The Domestication of Populism: Brexit and the Rise of Anti-Political Rhetoric in the UK

Euroscepticism is frequently linked to populism, in a form that frames European institutions as distant ‘elites’, out of touch with ordinary people. This rhetoric was key to arguments in the UK over many years, leading up to the ‘Brexit’ referendum in 2016. Scholars have documented how such framing in the UK, unlike in many other EU states, was not restricted to fringe parties but also entered the mainstream through the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party. This ultimately successfully forced the party leadership into conceding the referendum. An interesting question is what happens to these populist sentiments once ‘the people’ have chosen to break from the original ‘elite’. Following the Brexit referendum, the Article 50 process ushered in a new period of difficult internal and external political negotiation over the form that the UK’s future relationship with the EU should take. Although some anger continued to be directed at EU ‘elites’, increasingly rhetoric focused on the failures of UK domestic institutions – politicians, parliament and the courts. Standout cases included media headlines denouncing UK judges as ‘enemies of the people’, and statements from Conservative ministers that parliament, for example, had ‘no moral right to sit’. This culminated in a general election framed by the Prime Minister with a language of ‘parliament versus people’. This paper will trace the ‘domestication’ of UK populism both theoretically and empirically. Through analysis of parliamentary and media debates before and after the referendum it will analyse the extent of populist rhetoric, and how this shifted from EU to domestic institutions. Theoretically, the paper will argue that UK Euroscepticism responded in part to populist public sentiments, and that far from quelling such sentiments the UK’s decision to exit from the EU required Eurosceptic leaders to redirect these sentiments somewhere else. The lesson from the UK is therefore that EU exit may not allow the original dignity of domestic institutions to be restored, as hard Eurosceptics suggest, but instead ultimately help to fuel the undermining of such institutions.