The UK Under Brexit: A Populism Research Laboratory?

Abstract

The panel puts together papers that look at different aspects of populist politics in Great Britain under Brexit. The first paper examines the relationship between European, national and “regional” (in the sense of constituent countries) identity among the British electorate using data from a Voting Advice Application to determine the degree to which these different identities can be in accord or are in conflict link to the identity ‘models’ promoted by the political parties in the UK during the ‘Brexit’ referendum campaign. The second paper looks at the level of local politics to understand better what Brexit means to ordinary citizens. The paper contextualises the most prominent academic explanations and predictions about Brexit at a local level, via the investigation of local sources and discussions with local stakeholders in five local authority areas of England and Wales. The third paper adopts an innovative mixed-methods research design, utilising both UK elite political and religious discourse between 2005-2015 and unique survey data tracing UK immigration attitudes to demonstrate that a crucial, overlooked dimension of UK migration politics and discourse centres on the battle to define what it means to be truly ‘British’, as this is pivotal regarding the way in which migration impacts upon the threatened referent object, British identity.