Deconstructing Brexit: Eurosceptic Discourse and the Ideational Context of the United Kingdom’s Exit from the European Union

The decision by voters in the United Kingdom (UK) to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016 plunged the UK into arguably the greatest political crisis facing the country since the end of the Second World War. In addition to the economic consequences of leaving the single market, and the diminished standing of the UK both within the EU and beyond, renewed calls for Scottish independence have emerged, and the consequences for the Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement remain unclear. The ramifications of this decision, however, reverberate far beyond the confines of these islands. The implications for the EU are seismic, and perhaps even existential. It is not just the EU’s future relationship with the UK which is at stake, but the very nature of the Union itself and the future trajectory of the integration project. Will the EU, for example, now face further secession movements in other member-states? EU citizens who have made their homes and built their lives in the UK face an uncertain future, as do the significant number of Britons residing throughout the EU. Outside Europe, questions arise about the attractiveness of the UK for foreign investment and the UK’s commitment to other multi-lateral forums. That the vote to leave the EU was not widely foreseen by politicians (including many of those campaigning for an ‘out’ vote), political commentators or the financial markets underlines the need for further exploration and analysis of how the UK arrived at this place. This paper aims to address this question by placing the Brexit vote in its longer historical context. More specifically, it examines the embedded Euroscepticism which has dominated British political discourse on the European project and the role of the UK within it for at least the last three decades. Drawing on post-structuralist discourse theory, the paper argues that the vote to leave it was driven by a decades long denigration of the European integration project in the UK and a political discourse in which the terrain of discussion, and the conceptual vocabulary of the debate, were dominated by a right-wing Eurosceptic discourse which framed the EU as inherently heterogeneous and antagonistic to the UK. It examines how ideas of British exceptionalism, which underpin Eurosceptic discourses, were sustained and reproduced and their affective power amongst the UK population. It documents how these discourses were embedded over decades and then activated by leave campaigners in the immediate run up to the vote. The argument presented here will be of interest to scholars and students of British and European politics both in the UK, and elsewhere in Europe and beyond who seek to understand the origins of the Brexit decision and the evolution of Britain’s position with regard to the EU in recent decades. It is of relevance also to those interested in the relationship between political decision making and wider societal discourses which shape the terms in which policy debates are couched and the terrain on which they are conducted.