The Social Consequences of Brexit for the UK and Europe
Euroscepticism, Populism, Nationalism, and Societal Division1
Steve Corbett
Abstract
This article examines the 2016 Referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the
European Union and draws on initial research into the reasons that the UK voted to leave and
demographics of the leave vote. This initial analysis suggests that the Brexit (British Exit) vote
reveals wider and deeper societal tensions along the lines of age, class, income, and education
(Goodwin and Heath 2016). By providing an account of the background and events of the
referendum, this article asserts that the vote was a case study in populist right-wing Eurosceptic
discourse (Leconte 2010; Taggart 2004), but it also reveals strong elements of English
nationalism (including British exceptionalism and social conservatism) in parts of British society
(Henderson et al. 2016; Wellings 2010). Given this, the article begins to make sense of Brexit
from a social quality perspective and outlines a possible social quality approach to the UK and
Europe post-Brexit.
Keywords: Antiestablishmentarianism, Brexit, Euroscepticism, English nationalism, left behind,
populism, societal division
On 23 June 2016 the United Kingdom (UK) voted by a referendum to end its forty-three-year
membership of “the European project.” After a close-fought, often incoherent, and rambunctious
referendum campaign, in the end, a difference of just over one million voters enabled the Leave
1 Forthcoming in International Journal of Social Quality 6(1), © the author
campaign to win the referendum by 51.9 percent of the vote to 48.1 percent. This article
examines the background to the referendum campaign and how populist and nationalist forces
were mobilized to support the long-running campaign by right-wing Eurosceptic groups for the
UK to exit the European Union (EU). Wider societal divisions are revealed by the Brexit (British
Exit) vote (Goodwin and Heath 2016), and it is proposed that the social quality approach can be
useful to analyze these divisions, while promoting an open, internationalist, and universalist path
post-Brexit.
The article first examines the roots of Brexit by tracing the development of
Euroscepticism in the UK since the early 1990s and the formation of the latest stage of “the
European project”—political and economic integration within the European Union. British
Euroscepticism is underpinned by two interlinked factors: the resurgence of populism and
English nationalism. Second, an account of the referendum campaign is outlined that highlights
the influence of populism and English nationalism, which includes opposition to representative
(liberal) democracy, the idealization of a “heartland,” and the articulation of the particular social
values that make up this “heartland” (Taggart 2004). Third, an analysis of the Brexit vote reveals
deeper underlying factors beyond the articulated concerns that voters have with unresponsive
elites, the protection of British values and norms, and an opposition to immigration. These
include widening societal divisions between people on the lines of age, education, and skills,
wealth, geographical location, and social values. Although not clearly articulated in the accounts
of people’s reasons for Brexit, issues of inequality and austerity are cited as important. Fourth,
the article subjects the argument developed to the social quality framework and proposes the
ways in which social quality can begin to analyze the societal divisions revealed by Brexit, and
its implications for social quality as a universalist, internationalist, and progressive concept.
The Roots of Brexit
Over the past forty years there has been increasingly mainstream opposition to projects of
European unification in the UK, especially since the establishment of the European Union in the
early 1990s (Geddes 2013). Though this must be set in the context that British Euroscepticism
(as discussed below, this is largely English nationalism) has a longer legacy of opposing any
form of European integration dating back to before World War II (Crespy and Verschueren
2009; Forster 2002), and can even be traced back to the period of the formation of the Church of
England and separation from Rome in the sixteenth century (Smith 2006).
In more contemporary British Euroscepticism, Anthony Forster (2002) identifies three
key periods; Macmillan’s application to join the European Community (EC) in the 1960s
through to Wilson’s referendum in 1975, which voted in favor of membership of the EC; second,
the Thatcherite redefinition of the terms of the European debate, which led to the third period of
opposition to the Maastricht Treaty and EU moves toward political and economic integration, in
which current British Euroscepticism finds its most defining reference point. It is this current
period that has seen the rise of strong opposition among Eurosceptic groups in the UK,
coalescing into the 2016 EU Referendum and vote to leave the EU.
However, in this period the roots of British Euroscepticism go wider and deeper than just
the politics of the UK’s relationship with European institutions to include the legacy of English
nationalism that is grounded in the myths of the British Empire (British exceptionalism) and
impact of World War II on the national consciousness. This finds contemporary expression in
opposition to several aspects of cultural, economic, and political globalization through the rise of
populism. Combined with this tendency toward both left-wing and (especially) right-wing
populism, Euroscepticism and its influence on the 2016 EU Referendum can be seen as not just a
political process but also as a cultural and economic one. This has implications for the societal
preconditions for, and consequences of, the Brexit vote.
Euroscepticism
It is important to acknowledge that Euroscepticism is not solely a British phenomenon. Cécile
Leconte (2010: 46; 2015) argues that the mainstreaming of Euroscepticism began in the 1990s,
and was not just confined to Britain, but included the German chancellor Helmut Kohl’s
opposition to the “regulation fury” of the Maastricht Treaty and a number of close-run referenda.
The rejection (and subsequent acceptance) by Denmark of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and
1993, France in 1992, and Ireland’s initial rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in 2010, and the rise of
populist Eurosceptic leaders in France, Austria, the Netherlands, and elsewhere suggest
conflicting views on satisfaction with the direction of “the European project” (Leconte 2010,
2015; Taggart 2004).
However, a strong tradition of British Euroscepticism is connected to the post-imperial
decline of the British Empire and general economic decline (Gifford 2008). Indeed, British
people are the least likely of all twenty-eight EU member states to identify as “European”
(Dennison and Carl 2016). However, there is not an essential “national character” that is
predisposed toward Euroscepticism, but rather, as elaborated below, populist political and media
actors can articulate aspects of national antagonisms such as societal inequalities and tensions
within societal integration as problems deriving simply from “the European project” (Canovan
1999; Geddes 2013).
