Governing austerity in the United Kingdom: anticipatory fiscal consolidation as a variety of austerity governance

This article analyses the logic underpinning austerity governance in the UK. Taking the UK’s relative fiscal and monetary policy autonomy as a starting point, the article unpacks and analyses how the UK has charted a successful course between the imperatives of social stability and market credibility. At the heart of this ‘success’ is a fundamentally anticipatory governing logic. Fiscal consolidation was justified and enacted as a pre-emptive and preventative intervention in order to anticipate an indebted and thus disciplined future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, then, UK austerity is not necessarily just geared towards swingeing spending cuts, because the direction of travel towards an imagined debt- and deficit-free future is just as important as reaching the destination itself under the logic of anticipatory fiscal consolidation.