{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023668639053254437, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0029585798816568047, 'mean_word_length': 5.698019801980198, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Conclusion: More Security, More Politics

The conclusion reasserts that professional politicians are more active on security than ever before, and that although parliamentary politics is deeply unfashionable among critical scholars, it is precisely this unfashionableness that makes it so important in this context. If ‘security’ can increasingly be found in this most ‘normal’ of political arenas, then we cannot seriously maintain that security is inherently exceptional and anti-political. The chapter revisits the debate on security as a state of exception, arguing that if security is increasingly part of normal politics, and not a damaging exception to it, then we need to rethink our very understanding of security. The exclusions, prerogatives, taboos, boundaries, hierarchies and symbolic inequalities that elevated security above normal politics have been diluted by new security practices and problematisations. As these have proliferated, they have spilled into the normal political arena and the activities of politicians. The chapter demonstrates this argument by summarising the book’s story of UK security politics over four decades from the 1980s onwards, discussing issues of parliamentary marginalisation, influence, voice, and oversight. Finally, the chapter concludes that more security does not mean less politics, it means more.