ABSTRACT
The past few years have seen a breakdown of trust in political, financial, and media institutions and a growing pessimism about the ability of these institutions to rise to the new challenges. Between 2010 and 2015 the concept of austerity dominated economic and political discourse. This chapter looks at how the understanding of the crisis was mediated through the prism of key political and economic commentators from the UK quality press. In our previous research, we showed how the austerity narrative became the dominant paradigm in the run-up to the 2010 general election. This chapter extends the analysis to the period from 2012 to the next general election in 2015. It shows that what had been an initial response to the consequences of the financial crisis had become entrenched in political discourse. We identify the key issue as the lack of a credible and coherent alternative to austerity by the political opposition. Support for austerity actually rose during the period of our study, paradoxically influenced by the nascent economic recovery that began in 2013.
