ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the neoconservative response to the riots. It examines the politics of spatial division, before concluding with suggestions about how the riots might be seen to represent the emergence of a new fantastical politics of the city. The chapter shows that neoliberal British society is a class space, defined by insider and outsider socio-economic positions, which recalls Engels' classic exploration of industrial Manchester. It argues that the English riots of 2011 revealed the existence of a deeply divided Britain, what Disraeli called in 1845 'the two nation divide', or more recently Simon Charlesworth spoke about in terms of a 'Dis-United Kingdom'. The neoliberal city is a nihilistic space of biopolitics and metabolism, a space of creative destruction which enables life to renew itself but little more, a static space outside of history, a space going nowhere. In David Harvey's view, the governmental strategies are the key battlegrounds of politics today.
