Schrecker and Bambra's software analogy of neoliberalism is a good one. It seems we have moved from a 1.0 version in the labour reorganisations of the 1970s, to a 2.0 in the pre-financial crisis era to a current rollout of the full 3.0 beta version. Completing their analogy leads to the conclusion that there is a need for a different operating system that better meets the requirements of a far broader base of users. These requirements include population's rights to a fulsome and healthy life; something which can only currently be guaranteed to a small minority. Their argument covers familiar territory on the macro causes and consequences of an economic and political system that necessarily benefits the few. Health inequality and inequity are convincingly demonstrated through their use of large-scale data, correlational analysis and a dedication to the field over decades. For Schrecker and Bambra (and many notable others – Marmot, Dorling) the ‘standard of proof’ is of sufficient quality and quantity that ignoring it or discrediting its ‘scientific standard’ would be “counterproductive and even unethical from a public health perspective” in that it allows inequality to thrive. The ethical standard of public health, however, is unlikely to be replicated by those in industry and society who have most to gain from its maintenance. And so yet another familiar argument recurs.

Returning to the substantive content, Schrecker and Bambra direct us through four examples of how neoliberalism makes us sick: insecurity, austerity, inequality and obesity. Each is approached in the context of the development and characteristics of the economy and the welfare state using cross-national comparisons and welfare regime categorisations. They highlight how states with the strongest, deregulated neoliberal trajectory disadvantage the health of its citizens the most. This applies across the social gradient. It seems inevitable that the authors focus on the UK and the US in their elaborations. Standing out from the four examples is the evidence and discussion around obesity: a popular neoliberalised disease. Its power lays in its analysis of the political economy of food which can appropriately summarised as ‘rotten’. They highlight the contours of obesity across the Global North and the astonishing growth in its prevalence in neo-liberal states in particular; a phenomenon that applies and is most rapidly accelerating in the developing neo-liberal economies of the Global South. They also point to the complexity of causality and the obfuscation of obesity as an individual-lifestyle issue: a product of bad choices rather than bad environments and complex, multi-layered systems of influence.

Beyond the case of obesity, Schrecker and Bambra focus on “how neoliberalism tends to concentrate both advantage and adversity in ways that lead to adverse health outcomes and widening health inequalities” (p.41). Labour market insecurity, welfare retrenchment and austerity and inequality are all highlighted and illustrated in similar ways using cross national and large scale datasets; analysis of health outcomes by welfare regime, policy analysis, key influential texts (e.g. the Whitehall studies and Wilkinson and Pickett, Reference Wilkinson and Pickett2010) and illustrative examples from the evidence base. Within this is a mosaic of processes through which neoliberalism makes us sick and it is to these processes that the book could be expanded (How Politics Makes Us Sick 2.0?). Obviously, in a book this short, it is difficult to cover all the available bases, and it would have been good to see some extended reflections on Collins and McCartney's (2010) remarkable work on the neoliberal political attack in the West of Scotland, and the ways in which this has contributed to a politics of resistance to neoliberalism in Scotland. Also, the classed politics of neoliberalism, whilst referred to, could have been made more of. As numerous commentators have argued, austerity politics is aimed at reinforcing class privilege, about making the poor pay for the mistakes of the rich, and to provide ideological cover for this. Carles Muntaner's (Reference Muntaner, Ng, Chung and Prins2015) recent work on neo-Marxist analysis of class in relation to health inequalities would have been another way of exploring some of these issues. And of course, coming back to the ideological justifications for neoliberalism, the emerging literature around affect would also have been an interesting place to take discussions about how neoliberalism not only ‘gets under the skin’ but also shapes discourses around self, identity and agency – in other words, how it enters the ‘soul’. For example, Walkerdine and Jimenez's (Reference Walkerdine and Jimenez2012) superb work around the inter-generational circulations of shame in former industrial towns; Diane Reay's, Bev Skeggs’ and Andrew Sayer's collective body of work on class and its affective dimensions also point in the direction of a sociology that can lend support to a political critique of neoliberalism. Beyond this, Lauren Berlant's (Reference Berlant2011) epic Cruel Optimism forensically dissects the ways in which neoliberalism lays siege to and wears away our fantasies of the good life. Again, if there is a criticism of the book, it is that their – relatively uncritical – take on the psychosocial explanation for inequalities popularised by Wilkinson and Pickett (Reference Wilkinson and Pickett2010) could be strengthened by looking across to other literatures. There is a companion book, which also identifies a more critical sociology that can support many of the arguments they are seeking to make.

But this may well be for other authors. Their conclusion draws together reflections on alternative views of the future of health that require political cure (p. 112). These reflections offer both optimistic and pessimistic possibilities. On reading, it is hard not to feel the strength of ‘there is no realistic alternative’ arguments holding sway in the foreseeable future. There is, of course, a different way. As the authors identify, this at its core involves some radical shifts in global political orientations. But there is also a dialectic emerging from competing quarters on, for example, the absurdity of food banks in the modern era, the threat of privatisation of the NHS and the gross inequalities in wealth. It is from these counter-arguments that a way to a more optimistic future for health may be found. Using the conceptual work of Fiona Williams (Reference Williams, Irving, Fenger and Hudson2015) there appears to be room for a new welfare for the common good that includes a ‘health commons’ that might – as Schrecker and Bambra point out – return us to the politics of the post-war settlement in Europe.