Brexit and Britain’s Culture Wars
| Author | Maria Sobolewska,Robert Ford |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/2041905820911738 |
4POLITICAL INSIGHT•MARCH 2020
The central focus of the
Conservatives’ successful
2019 election campaign was
resolution. The promise, endlessly
repeated, was to ‘get Brexit done’, ending
three years of angry deadlock and moving
the national agenda on to other things.
This pledge proved wildly successful,
tapping into voter frustration with political
gridlock to deliver the Conservatives a large
parliamentary majority. Brexit, we now all
know, will get ‘done’ – though what ‘done’
means, and how to achieve it, will take a
while yet. Yet, like many previous political
slogans, ‘Get Brexit Done’ even if succeeds
narrowly, will most likely disappoint
more broadly. Hopes of resolution and
reconciliation will be difficult to meet. The
identity conflicts mobilised into politics by
the 2016 EU referendum long predate that
vote and run much deeper than arguments
about trade and political integration. Brexit
has become a powerful symbolic rallying
point for both sides in this conflict, but the
differences between Leavers and Remainers
were never only, or even primarily, about
Britain’s relations with the EU. Brexit may
resolve, for now, one argument between
these groups, but there are plenty of other
potential disputes waiting. ‘Getting Brexit
done’ cannot heal divisions Brexit alone
didn’t create.
Identity conflicts
The divisions mobilised in the EU
referendum have roots going back decades.
They are the product of demographic
changes which have opened up new
Brexit and Britain’s
Culture Wars
Boris Johnson has declared Brexit ‘done’. But behind the rhetoric, the
identity conflicts mobilised by the EU referendum are here to stay,
write Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford.
fundamental divisions in the electorate
over identity and values. These are identity
conflicts because they are fundamentally
framed around questions of ‘us’ against
‘them’. These are conflicts focused on
differing understandings of ‘us’, different
fears and prejudice about threatening
outgroups (‘them’), and polarised debates
about social changes which are shifting
who ‘we’ are and how this should change.
Such conflicts are universal, but they
have become more salient in the decades
preceding the Brexit referendum, because
of two 50-year trends – educational
expansion and rising ethnic diversity. Both
trends have a profound impact on how
voters view their social identities and react
to identity conflicts. The ethnocentric ‘us
against them’ worldview, featuring strong
attachments to traditional identities such
as the nation and the majority ethnic
group, and negative views of outgroups
such as migrants and minorities, is
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