Andrew Geddes (2013: 1) argues that the UK has historically been ambivalent about EU
unification, few British politicians have been enthusiastic about the EU, and that since the 1950s,
“opposition to European integration has remained a powerful political undertow in British
politics.” This led Stephen George (1998) to famously describe the UK as an “awkward partner”
with the rest of Europe. As a result, a pragmatic and skeptical position about grand projects has
been the British political class’s approach to the EU, with a narrow focus on the economic costs
and benefits of membership. This means that the UK’s relationship with Europe has been seen as
one of “conditional and differential engagement,” in which the ambivalence of British
policymakers has placed the UK within an “outer tier” of the EU (Geddes 2013). This has meant
that the UK has increasingly been subject to EU-wide initiatives, while remaining largely
peripheral to other European actors driving the development of the EU.
In the past three decades, an economic and trading relationship has been the cornerstone
of the British right’s approach to Europe and in power the British left has embraced some of the
aims of “social Europe” (e.g., the social chapter). But as Geddes (2013: 14) argues, “The EU’s
move, from ‘market-making’ to ‘polity-building’ has created more space for Euroscepticism in
British politics that draws from the representation of the European project as a threat to national
identity, as well as wider disaffection from the political system.” Nicholas Startin (2015) argues
that there have been three key events in moving Euroscepticism into the mainstream of British
politics: the Maastricht Treaty (1992), the big bang of EU member state expansion (2004), and
the global financial crisis and eurozone economic crisis (2008 onward). Maastricht was
especially divisive for John Major’s Conservative government in the 1990s and led to significant
backbench rebellions within the Conservative Party, which, combined with the media portrayal
of EU policy, promoted an especially “right-wing Euroscepticism” that is “regressive and
conservative within the British political culture, but its strength lies in its capacity to be populist
and appear contemporary and radical” (Gifford 2006: 857).
The expansion of the EU since 2004, with increasing migration and competition for lowskilled,
low-pay insecure work in the UK as part of the overall neoliberal direction of British
society, the consequences of the financial crisis and the Conservatives’ austerity policies, have
disproportionately affected the social conditions of older, blue-collar, lower-skilled people (Ford
and Goodwin 2014a). This, along with a hostile right-wing news media eager to place blame for
domestic issues on the EU, hasincreased Euroscepticism (Startin 2015). This has therefore had a
significant influence on the quality of debate on Europe within the UK, which contributes to the
UK’s weak and skeptical relationship with the EU, while a “cycle of pragmatism and
radicalization which [Conservative and Labour] parties undergo in and out of office
respectively” increases the disruptive aspects of Euroscepticism (Forster 2002: 140–141).
However, while public debate is framed by news media presentation and the politics of EU
membership, two factors underpin a wider societal responsiveness to Eurosceptic themes:
populism and English nationalism.
The Rise of Populism and English Nationalism
While growing Euroscepticism within the political class (especially within the Conservative
Party) contributed to the decision to put the UK’s membership of the EU to a popular plebiscite,
the rise of populism has been charted by political theorists as a means for the articulation by “the
people” of “grievances and opinions systematically ignored by governments, mainstream parties
and the media” (Canovan 1999: 2). This includes those characterized as “left behind” by rapid
societal change associated with political, cultural, and economic globalization processes, of
which Europeanization is a part (Ford and Goodwin 2014b), and austerity politics (O’Hara
2015).
Pillars of the British establishment have been beset by scandals in recent years. These
include the 2007–2008 financial crisis caused by the risky and unregulated behavior of leading
global financial institutions and public anger with the subsequent return to banker’s bonuses, tax
avoidance and evasion schemes by celebrities and major corporations, the intrusion into the
private lives of citizens by the British news media (such as the Milly Dowler phone hacking
scandal perpetrated by the News of the World), and the contempt shown for the political class
following the MPs’ expenses scandal, during which one Conservative MP was publicly derided
for spending public money on a floating duck house (Allen 2009). This has contributed to an
already general decline of public trust in the political class (Hay 2007), with IpsosMori (2016)
reporting that only 21 percent of the British public now trusts politicians to tell the truth. This
extent of distrust in the political class and other elites is both a cause and a symptom of the rise
of populism in the UK.
Populism can be described as an antiestablishmentarian discourse that emphasizes “the
people” against “the elites,” partly through mythmaking, but also through the simplification of
complex issues (Leconte 2015: 258). As there is no inherent theoretical foundation to populism,
the concept eschews a straightforward theorization (Canovan 1999) and is often referred to as a
“thin ideology” that combines with “fuller” ideologies (Stanley 2008), or a type of discourse
through which other grievances are articulated (Leconte 2015). Paul Taggart (2004) refers to
three components of the concept of populism. First, populist politics is oppositional to
representative (liberal) democracy and identifies “charismatic leadership” as an aspect of
defining its oppositional discourse (which includes mythmaking and simplification of complex
issues). Taggart (2004: 273) identifies Marine Le Pen, Jörg Haider, and Silvio Berlusconi as
charismatic right-wing European populists, and in the referendum, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson,
and, to a lesser extent, Michael Gove, variously took on this role (discussed below).
Second, a “heartland” is called upon as an idealized conception of an imagined past,
which has since been weakened or destroyed by enemies of “the people,” providing populists
with a narrative of crisis for their “reluctant” political action (Taggart 2004). Important in all
populist discourses of “the people” is that they form either an ethnic, civic, or political category,
against another group—“the other” (Leconte 2015: 258). Populists often engage in homespun
rhetoric, in order to simplify complex issues in communicating opposition to “the other.” This
helps to define “the people” that populists claim to speak on behalf of. In the case of the
referendum, this can be “Middle England” or the white working class. Indeed, it is possible for
both to identify with the same populist discourse as “ordinary people” against the elite: “[t]he
people are nothing more than the populace of the heartland and to understand what any populist
means by the ‘people’ we need therefore to understand what they mean by their heartland”
(Taggart 2004: 274).
