Back of the queue: Brexit, status loss, and the politics of backlash
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148120949824 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Author | Joshua Freedman |
| Subject Matter | Symposium on Backlash Politics in Comparison |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120949824
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2020, Vol. 22(4) 631 –643
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1369148120949824
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
Back of the queue: Brexit,
status loss, and the politics of
backlash
Joshua Freedman
Abstract
Status anxiety is not a necessary condition for backlash movements, and yet, both are highly
complementary. Across political levels, from the community and state to the international
system, status anxiety is often cited as a principal grievance and motivator of backlash politics.
This article challenges the basic premise behind this framing by arguing that status loss – as
a subset of status anxiety – and backlash politics, are essentially co-constitutive phenomena.
Status loss can certainly propel backlash movements to form, but claims of status loss and
decline are also uniquely exploitable mechanisms for bringing backlash movements into
existence. Rather than treat objective status loss as an obvious cause of backlash movements,
then, this article switches the focus to how subjective narratives of status loss are constructed,
promoted, retrieved, and contested, in order to either advance, or oppose, the cause of
backlash entrepreneurs. Doing so illustrates a primary mechanism of backlash politics, but
also a primary mechanism of status loss, challenging dominant intrinsic and material premises
on the role of status in international relations. This discussion is illustrated through a focus
on Britain’s 2016 referendum on the European Union, and the extent to which both Leave
and Remain campaigners elevated the rhetoric of status loss in defence of alternative pasts,
presents, and futures.
Keywords
backlash, Brexit, collective memory, identity, nostalgia, rhetoric, status
Introduction
Forty-five days before Britain’s in/out referendum on the European Union (EU), Prime
Minister David Cameron (2016) delivered a speech at London’s British museum designed
to – quite literally – remind the country how great they were. This message of reassurance
was qualified, however, by Cameron’s insistence that Britain’s status, still great though it
was, was also dependent on the country’s membership in the EU. Any attempt to detach
from the latter, Cameron argued, would foolishly harm the former. This rhetoric was at
home in a referendum where the nature of Britain’s status and identity, and the
Politics, Oberlin College and Conservatory, Oberlin, OH, USA
Corresponding author:
Joshua Freedman, Politics, Oberlin College and Conservatory, Oberlin, OH 44074-1613, USA.
Email: joshua.freedman@oberlin.edu
949824BPI0010.1177/1369148120949824The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsFreedman
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
To continue reading
Request your trial