England: The Brexit Election?
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905817726891 |
| Author | Andy Mycock |
12 POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2017
Contrary to the expectations of
many election observers, Theresa
May’s snap election gamble saw
the Conservatives lose ground
to Labour in terms of English seats won – if
not overall vote share. The campaign began
with the Conservatives having high hopes
of making significant in-roads into Labour’s
northern English heartlands in their pursuit
of a sizeable Westminster majority. But
although the party’s vote share increased
from 41 per cent in 2015 to 45.6 per cent,
the number of English seats won fell from
319 to 297. By comparison, Labour staged
something of an English revival, with a
significant increase of over 10 per cent,
to claim nearly 42 per cent of the English
vote share. This saw Labour’s English
representation increase from 206 seats in
2015 to 227.
The Conservatives electoral woes
in England were in part, due to an
overestimation of the impact of the EU
referendum on English voters. While
Brexit clearly had an effect on English
voting behaviour in some areas, it was
neither nationally consistent nor decisive.
Moreover, Brexit suppressed the appeal
of English identity politics for the main
parties. This may have surprised some,
England:
The Brexit Election?
The politics of England is becoming increasingly fluid and fractured, argues Andy Myco ck.
The General Election –
The View from Across the UK
particularly as research over the past
decade or so has charted the emergence
of England as a nascent but identifiable
‘political community’, underpinned by
an increasingly popular and politicised
national identity. This has led some
commentators to conclude that English
nationalism was the primary driver in
motivating a majority of those who voted
for Brexit in England. For example, Fintan
O’Toole (2017) spoke for many in noting
‘when you strip away the rhetoric, Brexit is
an English nationalist movement’.
As my colleague Chris Gifford and I have
noted, British forms of Euroscepticism
(2015) have proven both national and
multi-national in their political framing and
popular appeal across the UK. Although
most of those who express discrete or
majoritarian affiliations to an English
national identity likely voted ‘leave’ in
2016, this only concerned between a
third and a quarter of potential voters
in England. This suggests the majority
of English ‘leave’ voters saw themselves
as equally Anglo-British or more British
than English. Moreover, the various ‘leave’
campaigns were framed at a British state
rather than English national level. If the
majority of those voting ‘leave’ interpreted
Anglo-British Euroscepticsm as English
nationalism, this would likely be reflected
more prominently in terms of English
identity exclusivity.
Brexit was also largely understood in
British rather than English national terms
during the 2017 General Election as the
electoral successes of Labour and the
Conservatives in other parts of Britain attest.
Political Insight Sept2017.indd 12 21/07/2017 11:57
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