Third, different populisms draw their values from their own conception of the
“heartland,” not from the populist discourse itself. For Taggart (2004: 275) “[p]opulists mobilize
when their heartland is threatened … populism, lacking core values, is highly chameleonic” and
can differ in different contexts. This means that populism can be found across the political
spectrum. Left-wing populism asserts “the people” against economic and political elites in the
name of social justice, either through working class consciousness or other identities, and can
assert participatory democracy against corrupt elites, for example, in the Occupy movement—
“for the 99% against the 1%” (Graeber 2013). While there is a parallel left-wing critique of the
democratic deficit within the EU and problems with the neoliberal logic driving much of its
policy direction (Lizoain 2016), the account of the EU Referendum below asserts that the vote to
leave was driven largely by right-wing populist Euroscepticism.
Koen Abts and Stefan Rummens (2007: 418) describe right-wing populism as a “twofold
vertical structure” that is antagonistic upward toward the “intellectual, economic and political
elites” who, separate from the people, abuse their positions of power and influence, and a
downward antagonism centered on “those at the supposed bottom of society, criminals,
foreigners, profiteers and perverts who threaten the purity of the people.” Populism therefore
provides legitimacy for excluding “the other,” and the vertical antagonism allows for the removal
or exclusion of “the enemy” from the political, or even the overall societal, domain (Abts and
Rummens 2007: 419). It forms part of a discourse of opposition to mainstream political parties,
immigration, social and cultural liberalism, permissiveness, multiculturalism, internationalism,
belief in progress, and a strong perception of “losing out” or being “left behind” in these
processes of Europeanization and globalization (Canovan 1999: 4; Ford and Goodwin 2014b;
Leconte 2015). Given this, Leconte (2015: 257) argues that researchers should focus on
understanding how populist leaders articulate and reshape popular grievances and how people
actually perceive and identify with discourses such as populist Euroscepticism.
England is divergent from Scotland and Northern Ireland (and to a lesser extent, Wales)
in its Euroscepticism with many polls showing majority support for Brexit in England, compared
with 65 percent support for remaining in the EU in Scotland (Henderson et al. 2016). Indeed,
survey data shows that the more strongly individuals identify as English, the more likely they are
to support withdrawal from the EU (while conversely in Scotland, those who see themselves as
British are more likely to be in favor of Brexit) (Henderson et al. 2016). This has connected
populist Euroscepticism with English nationalism (Gifford 2006, 2008), which helps to define
the values that underpin the populist conception of the “heartland.”
English nationalism can be defined by its defense of “British sovereignty,” often against
Europe, and the sense of the uniqueness and longevity of Parliament, where other European
countries are perceived as all too ready to cede sovereignty (Wellings 2010). This “hubristically
melancholic” nationalism presents “nostalgia for the past combined with an increasingly
organized and popular Euroscepticism” (Wellings 2010: 498). Ben Wellings (2010: 498)
identifies the ideological makeup of English nationalism as opposition to bureaucracy, open
borders, and migration, all of which are perceived to contribute to the erosion of sovereignty.
This connects the values of English nationalism with social conservatism and an imagined past
built through the history of Empire and victory in World War II, which has been diluted by
increased movement of people, permissiveness, and deindustrialization.
While English nationalism suggests “the people” as socially conservative, this is
problematic for the Conservative Party because its neoliberal direction since the Thatcher years
has espoused a more internationalist, free-market “Anglo-American nationalism” that has often
conflicted with the social conservative base (Gifford 2008). English nationalism is not just the
preserve of the traditional British right, but also is a theme within Labour’s core working-class
constituencies in the former industrial areas of northern England. This has provided the
conditions for the rise of the populist Eurosceptic, and English nationalist, UK Independence
Party (UKIP) (Ford and Goodwin 2014a, 2014b).
While UKIP’s membership was famously described as “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet
racists” by David Cameron (BBC 2006b), the perception that UKIP supporters are drawn only
from Conservative-leaning right-wing voters in wealthier areas in South East England has
masked the growth of the party’s popularity, and its core message of Euroscepticism, in the
deindustrialized northern English constituencies that have traditionally supported Labour. These
people tend to be older, white, and working class, with generally lower educational
qualifications, while mainstream political parties have tended to focus on “the center”: highly
educated, financially relatively secure, and socially liberal middle classes (Ford and Goodwin
2014a). The former composes a “left-behind” (or marginalized) group of people in these regions.
These groups also tend to have shared social values that have been ignored by the adoption of
multiculturalism, civic citizenship, social liberalism, and international and globalizing politics.
The values of the “left-behind” include a shared “ethnic” or “ancestral” conception of national
identity and citizenship that is inherited by blood and birth, defense of sovereignty of this distinct
ancestral identity from foreign cultures, ideas, and peoples (Ford and Goodwin 2014a).
As a result, deep dissatisfaction with the enlargement of the EU and increased movement
of people, especially from new member states in central Europe opened up tensions in British
politics that neither New Labour nor Conservative parties could address. During the 2000s, these
generally older, white working-class voters turned away from both Labour and the
Conservatives, and toward the UKIP on the themes of concern about the level of immigration,
threats to “traditional” British identity, and the arrogance of “metropolitan” political and
economic elites, culminating in the party’s victory in the 2014 European elections with 26.6
percent of the national vote (Ford and Goodwin 2014a, 2014b). Crucially, UKIP did not create
this disillusionment but has capitalized, either by design or fortune, on the disjuncture between
mainstream political parties with their embrace of neoliberal globalization and cultural
globalization and these marginalized segments of the electorate (Ford and Goodwin 2014b).
Given these developments, the referendum took place in a period in which
antiestablishmentarian right-wing political discourse and right-wing media narratives have
supported Eurosceptic populism. This has connected with the English nationalism that is present
in the lived experience of the “left-behind.”
