The Cultural Politics of Crisis in the UK

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 triggered a global public health crisis. States, international organisations, health services and societies struggled to contain the virus and its potentially catastrophic social and economic effects. This chapter explores some of the political, media and public discourse surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK and shows how this discourse is embedded in a wider ‘cultural politics of crisis'. Highlighting parallels and connections between responses to the pandemic and those to the preceding global financial crisis that began in 2008, it is argued here that common discursive resources were engaged in both cases.