Root and Branch Restructuring to Achieve Major Cuts: The Social Policy Programme of the 2010 UK Coalition Government

The 2010 Coalition has set itself the challenge of combining an unprecedentedly rapid and profound retrenchment with a fundamental restructuring of the public sector, both to be accomplished within five years. The immediate justification is a presumed need to reduce national indebtedness. The longer-term goal is to shrink the state, free up the market and set British political economy on a new course.

The programme has encountered a number of set-backs and some elements appear more likely to be realized than others. This article considers the objectives of the Coalition programme and the likely outcomes, using evidence from a number of sources including comparisons with the experience of retrenchment elsewhere and analysis of previous rounds of public spending cut-backs.