The 2016 UK EU Referendum: A Perfect Storm of Societal Division, Political Short
Termism, and “Banging on about Europe”
Despite long-running clamoring for a referendum by sections of the right (UKIP, elements of the
Conservative Party, right-wing news media), the moves toward political and economic
integration have increased both ambivalence and general opposition to the EU among the
population. Richard Eichenberg and Russell Dalton (2007: 147) suggest that “national identity
remained a core commitment of European citizens even as they support the broad tenets of
market integration.” However, the realization of a referendum on Europe can be traced to the
attempt by Cameron to “modernize” the Conservative Party after successive electoral defeats to
New Labour. This section outlines the events that led up to the referendum, including changes to
the Conservative Party in opposition, the referendum pledge and subsequent attempt to
renegotiate the UK’s role in the EU, and the “short campaign” between 19 February 2016 and
the vote on 23 June 2016. It is suggested that the referendum was in part a highly risky attempt
by the then prime minister to manage internal Conservative Party tensions—one that failed to
recognize the extent of rising antiestablishmentarianism, populism, and English nationalism. In
the following section, these latter factors are pointed to as reasons behind the Leave vote’s
success and it is suggested that wider analysis of societal inequalities in the UK can help to
understand the implications of Brexit.
Cameron’s Modernization Project, Election, and Referendum Pledge
Following the Major government’s internal post-Maastricht battles over Europe and subsequent
routing in the 1997 general election, where Tony Blair’s New Labour won an unprecedented
landslide victory, the strongly Eurosceptic Conservatives continued to lose elections outright.
But under David Cameron’s leadership, the Tories were able to form a coalition government
with the centrist Liberal Democrats, as the largest party following the 2010 election. While
lacking an electoral majority, the route for the Conservatives back into power was the result of a
five-year attempt to “detoxify” the Tory brand by “modernizing” the party. Part of Cameron’s
modernization project in opposition was to adopt more environmentally aware (“vote blue, go
green”) and socially liberal rhetoric (“hug a hoodie,” “compassionate conservatism”), including
the much vaunted “big society” idea, which dusted off appeals to an imagined conservative
communitarianism of the postwar One Nation Tory type, while seeking to retrench the role of the
state in society (Corbett and Walker 2013). These served as attempts to move the Tories on from
“banging on about Europe” (BBC 2006a).
Meanwhile, the New Labour government in 2008 ratified the Lisbon Treaty on further
European integration, which evidenced an increasingly neoliberal direction, despite having in
2004 promised a referendum on the European Constitution Treaty (as the Lisbon Treaty was
formerly known). This emboldened the Eurosceptic right’s demands for a referendum on EU
membership, led by three-time UKIP leader Nigel Farage, whose party climbed to second in the
2009 European elections and would eventually win the highest share of the vote in 2014. With
the combination of pressure from the intake of hard-line Eurosceptic Conservative MPs in the
2010 election and an attempt to stymie the “revolt on the right” by UKIP, in January 2013,
Cameron made a pledge to hold an in/out referendum on British membership of the EU if the
Conservatives secured a majority in the forthcoming 2015 general election (BBC 2013).
This move ultimately put long-term societal instability and Cameron’s political career (as
a pro-remain Tory) on the line for short-term electoral advantage. After a surprise majority was
achieved in the 2015 general election, the in/out referendum was a manifesto commitment that
was included in the Queen’s Speech. The risk taken by Cameron at the time of the pledge was
felt initially to be mitigated by the assumption that the 2015 election result was likely to require
another coalition government, and perhaps the EU Referendum pledge, like the pledge to cut a
further £12 billion from the “welfare bill,” would need to be negotiated with the pro-EU Liberal
Democrats.
The stipulation laid down in the referendum pledge by Cameron was that he would
provide his favored offer of a renegotiated relationship between the UK and the EU against
Brexit. By February 2016, after some concessions, Cameron had negotiated four key principles
from the other 27 member states:
● A four-year “emergency brake” on in-work benefits for migrants
● A reduction in child benefit paid to EU migrants when their children remain overseas
● The removal of the phrase “ever closer union” from any future EU treaties involving the
UK, which would end any further political integration between the UK and EU
● “Emergency safeguards” to protect the City of London and reduce “red tape” for British
businesses (BBC 2016).
While this failed to appease Eurosceptics within the Conservative party, Cameron’s renegotiated
EU membership to some extent echoed analysis of recent polling on the preferences of the public
(Vasilopoulou 2016). These include issues of freedom of movement within the EU—“the right to
work and receive welfare in another EU country”—while concerns about British sovereignty and
ending the political integration of Europe were other, less prominent concerns (Vasilopoulou
2016: 222). Sofia Vasilopoulou’s (2016: 226) analysis suggested that focusing on a utilitarian
cost/benefit analysis of European integration would be a powerful frame for influencing voters’
decisions on continued membership. The renegotiation was put to the country on 19 February
2016, with a referendum date of 23 June 2016—little over four months for the UK public to
engage and consider the pros and cons of the in or out positions.
The “Short Campaign”
Two broad campaigns were marshaled: Remain or Leave, which themselves were hasty
coalitions of members of different political parties and political positions, each with their own set
of reasons and political difficulties in presenting their particular cases. The official Remain
campaign—Britain Stronger in Europe—was essentially a cross-party campaign in principle, but
revealed antagonisms between the Conservative and Labour leaderships. The perception of the
united Westminster establishment against the people of Scotland in the 2014 Scottish
Independence Referendum weighed heavy on the reluctance of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to
share a platform with Cameron (Labour in for Europe was a rival, somewhat lukewarm
campaign for defending workers’ rights and reforming the EU from within).
