Legitimacy gaps, taxpayer conflict, and the politics of austerity in the UK

Following the 2008 financial crisis, fiscal deficit reduction has become the name of the game for many Western states. This article uses focus group data to explore the legitimation of austerity in the United Kingdom. It is argued that fiscal consolidation speaks to real concerns citizens have over unfair redistribution to supposed ‘undeserving’ groups. The undeserving rich and poor are stigmatised during times of austerity since they are assumed to take more than they give from the public purse—leaving taxpayers, the assumption goes, to pick up the bill. By speaking to this legitimacy gap between prudent normative expectations and the lived experiences of state profligacy, fiscal consolidation can appear to speak to the interests of ‘the taxpayer’—a group conceptualised as a sense of group position that arises from collective sense-making rather than a pre-given constituency.