Through passionate rhetoric addressing questions of identity and autonomy, the Leave campaign tapped into something the more cautious and technocratic Remain campaign failed to understand.
The referendum on Brexit was divisive in a way that went beyond simple disagreement between opposing camps; what was evident was a complete breakdown in communication between Leavers and Remainers.
This breakdown in communication was underpinned by the inability, for the most-part, of each side to comprehend the perspective of the other. With the referendum done and dusted, despite calls for the country to unite behind shared goals, this legacy of polarisation remains.
The breakdown in communication was represented in an article by Brendan O’Neill, entitled I’m a ‘Brexit Extremist’ and proud of it.
In the article, O’Neill refers to a YouGov poll finding that 39% of Leavers (800 from a 2000 person sample) say that loosing their or a family member’s job would be a price worth paying for Brexit.
Many Remainers jumped on this poll result as indicative of Leavers being either irrational or stupid, labelling them ‘Brexit Extremists’. O’Neill took the opposing view: that the poll represented something laudable – a willingness “to endure hardship in service of a moral cause”.
What was apparent in the article was not only disagreement, but two perspectives completely isolated from one another, making rational debate impossible.
For the majority of Remainers, whether or not we should leave the EU was underpinned by rational calculations regarding wealth and security. For Leavers, more emotional considerations, deeply connected to personal and national pride were paramount. From this perspective, self-sacrifice could be rationally justified in its satisfaction of a desire for honour.
In order to engage in constructive debate, it is not enough simply to argue from one’s own perspective; one must make an effort to understand the motivations inspiring the other side too.
The successful Vote Leave campaign recognised the desire for honour and self-esteem that many British people – especially in the so-called ‘left behind’ communities – felt they had been stripped of.
Through passionate rhetoric addressing questions of identity and autonomy on a personal and national level, the Leave campaign tapped into these motivations in a way that the more cautious and technocratic Remain campaign did not.
Given the Leave campaign’s success, the values and concepts underpinning the rhetoric are worth further consideration, as they will continue to be a source of motivation as Brexit unfolds.
Firstly, there was the campaign slogan – Vote Leave, take back control – which appealed to a desire to reclaim autonomy in decision making. Maintaining autonomy is essential to ideas of pride and honour which were a source of motivation, mobilising voters behind Brexit.
Other themes which permeated the language of the Vote Leave campaign also appealed to a sense of honour. By labelling the Remain campaign ‘Project Fear’, the Leave campaign was able to promote Brexit as the optimists’ choice. By identifying Brexit with a patriotic belief in British potential, the Leave campaign was again able to galvanise voters by appealing to a sense of honour and national pride.
Similarly, references to Britain’s historic achievements mobilised voters by boosting their collective sense of honour. Through idealising Britain’s past and referencing great historical figures such as Shakespeare and Churchill, the protagonists of the Leave campaign encouraged voters to believe that something inherent in the national character would allow Britain to succeed on its own. What’s more, voters were instilled with a sense of duty to live up to former glories by showing leadership, rather than hanging on to the coat tails of others in Europe.
Finally there was the notion of Britain having a unique destiny, to be brought about through action in the present. This vision of the future is intimately tied to the romanticised notion of the past.
In the words of Boris Johnson, Brexit would allow us to “recapture our voice”. This sense of a unique British destiny was a source of pride and confidence for many Brexit voters and is rooted in the idea of ‘exceptionalism’, common to many past and present imperial powers. Though the British Empire may be gone, the sense of destiny and the imperative to show leadership remains.
Self-sacrifice in pursuit of an ideal was implicit in the rhetorical themes running through the Leave discourse in a way that was missing from the more cautious and pragmatic tone of the Remain campaign. By relying too heavily on economic rationalism and by showing reluctance to emphasise the values of collective responsibility, the Remain campaign failed to appeal to motivation based in honour.