Like the Scottish Independence Referendum, which was narrowly won by the unionists,
the Remain campaign engaged in “Project Fear,” with increasingly shrill doomsday scenarios
presented to a distrusting public. This included a range of “expert” commentary, such as
governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and analysis from the International Monetary
Fund, which culminated in the chancellor George Osborne’s claim that Brexit would cost each
household £4,300 and, in the dying days of the campaign, threatening a £30 billion “punishment
budget” of further austerity cuts to public budgets combined with rises in general taxation
(Mason et al. 2016). Even if true, the question remained—was this enough to scare “left behind”
groups who may have considered that they had nothing left to lose?
While the weight of the political and economic establishment presented the Remain case,
other political and media elites supported the Leave campaign. Originally rival campaigns, crossparty
Vote Leave (featuring Conservatives Boris Johnson and Michael Gove and Labour grandee
Frank Field, among others) and Leave.EU, bankrolled by UKIP donor and businessman Arron
Banks, which provided a platform for Farage, both presented the case for leaving. Both the
official Vote Leave and Leave.EU campaigns engaged in populist antiestablishmentarian rhetoric
in comparison with the technocratic Project Fear of the official Remain campaign.
While evidence of this populism is presented below, it is important to also acknowledge
the frame for the referendum provided by the news media. As discussed earlier, the right-wing
news media in particular has tended toward strong Euroscepticism since the 1980s, while only
the Guardian, the Independent, and the Financial Times are considered in any way
“Europostive” (Startin 2015). The Eurosceptic campaigns include the Daily Express (circulation
around 500,000), which officially endorsed UKIP and its long-running Leave campaign (Startin
2015).
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2016) conducted a study of 928 news
media articles during the first two months of the official referendum campaign and found that 45
percent of articles had been negative about the EU compared with 27 percent that were in favor
of remaining. This is combined with a practice among right-wing newspapers such as the Daily
Express, the Sun, and the Daily Mail to present aggressively anti-EU headlines (“STICK IT TO
THE EU!”), contentious claims (“QUEEN BACKS BREXIT”), and mythmaking, such as that
about the EU “banning” bendy bananas from British supermarkets (Castle 2016; Henley 2016).
With the backing of the majority of the British news media, both Leave organizations
engaged in emotive and “positive” campaigns that appealed to populism and the sense of English
nationalism, including the slogan “Vote leave, take control,” emphasizing the repatriation of
sovereignty to Parliament as direct representatives of “the British people” and extensive use of
red and white in campaign literature connecting with the English national flag. Boris Johnson
appealed to “hope” for the voiceless and restoration of democracy across Europe, while in
response to the cataclysmic warnings from the Remain campaign, Michael Gove claimed that
“the people” were “tired of experts.” A defining image from the Vote Leave campaign was the
infamous homespun claim (since repudiated both in the sense of its truthfulness and whether it
would ever be actually carried out) on the side of a red bus, “we send the EU £350 million a
week, lets fund our NHS [National Health Service] instead.”
Meanwhile, on 16 June 2016, Farage posed in front of a Leave.EU campaign poster with
the slogan “Breaking point: the EU has failed us all,” featuring a snaking queue of hundreds of
presumed EU migrants through a field (who were in fact Syrian refugees), which had chilling
echoes of Nazi propaganda. While almost all media commentators condemned the poster, its
underlying intention was to reinforce the connection for English nationalists and Eurosceptics
between concerns about immigration and the EU. With horrifying symmetry, on the same day
the Labour MP Jo Cox, a passionate campaigner for the plight of refugees in the Syrian conflict,
was murdered outside of her constituency office in Birstall, West Yorkshire, by a far-right
British nationalist, who was reported to have shouted “put Britain first!” as he shot and then
stabbed Cox (Boyle and Akkoc 2016). After one of the darkest of days for British democracy,
the campaigns were paused for three days while MPs and the public mourned the death of Cox.
By 23 June, polls had suggested a return to a lead for the Remain campaign, after some
polls had previously indicated a surge for Leave. But when the results were announced, the
Leave campaign had won by a narrow 17,410,742 votes (51.9 percent) to 16,141,241 (48.1
percent) on a turnout of 72.2 percent. Adopting the populist and nationalist refrain, Farage
declared in the early hours of the following morning, that 23 June 2016 should be renamed the
UK’s “Independence Day.”
The Populism and English Nationalism of Brexit, and Its Social Consequences
The immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote saw a collapse of the pound on the financial markets,
and Cameron resigned as prime minister the next day. While the next few weeks of political
maneuvering behind the scenes that saw the then home secretary, Theresa May (who had been
conspicuous by her absence in the referendum campaign) emerge as prime minister. Meanwhile
the Labour Party has since been riven by infighting and a poorly timed attempt to remove
Corbyn as leader. The wider societal shocks of the Brexit vote in the UK saw a significant rise in
racist and xenophobic attacks in the country, including several racially motivated murders that
have been attributed to Brexit, with a reported 42 percent increase in recorded hate crimes in the
week before and after the vote, while the head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council stated,
“Some people felt [Brexit] gave license to vent [racist] views or behaviour” (Dodd 2016).
At the time of writing, early analysis has proved to be a mixed picture of the initial effect
of the Brexit vote on the British economy, suggesting an initial dip in the Financial Times Stock
Exchange, a drop in the value of the pound to levels not seen since the 1980s, and evidence of a
contracting economy (Belam 2016). Longer-term effects are likely to be exacerbated if and when
the British government invokes Article 50 to formally set the Brexit process in motion, which
will necessitate a resolution of the impasse in negotiating positions between access to the
European Single Market and denial of free movement of EU citizens. Divisions within the
Conservative Party do not appear to be healed, with some moving toward a “hard Brexit”
position that will seek a clear break and application to the World Trade Organization for trade
negotiations, to a “soft Brexit” that seeks to compromise and retain some aspects of the UK’s
economic relationship with the EU. This is notwithstanding the legal travails over the “advisory”
nature of the referendum (HM Government, 2015). The return of Eurosceptic neoliberals such as
David Davies, Liam Fox, and Johnson to key positions within the cabinet suggest that “hard
Brexit” is not off the agenda. The overall societal picture reflected in the referendum result does
not look good for the UK and, as Leconte (2015) posited above, attention to how both political
actors mobilized popular grievances against the EU and how Leave voters identified with this
discourse are aspects of understanding Brexit.
