Legacies of past institutionalized political discrimination reverberate in present-day patterns of commercial drinking water consumption. We investigate several case studies – redlining, the Voting Rights Act implementation in North Carolina, institutionalized neglect in Appalachia, and political marginalization of Hispanics in the Southwest – to illustrate the relationship between moral distrust of government and citizen-consumer behavior. We find that areas redlined in the 1930s are more likely to host present-day water kiosks. Parts of North Carolina protected by the Voting Rights Act in 1965 have lower present-day bottled water sales than unprotected areas. Counties located within Appalachia have higher bottled water sales than counties outside of Appalachia. Water kiosks in the Southwest today are most likely to be located in predominantly Hispanic communities. Commercial water companies capitalize upon these legacies of moral distrust to market commercial water products to politically marginalized populations. “Cultural” preferences for commercial water stem from citizen-consumers’ beliefs about the competence and morality of government.

Chapter 5 focuses on the long-term political trends that helped to set the scene for Brexitland. Both Labour and the Conservatives changed in ways which alienated voters and eroded traditional partisan political identities. The two governing parties converged ideologically, and their elites became dominated by career politicians recruited from a limited number of graduate-dominated professions, reducing the differences between parties and narrowing the sections of society they represented. Voters responded to these changes by losing interest in politics and becoming more hostile to politicians, reflecting a growing belief that they were being denied a meaningful choice. This alienation was particularly acute among identity conservative voters, creating a political opportunity for a new issue or a new political force to mobilise the intense discontent of this group. Sure enough, in the second half of the New Labour governments, an issue emerged with the ability to realise this potential: immigration. We show how and why conflicts over immigration rose up the agenda in the later New Labour governments, and why this issue proved to be such a powerful lightning rod for discontent among identity conservatives.