Conversely, the narratives of the Leave campaign wove together notions of personal honour and national pride, forming a coherent system of values with which people identified and found inspiring. Within this system of values, taking risks in pursuit of greater autonomy and in order to chose a path free from European hegemony made sense.
For those who support intergovernmentalism, co-operation and integration, the task is to understand the importance of these motivations and to argue in a way that not only appeals to people’s pragmatism, but inspires them to take risks in defence of cosmopolitan values too.
Christopher Morton wrote his Masters dissertation on the discourse of the Leave campaign leading up to the referendum.
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10 Responses to “Lessons from Brexit: The defence of globalism must appeal to more than mere pragmatism”
greg
@Will – You’re not getting it; and it shows in the “Remain voters do expect very severe economic consequences” part of your comment.
The type – class – of people who voted to remain will be the people who have wonderful, fulfilled lives: the people at the bottom have nothing – so a loss of nothing still equals nothing.
We leavers are used to scrabbling around in the dirt for whatever scraps of a dignified life we can scratch up; and we no longer see any gain in supporting an EU aristocracy – or its supporters.
It is amusing to one as old as I, that the present day Labour party harbours this love of the EU in its bosom: the Labour party that I grew up with would have stood resolutely on the side of the downtrodden and against the bankers of the EU.
Richard MacKinnon
Greg,
The position of The Labour Party on the EU has always been and still is a farce. Labour and the present leader JC have always looked upon the EU from day one with supicion. To those on the left of Labour the EU was and still is a club for the money men to make more of the stuff. Labour are now full supporters of the EU only because those anti EU Tories have forced the issue with the referendum and Brexit. It is a classic case of reacting to a situation for no other reason than opposing the enemy.
This has all culminated in the funniest political flip flop I have ever witnessed. When at the last minute last year, just before the referendum vote, when The Remain campain were getting the jitters, the life long EU sceptic Jeremy Corbyn was persuaded to do something. Wheeled out in front of the TV cameras Jeremy climbed off the fence and pronounced his full support for Remain. No sooner were his feet on terra firma and with no apparent damage to his favorite corduroys he finds out he was on the right side all along.
Will
Greg
“The people at the bottom have nothing, so the loss of nothing still equals nothing”
Rubbish. A Brexit induced recession would hurt those at the bottom the most, as they will soon find out if David Davis, Michael Give and Pritti Patel have their way.
Chris
@Will I agree that the poll I cited does not in itself show anything that substantial. The main reason I cited it was because it supported what I found reading through the discourse of the Leave campaign: that the majority (not all, by the way) of the arguments from the Leave side appealed to more emotional questions of identity and pride than to economic rationalism.
These, I think, are the arguments that won the day (not economic arguments). It is not contradictory that most Leave voters could think that Brexit will leave them better off AND be ok with making sacrifices for the sake of Brexit (if needs be). I think that for many Leave voters, linking ideas of pride and identity to Brexit meant a) that they would make such sacrifices and b) that they also have an optimism that Britain can and will succeed on its own which is itself linked to national pride.
While the remain campaign was good at arguing from a position of economic pragmatism, it was less good at appealing to the emotions and a sense of honour and pride. Globalism (like nationalism) has an undercurrent of values (pride in forming collective identities; in breaking down borders; in facilitating the emergence of universal values; and in co-operative projects – to combat climate change, check the development of offensive nuclear programmes, constrain irresponsible leaders within boundaries of norms etc etc) which can be appealed to. The Remain side did this less well than the Leave side in my opinion and there is a lesson in that for people who identify with cosmopolitan values. There is also a lesson about endeavouring to understand the lense through which the other side views an issue, even if ne does not agree with it.
Thanks for your comment
Tez
Hi Chris,
How do you determine that “Whether Brexit will be harmful to the economy is a question that has a right and a wrong answer”.
How does it have a right or wrong answer? There are too many variables and no control to compare this to. There will be winners and losers, as there are currently, and there is no way to know whether Brexit will have been good or bad. All there will be is conjecture between disagreeing historians for generations after the event. This is why economics is the dismal science.