Populism and English Nationalism in the Referendum
The referendum campaign provides a textbook account of populist politics in the UK. This can
be illustrated by drawing on Taggart’s (2004) three components of populism. These include
opposition to representative democracy, an imagined past of the “heartland,” and the English
nationalist values that make up this vision of the “heartland.”
As highlighted above, the tactic of Project Fear backfired spectacularly for the Remain
campaign, with an increasingly distrusting and incredulous public refusing to heed Osborne’s
warnings of economic meltdown. This was supported by the Leave campaign’s emotive appeal
to “taking back control” from unresponsive and distant elites, whether from Brussels or from
complicit “Europhile” politicians in Westminster. Further, the “charismatic leadership” of
Farage, Johnson, and Gove in constructing a “David versus Goliath” narrative drenched in myths
about migration and out-of-touch “experts,” English stoicism, and World War II referencing
defiance, increased the sense that the referendum represented an opportunity for voters to give
the elites a bloody nose, especially for those who can be considered to be “left behind.”
The second aspect of populism, the construction of a “heartland” and narrative of a crisis,
requiring “reluctant” action, suggested that the UK was better off before increased European
integration and free movement of people, and that a return to this imagined past by “standing on
our own two feet” would represent a return to a prosperous golden era of British exceptionalism.
This conception of the “heartland” mirrors the UKIP strategy for building support across the
country—direct appeal to Eurosceptic voters drawn from middle and upper class “Tory shires” in
the South and South East of England. This is combined with an articulation of grievances over
the neglect of white working-class communities in northern and eastern regions, and seaside
towns, drawing in especially older voters, for whom stable employment has given way to
competition for low-pay insecure work, and for whom the dramatic increase in university
education under New Labour came too late in their lives (Ford and Goodwin 2014a).
It is clear in the themes presented by the Leave campaign, along with long-running rightwing
news media narratives, that the right-wing populism underpinning much of the discourse on
Brexit is drawn from English nationalism. This preference for social conservatism, including
distrust of migrants, ethnic minorities, welfare “scroungers,” along with selfish elites, found
resonance in the Leave vote. Indeed, initial analysis of the vote supports this picture (Goodwin
and Heath 2016; Lambert 2016).
The economy has long been held as a decisive factor in the voting intentions of the
British public (hence the “strong economy” message that featured so prominently in the
Conservatives’ 2015 election campaign and use of economic arguments in Remain’s Project
Fear). Startin (2015) questions the economic cost/benefit analysis and suggests that the rise of
UKIP and Euroscepticism has relegated “rational choice” views about the EU in favor of more
emotive appeals to sovereignty and anti-immigration sentiment (through the lens of the negative
societal consequences of freedom of movement). Indeed, Eric Kaufmann’s (2016) initial
reflection on the Brexit vote (drawing on 2015 electoral data from people indicating that they
will vote to leave) suggests that identity, rather than economic arguments, motivated Leave
voters, and that these voters value order and social authoritarianism over openness and
permissiveness: “[t]he order–openness divide is emerging as a key political cleavage,
overshadowing the Left–Right economic dimension.” The evidence suggests that Leave voters
are also more likely to support capital punishment and value the importance of disciplining
children (Goodwin and Heath 2016; Kaufman 2016).
Michael Ashcroft’s polling of referendum voters suggests the heaviest concentration of
Leave voters in many coastal areas, northern English regions (except for Liverpool, and
Manchester in particular), and especially the North East of England, while Scotland, Manchester,
and parts of London and the South East went more strongly in favor of Remain (Lambert 2016).
Further, Leave voters tended to identify more as “English” than “British” (71 percent of Leave
voters) (Goodwin and Heath 2016). Finally, the social values that characterized Leave voters
further suggest a prevalence of social conservatism: Leave voters were most likely to oppose
multiculturalism (81 percent of Leave voters), social liberalism (80 percent), immigration (80
percent), environmentalism (78 percent), feminism (74 percent), the Internet (71 percent),
globalization (69 percent), and capitalism (51 percent) (Lambert 2016).
Finally, societal inequalities between Remain and Leave voters suggest that the UK is
deeply divided in terms of age, class, material wealth, social and cultural values, national
allegiances, geography, and educational opportunities (Goodwin and Heath 2016). Goodwin and
Heath (2016) argue that three key aspects help to define the cleavages between Leave and
Remain voters, which points to an underlying problem of inequality. Income and poverty were
latent issues in the referendum: “[g]roups of voters who have been pushed to the margins of our
society, live on low incomes and lack the skills that are required to adapt and prosper amid a
post-industrial and global economy, were more likely than others to endorse Brexit,” while
having lower educational qualifications increases the chances of supporting Leave, and
marginalization is also experienced as a “double whammy”: lack of educational qualifications
and skills are predominant in areas that lack employment opportunities. While inequality and
austerity are considered to be marginal to Leave voters’ identification with populist
Euroscepticism and English nationalism (Dennison and Carl 2016), Matthew Goodwin and
Oliver Heath (2016) suggest that a deeper analysis of the societal divisions involved in Brexit
need to explore inequality further.
Post-Brexit: The Social Quality of the UK and Europe
Apart from the huge political and economic questions about the direction that the UK and other
member states in Europe should take following the Brexit vote, there must be a concern with the
wider societal implications of Brexit. These are rooted in inequalities, including cleavages
between class, age, wealth, education and skills, geography (including urbanization), and
crucially, social values and identity. This suggests an important role for social quality, in both the
analysis of the emergent divisions between people and ruptures in the societal and political fabric
of the UK, and also as a normative universalist and internationalist project for creating a more
cohesive, open, and progressive society. A further question is whether this is possible from the
transformations that Brexit will engender.
