This article looks at the character of risk politics in the UK and contemporary governmental responses. It then goes on to consider why risk has become such a significant concept for governance across policy domains and organizational settings, and it examines what this tells about the character and future of UK risk governance more generally. Moreover, the emergence of risk as an organizing principle of governance is described. The article also discusses the factors influencing the politics and governance of risks linked with scientific and technological innovation in the UK. Risk has proved valuable as a way of framing policy problems that reflexively manages the negative institutional externalities of governance itself, and in so doing has transformed problems not conventionally understood as risks into risk problems.