ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses what is really the political form of the first stage of neoliberalism in the UK: Thatcherism. It sketches the salient features of Thatcherism as a hegemonic project, structured around a discussion of the Hall–Jessop debate on Thatcherism, but one in which a novel, specifically discourse-theoretical take on Thatcherism is put forward. This chapter will also try to illuminate the role of Thatcherism as a form of neoliberal governmentality, arguing – counter to many of the established narratives – that to describe it as roll-back neoliberalism is to underestimate the pervasiveness of Thatcherite interventionism in the social, cultural, political and economic life of Britain over the course of the 1980s.
