and constructing a new hegemonic paradigm from below. The first step towards exploiting the current crisis of hegemony and waging a long-term war of manoeuvre must therefore be to mobilise disparate groups of people to become involved in the elaboration of a set of policies that will effectively deliver political and economic democracy. The test of any counter-hegemonic policy must be its ability to challenge existing power structures and devolve power downwards.

Challenging the current hegemony does nonetheless represent a formidable challenge, especially given the continued use of authoritarian populism to win popular consent for the status quo. Indeed, the current conservative government in the UK is successfully pushing a particular narrative of crisis, greatly aided by the media, waging a “culture war” and masking deeper divisions of wealth and power. Yet, whilst this may be a successful strategy in the short-term, misdiagnosis of the nature of the present crisis means that the economic and political problems highlighted above will remain unsolved, leaving the current hegemony vulnerable to attack. Tackling the current hegemony thus also entails exposing the precise nature of the neoliberal crisis – only then can the radical redistribution of economic and political power be regarded as viable solutions. The struggle for hegemony is far from resolved.  

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