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Attempting to summarise the responses of right wing commentators to Benefits Street is both depressing and challenging: there are so many contributions from which to choose. Here, we focus on three responses to the programme, made within 10 days of each other: one from Iain Duncan “ith, the “e eta of “tate fo Wo kad Pe sio s; oe Ch istia Gu, Du a “ith s fo e spee h ite aduet Di e to of the Ce te fo “o ial Justi e C “J, the thi k-ta k which Du a “ith esta lished follo ig his Easte house epipha; adoe F ase Nelso, editor of The Spectator, columnist for the Teleg aph adee of the C “J s Ad iso Cou il.

The aim is to scrutinise and lay bare the way in which right wing politicians and pundits produce, reproduce and activate stigma for political capital. We explore this issue and draw on Bourdieusian s hola ship os oli po ead Wa ua tso ept of territorial stigmatisation to highlight the tensions between the ongoing reflection, selection and deflection of reality that social science must address in order to have analytical and political relevance to this debate.