Social Quality in the UK and Brexit
Sue Hacking (2015: 111) argues that in the UK the political issues of economic security and
social exclusion provide evidence of the articulation of some the themes of social quality.
However, these emphasize “identifying and rehabilitating antisocial individuals” (Hacking 2015:
117). Neoliberal policy developments since the New Labour years have focused on the
employability of individuals (paid work as the solution to social exclusion) through to the
Coalition Government’s Welfare Reform Bill, which emphasizes “nudging” individuals to
“move into work” by withdrawing income support, combined with increasingly authoritarian
policies of social control (such as anti-social behaviour orders) (Harrison and Sanders 2016).
Further, concerns with social cohesion have developed from perceptions of the “failure”
of multiculturalism. These have tended “to polarize UK social politics toward a focus for social
action on poverty through the reduction, or empowerment, of excluded groups, conceptualized as
reclamation of economically or morally participative citizens” (Hacking 2015: 111). An example
of a recent approach to increasing social inclusion and promoting social cohesion has been the
Coalition’s Troubled Families Programme, which sought to help 120,000 identified “families
with multiple problems” by joining up services in order to save public money and achieve better
outcomes (Hayden and Jenkins 2014). The lack of success of a policy direction that favors
initiatives such as these combined with deep cuts to public services suggest that neoliberal policy
approaches have a role to play in fermenting the discontent that has given rise to populism and
English nationalism, which are evidenced above as part of the Brexit vote.
Crucially, social quality is also concerned with re-theorizing the conditions of
socioeconomic security, social cohesion, social inclusion, and social empowerment within
society (van der Maesen and Walker 2012). This provides a direct counter to the underlying
problems that have helped to produce Brexit; arguably, poor levels of all four conditional
dimensions. As Hacking (2015) argues, the value of an alternative social quality approach for the
UK is to try to move the individualizing and moralizing perspective on poverty and inequality
that has historically been adopted toward a more interventionist and collectivist approach that
recognizes the relationship between individuals and communities in the formation of collective
identities. The Brexit vote and analysis in this article suggest that populism and English
nationalism underpin the formation of collective identities centered around deep societal
divisions: filtered through the populist lens as “the British people” against “others” (whether
elites or minorities). This poses a significant challenge to developing the normative values
associated with social quality (see below).
Since social quality concerns itself with “the extent to which people are able to
participate in social relationships under conditions which enhance their well-being, capacities
and potential” (Beck at al. 2012: 68), there are also social quality questions around participation
in democratic processes in the UK. The social quality concept of “participation” clearly goes
beyond immediate and visceral feelings of empowerment in a popular plebiscite such as the EU
Referendum, with all the public and news media debate that has surrounded it. But again, the
social implications of the societal divisions revealed by the Brexit vote indicate that this popular
energy needs to be channeled into practical policies for improving people’s lives through
responsive and active political institutions, and potentially the diffusion of long-term inclusive
and democratic participation into other areas of society, such as the workplace and local
community (Corbett 2014).
Developing a Social Quality Analysis of Brexit
Drawing on four sets of interrelated factors that make up the social quality framework, we can
propose a project for analyzing the social implications of Brexit. The following are tentative
reflections on the value of social quality theory to the issues, tensions, and societal divisions
highlighted in this article. As set out by Wolfgang Beck and colleagues (2012), we can look at
the four sets of factors and their constitutional, conditional, and normative dimensions. The
social quality theory suggests that interrelated constitutional dimensions help to realize
“competent social actors,” while conditional dimensions determine “the opportunities for and
outcomes of social quality,” and normative dimensions can be used to “make judgements about
the appropriate or necessary degree of social quality” (Walker 2015: 52, 53, 55).
Considering the first set of factors, social recognition, cohesion, and solidarity, in relation
to the analysis of Brexit above suggests that the role of populism and English nationalism in
articulating people’s grievances encourages a sense of exclusivity of social recognition, rather
than openness. This may reinforce lack of social recognition for some groups within society. For
example, “ethnic” or “ancestral” nationalism excludes those who are not considered to be
“genuinely” British (or English), creating further division between white British and ethnic
minority groups. Further, unless the “left behind” white working-class groups are rewarded with
improved social conditions, disillusionment may increase with the lack of social recognition.
This has obvious implications for the cohesiveness of UK society and the fermenting of societal
divisions by pitting different collective group identities against one another. Likewise, solidarity
becomes inward-facing social conservatism, focusing on ordered communities and defense of
this version of Britishness.
The second set of factors includes social responsiveness, inclusion, and equal value. As
already suggested by the exclusive notion of social recognition that is encouraged by English
nationalism, this also relates to the lack of openness of groups, communities, and systems that
the populism of Brexit may facilitate. If social institutions are perceived as only responsive to
specific British groups, then further societal dislocation could occur. This would increase
exclusion in British society and underplay the equal value of all citizens. Moreover, the
preference for voting Leave by over 17 million British people as a rejection of political and
cultural elites suggests that the perception of a lack of social responsiveness of the British and
international establishments already exists.
Personal security, socioeconomic security, and social justice form the third set of factors.
These relate to how feelings of a lack of socioeconomic security influenced the Leave vote by
older, white working-class voters that make up part of “left behind” groups. Although if the postBrexit
direction of British society is driven by social conservatism and without policies for
redistribution of wealth, income, property, and opportunities, then there may be further decline in
personal security for many groups of people in the UK. From this, increased socioeconomic
insecurity and ultimately, social injustice may continue to develop.
The fourth set of factors includes personal capacity, empowerment, and human dignity.
