Introduction

Both politics and community development have changed in England since the 2007/8 financial crisis. Prior to the crisis, a decade-long renaissance of community development was supported by the New Labour government (1997–2010). Through its communitarian and third-way agenda, New Labour endorsed community development as a tool to foster social capital to build ‘stronger’ and more ‘cohesive’ communities (Kay, 2006). Its scope expanded, with considerable infrastructure investment in the public sector, and in service delivery contracts to the voluntary sector (Taylor, 2012). The financial crisis disrupted such growth, which, this chapter argues, has facilitated the decline of community development activity in the UK, particularly in England.

This chapter analyses the relationship between the decline in status of community development, entrenching neoliberal hegemony, and the rise in populism. It does so using a post-structuralist discourse analysis methodology to analyse 74 texts which span national policy debate and the policy and practice within a case study local authority. The empirical evidence shows that, during the administration of the coalition government (2010–15), neoliberal and left-wing populist discourses competed to shape community development debate and practice in England. This chapter calls for community development to unite with left-wing populist strategies to generate and practise counter-hegemonic discourses. But the chapter also cautions that such discourses can reproduce unhelpful binaries which the community development field must attempt to reconcile.

Community development after the crisis

The 2007/8 global financial crisis has significantly shaped UK politics and social policy (Taylor-Gooby, 2011; Bailey and Ball, 2016). While the banking sector was responsible for the financial crisis (Barrell and Philips, 2008; Ivashina and Scharfsen, 2008), UK media debate blamed the New Labour government (1997–2010) for two ‘failures’: (i) to regulate the financial sector effectively, and (ii) to sustainably control the level of public sector spending in the years preceding the financial crisis (MacLeavy, 2011; Taylor-Gooby and Stoker, 2011). Academic debate challenged this, countering that UK public sector spending only increased in 2007/8 to bail out failing banks, provide investment capital and to cushion rising unemployment (Taylor-Gooby, 2011; Taylor-Gooby and Stoker, 2011).