"This is a timely provocation on the UK's experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. It illuminates deeper issues within the British political system, especially its increasing engagement with neoliberal philosophy and policy through an implicit commitment to value individual freedom over community security. Covid-19 has brought these tensions to a wider public audience, and challenges us to think more seriously about what kind of society we wish to forge post-pandemic." ( --Professor Sally Sheard BA PhD MFPH FHEA Executive Dean Institute of Population Health Faculty of Health & Life Sciences University of Liverpool) "This important and insightful book examines the Covid pandemic in its political context and shows how the UK's response to the pandemic embodied some of the worst aspects of neoliberal thinking. Boyle, Hickson and Ujhelyi Gomez demonstrate some of the most important lessons to be learned from how the UK's Covid response fell short, in the hope that responses to future emergencies can avoid the pitfalls of the past." (-- Professor Martin O'Neill Professor of Political Philosophy, University of York) "Each and every project and program of neoliberalization has a habit of failing in its own way, while failing the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable in ways that are quite systematic and sometimes deadly. In COVID-19 and the Case Against Neoliberalism, Mark Boyle, James Hickson and Katalin Ujhelyi Gomez combine a shrewd diagnosis of this distinctively political pandemic with a plea to actually build back better." (-- Professor Jamie Peck, Professor of Geography and Distinguished University Scholar University of British Columbia) "This book brings together detailed arguments about the impact of the pandemic on the UK within a political analysis about neoliberalism as influencing UK policy and its relationship to the impact of socio-economic factors on the biological.

It uses Liverpool City Region as the UK case study in comparison to analyses of other international experiences. It brings together detailed, heavily referenced arguments and data to inform the debate and analysis of the UK COVID-19 pandemic from a political science/public health interface, focusing on underlying structures and systems and decisions on strategy, response and how this influenced impact. It looks forward to potential learning from what happened, and analyses of influences as outlined. It adds depth and breadth to debates about socio economic inequalities, the role of the state, communities, individuals, and ways to improve equity and its impact on health, using the pandemic as the overarching case." (-- Professor Mark Gabbay MD FRCGP Professor of General Practice, University of Liverpool).