The election in the United Kingdom (UK) of the Conservative-led Coalition government (2010) followed by subsequent elections in 2015 and 2017 have led to a period that has become characterised as an ‘age of austerity’, where public spending has been substantially reduced in pursuit of deficit reduction, alongside an ideological commitment to reducing the size of the state. As a defining era of welfare state development, 2010 marked the end of 13 years of New Labour governments. Coming into government in the wake of the economic crash of the mid-2000s and in the middle of a recession, the government introduced stringent austerity measures, including some of the largest cuts in public finance ever seen and some of the most extensive welfare reforms since the introduction of the welfare state (see Taylor-Gooby and Stoker, 2011; Beatty and Fothergill, 2013; Lambie-Mumford, 2015).

The UK government austerity programme has been defined as a fiscal policy and a deficit reduction programme that consists of sustained reductions in public spending and tax rises, intended to reduce the government budget deficit and the role of the welfare state in the UK. It has been presented as both a political and economic project whose effects appear still controversial, and as an inevitable consequence of the 2007–8 financial crisis. During austerity some aspects of the National Health Service (NHS) and education sectors in the UK have been ‘ring-fenced’ and protected from direct spending cuts – despite expressions of serious problems such as workforce shortages, including recruitment, retention and remuneration of staff. Nevertheless, UK austerity policies have received criticism from the media, and political and academic sources in particular, and have prompted anti-austerity movements among citizens more generally.

At the end of the first full parliament under the austerity programme, the Labour Party and the Conservatives were deadlocked in the polls. At the 2015 general election the Conservative party modified their commitment to austerity with a series of unfunded spending promises, including £8 billion of additional expenditure for the NHS. At the same time, the 2015 Conservative Party general election manifesto proposed making sufficient reductions in public spending and welfare to eliminate the budget deficit entirely by 2018–19 and run a small budget surplus by 2020.