The initial analysis of the Brexit vote revealed a tendency for those with lower educational
qualifications, poorly paid and insecure work to vote for Leave. This suggests that the Leave
vote was in part driven by a perception that British society is denying the personal capacity of
older, white working-class people. The populist discourse deployed by Eurosceptics before and
during the referendum channeled a desire for empowerment and human dignity into a simple
solution to complex problems: leave the EU, and the UK can “stand on its own two feet.” This
suggests a perception of human dignity in the face of the EU as a bureaucratic monolith. These
initial reflections reveal troubling times for the UK post-Brexit from the perspective of social
quality. Although these reflections need elaboration in future research, the argument here
suggests that social quality analysis has the potential to explain the extent of societal division and
possible deepening of these in different ways following Brexit.
The Value of Social Quality for the UK and Europe Post-Brexit
The advantage of social quality is that it is an analytical tool and it is normatively grounded
(Beck et al. 2012). Social quality is fundamental for charting a new direction of the UK and
Europe post-Brexit. While undoubtedly the populist Eurosceptic discourses that articulated
English nationalist values drew on strands of xenophobia and gave license to an increase in racist
language and actions, it is important to recognize that this may also have been driven by poor
levels of social quality in the UK; including lack of well-paid and secure jobs, and poor working
conditions, the breakdown of communities, and the sense of dislocation, loss of direction, and
disenfranchisement in a political and economic system that has created many victims. The
usefulness of social quality in post-Brexit times could be its transformative potential for
developing a new form of open, internationalist, democratic, and progressive relationship
between the UK and EU member states.
Moreover, the Brexit vote reflects a wider emerging problem in Europe: the possible
resurgence of the populist far right, emboldened by UKIP’s success in the UK. This is pertinent
given that Euroscepticism is not just a British phenomenon (Leconte 2010). Indeed, Marine Le
Pen, leader of the Front National in France congratulated the British on voting to leave, and has
renewed calls for “Frexit” to follow the UK’s lead (Mowat 2016). Ultimately, it is necessary to
understand the deeper societal divisions that have contributed to the rise of populism and
nationalism across Europe. This requires a response to the concerns and social conditions of over
17 million British voters, while opposing and reducing racism and xenophobia, and recognizing
that just over 16 million UK citizens, including the majority of younger voters, desired to remain
a part of the EU. In addition, critical reflection on how European and nation-state institutions can
develop new relationships post-Brexit, including further democratization, decentralization of
power, and international cooperation should be part of a considered response to Brexit (Lizoain
2016). This necessitates responses to this expression of discontent in a way that builds new
inclusive and participatory forms of social democracy (Crouch 2013) and improves social quality
across Europe.
Conclusion
This article has assessed the 2016 EU Referendum and early research into its social
consequences. It has been argued that populist right-wing Eurosceptic political and media actors
have achieved a long-running campaign to achieve Brexit from the EU, and have stoked societal
tensions and grievances to achieve this through a populist discourse involving English
nationalism and social conservatism. The Brexit vote has also revealed stark divisions within
British society, for which the EU referendum provided the opportunity for a popular revolt by
“the people” against both elites and minorities.
For those who voted to remain (including this author), there has been public airing of
grief at the result. But during the summer of 2016, as racists have been emboldened on the streets
of British cities, there has been a tendency toward mocking Brexit voters when populist pledges,
such as “£350 million a week for the NHS,” were revealed to be lies (in this case within hours of
the referendum result). This only plays into the sense of societal division and distant elitism.
However, this article has drawn on initial research into the driving factors behind the Brexit vote
and the wider societal conditions that have facilitated this popular uprising against “the
establishment” to attempt to understand why Brexit occurred and to propose ways in which the
societal tensions can be addressed. This article has also proposed that social quality provides an
important framework to further develop an analysis of the problems revealed by the Brexit vote,
and should be part of building a new consensus.
In the context of a possibly unending crisis for the neoliberal political and economic
model (Gamble 2014), there has been a chance for the Left to build a new consensus. But
without clear and coherent social democratic and participatory alternatives to the collapsing
neoliberal order, it is clear that this vacuum is increasingly being filled by populism and
nationalism by providing outlets for the anger of many people who feel let down or “left behind”
by the societal impacts of neoliberal globalization (Payne 2016). This is borne out by the rise of
right-wing demagogues such as Farage, and in the United States, Republican President-Elect
Donald Trump (who proclaimed himself “Mr. Brexit”), along with a resurgent far right in
Europe, including Le Pen’s Front National. Meanwhile the left in the UK (Labour Party), Spain
(Podemos), and Greece (Syriza) have to different extents begun to recognize the gaps between
elites and their affluent middle-class constituencies and “left behind” groups that are susceptible
to social conservatism and nationalism. The left too, at this stage, has a tendency toward
populism: “the 99% against the 1%,” “austerity is a political choice.” While these slogans may
provide a genuine outlet for anger with neoliberal elites by progressives, they have yet to
translate into a coordinated universalist and internationalist project for social democracy that has
clear answers to the extent of societal divisions that Brexit reveals. The challenge for social
quality researchers is to contribute to creating this project.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Laurent van der Maesen for invaluable advice on this article. This article is dedicated
to the memory of Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen, West Yorkshire, UK, a passionate
campaigner for social justice for refugees in the Syrian conflict, who was murdered during the
EU referendum campaign.
Steve Corbett is a Lecturer in Social Policy at Liverpool Hope University, UK. His research
interests include participatory democracy and social quality (in particular the concept of social
empowerment), political ideology, and critical social policy analysis. He has written on the UK
government’s “big society” idea and a qualitative study of how workplace democracy and local
community democracy can improve social quality. His forthcoming work includes an account of
the concept of “the social” in social policy, co-authored with Alan Walker, and research into
regional film policy and self-organization of film clubs in northern England, co-authored with
Bridgette Wessels. Steve is a member of the Advisory Board of the European Institute, a
collaborative partnership between Liverpool Hope University and Université Catholique de Lille,
which seeks to develop research on the future of Europe.
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