After having seen in the previous chapter how processes of financialization are portrayed within the literature, the following discussions will look at how dynamics of everyday financialization play out in the UK. Following from the conceptual framework introduced in Chapter 2, the normalization of asset accumulation takes place by constructing an environment which induces everyone to accumulate assets and by creating discourses surrounding asset ownership.

Since the 1980s, a ‘regime of truth’ (Foucault, 1980, p 131) has been established in which it is seen as normal that households save, own a house and conduct financial investments, and thus build an asset stock – ‘diversified across a range of different asset classes (e.g. equities, bonds, property)’ (DWP, 2011, p 17) – on which they can draw upon during periods of income shortfalls. As the UK was argued to be a ‘capitalist country with too few capitalists’ (Davies et al, 2018, p 486), the stated aim was to create a society with more capitalists – that is, ‘more successful entrepreneurs’ (LM, 1997). In line with this argument, social protection is presented as contradicting a free and prosperous society, being only possible to fully realize in an authoritarian regime: ‘Our capitalist system produces a far higher standard of prosperity and happiness because it believes in incentive and opportunity, and because it is founded on human dignity and freedom … No country can flourish if its economic and social life is dominated by nationalisation and state control’ (Thatcher, 1975). Thus, assuming that a successful society is based on ‘profits and the wider distribution of property’ (Thatcher, 1984a), deregulation and privatization have consequently been promoted.

However, this regime of truth ‘isn't outside power, or lacking in power’ (Foucault, 1980, p 131), but rather enables the government to dismantle the welfare state. A discourse centred on entrepreneurial freedom puts the responsibility on the individual (Cutler and Waine, 2001) and has led to, as suggested in Chapter 1, systematic attempts to reverse previously introduced social policies. By emphasizing that there is ‘no such thing as public money – there is only taxpayers’ money’ (Thatcher, 1983), and thus focusing on ‘sound public finances’ (May, 2017), publicly funded welfare measures in the form of unemployment benefits, sick pay and state-funded pensions have been continuously reduced (disciplinary mechanism) and ‘replaced by risk represented as opportunity or reward for individuals’ (regulatory mechanism) (Langley, 2006, p 921).