Introduction

Despite differences in tone and texture between political parties and administrations since 1979, there has been a clear rightwards shift in welfare and penal policy. These trends have led to the creation of what Wacquant (2012, 2016) has termed a ‘centaur state’. The dual nature of the ‘centaur state’ sees an increase in personal freedoms for the elites in society and the deregulation of the market, while, in a counterpoint to these processes, the punitive turn in welfare and penal policy sees the state taking harsher positions in approaches to disciplining poorer members of society. Wacquant (2008, 2009a, 2009b) has termed these shifts in welfare and penal policy ‘prisonfare’, that is, a combination of workfare and prison. These changes have profound implications for the exercise of citizenship (Somers, 2008). These shifts have been intensified by the period of austerity. The cumulative effect of austerity policies can be seen in the underfunding of public services and a reduction in the incomes of the poorest members of society. The poorest members of society have paid for the errors of some of the wealthiest (Blyth, 2013) The UN rapporteur's report (Alston, 2018) laid out in clear detail the social and economic damage that these policies created. The most damaging cuts were experienced in the poorest areas (Crossley, 2016), which are the areas that were most hit by the previous policies of deindustrialisation and moves towards a service-based economy. Bourdieu (1999) concluded that the poorest areas of our cities have become characterised by ‘absence’, that is, they have been abandoned by the welfare-oriented institutions of the state.

Neoliberalism as market fundamentalism

Somers (2008) regards neoliberalism as a form of ‘market fundamentalism’. This captures not only the zeal of true believers, but also the way that the key ideas moved from the margins to the mainstream in the mid-1970s. Like a religion, there were a series of key texts as well as high priests who spread the true beliefs. These can be reduced to a core belief in not only the moral and economic superiority of the market, but also the need for its principles to be applied to all areas of social life. This belief in the market is combined with a deep-rooted anti-statism.