Introduction

At the Conservative Party conference in October 2018, Theresa May bounced on to the stage to the sound of Abba's Dancing Queen to declare that austerity was ‘over’ (CCHQ, 2018). Putting aside the scepticism of opposition parties over this claim (BBC, 2018), the speech did mark a significant shift, rhetorically at least, for the Conservatives. Speaking in 2009, May's Conservative predecessor, David Cameron, had argued that ‘the age of austerity demands […] some incredibly tough decisions on taxation, spending, borrowing’ (Cameron, 2009). In practice, ‘tough decisions’ meant deep cuts to public services.

Underlying the rhetoric about ‘austerity’ was an ideological debate around the role and scope of the state. By 2010, the routes that the Conservatives and the Labour Party offered to economic recovery had diverged along increasingly explicit ideological lines. The election of Cameron's Conservative-led coalition ended New Labour's ‘reformand-invest’ approach to public services. Cameron had long been sceptical about the size of the state, and its ability to achieve desirable social ends. Throughout his speeches, the state was portrayed as inefficient, bureaucratic and outdated – although this scepticism was often downplayed through a rhetoric of ‘modernization’ and political centrism while in opposition (Griffiths, 2014). However, it was the economic crisis of 2008 that offered Cameron the opportunity to explicitly challenge the state that had emerged during the New Labour years. While the Labour leadership had accepted the need for some spending cuts during the party's final years in power, Cameron blamed Labour's overspending for the scale of the crisis, arguing that the party had ‘maxed out on our nation's credit card’ (Lee, 2009, p. 69). He claimed that the high-cost public services of the New Labour years were untenable. On entering office in 2010 his government set out to radically transform the state.

This chapter focuses on the ‘contracting state’ under Cameron, and reviews developments in three major public services since 2010: health, education and welfare, paying attention to the way in which these reforms affect the agency of the people who rely on these services.