BREXIT LANDSCAPING

Britain 2016 will be forever marked as the year of Brexit, the year a democratic process of sorts, a referendum, gave agency to the invisible power (Gaventa 2006) of British people who no longer had any faith in the European Union.
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POP-ACADEMIC ANALYSIS:
Kim Voss (1996a) argues that the late nineteenth century Knights of Labor were debilitated by their failure to develop a “fortifying myth” that could sustain them through a loss. Similarly the Remain camp was shocked silent and void of any ‘fortifying myth”. The master key frame (Snow 1986) of “Britain Stronger in Europe” had lost and Remainers had no come back. Was there even a point to a come back?  What did this all mean?
Most accepted elements of story, narrative and framing are challenged by the outcome of Brexit.
Frame bridging (Snow 1986) does not apply because the demographic of Brexiters spans too much of the population and Remainers (which included the vast majority of  ‘progressive’ campaigners ) cannot agree on any number of the driviing forces that motivated Brexiters to vote the way they did.
Before any frame transformations (Snow 1986) can be considered, before any religious text can be co-opted into the outcome and before any grand narrative (Polletta 1986) can swallow and digest the ‘loss’ and familiarise itself with the new landscape, the blame game has begun and is gathering rocket speed.
brexit-blame-jeremy-corbynBlaming is irresistibly seductive when the alternatives are just too hard. The main stream media is blaming Jeremy Corbyn for being weak against Brexit rather than David Cameron was for calling the referendum in the first place. Remainers are blaming each other for weak marketing tactics.

 


MY ANALYSIS!

The Brexit campaign was simplistically and untruthfully framed (see Independent Video below).  It 1) largely blamed migrants for all the shortcomings in Britain , 2) claimed it was too expensive to stay in the EU and 3) claimed that the NHS was failing because of the two previous factors. This fit within the framing of austerity (as a solution) that dominates British main stream media.(NEF 2014). It does not matter that three lies fitting snugly into one big lie do not somehow make any kind of truth. What matters is that just enough people felt aligned to this framing (Snow 1986), to win the referendum.
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I see Brexit as a retreat and as such I see it as a product of insecurity rather than a brave new change. Many British people yearn for things to make more sense and for many this means a retreat into the more traditional way of life. A life when:
a country’s boundaries meant something;
being British meant that you were advantaged in Britain;
supply and demand explained most economic complexities;
factories made things in one part of the world not five;
you called your bank and spoke to someone in the UK not the Philippines;
commodities that felt expensive were expensive;
land and life was affordable if you had a full time job;
most people had full time jobs!
Brexit will not magically re-produce all the above but it is my belief that these desires underpinned the Brexit vote. Being a reserved Remainer, I see nothing fundamentally unethical about any of these desires.

 

Apart from the prima facia and shallow case that an inherent racism won the day, what also played a significant role in winning was the normalising of the notion of a finite public purse; that what is ear marked for the ‘people’ is not in fact related to a matrix of factors but to one factor – how much is in the piggy back.  Rather than fight the complex power paradigms most people cannot understand, they opted for a simpler fight. One they have a greater chance of winning. Some would call that a S.M.A.R.T. objective . Its a shame it was done with a deceitful, unethical, misguiding, backstabbing (D.U.M.B) campaign.
In life sometimes good things are achieved with white lies, but there can be no greater white lie, than the Brexit campaign, and so I fear that good may not be achieved this time.  It would have been a braver and more mature fight to try and reform the European Union than simply run away from it. Regretful divorcees come to mind. Those who learn that they did not know what they had till it was gone, and how deeply they wish they had stayed in their marriage to fix it.
Only time will tell whether what has happened, will be worth the upheaval…. that is yet to occur.

References

Gaventa, J. (2006). Finding the Spaces for Change; A Power Analysis. IDS Bulletin , 37 (6).

Polletta, F. (1998). Contending Stories: Narrative in Social Movements. Qualitative Sociology, 21(4), 419–446.

Snow, D. A., Burke Rochford, E. J., Worden, S. K., & Benford, R. D. (1986). Frame Alignment Processes, Micrmobilization, and Movement Participation. American Sociological Review , 51 (4), 464 – 481.

 


 

2 thoughts on “BREXIT LANDSCAPING”

  1. I really like your reference to the British people as the ‘Invisible power’. Never more so has the power of voting been shown than in the EU referendum. It had a record turnout at 72% (highest since 1950) and hopefully a positive from the referendum is more people will see the impact of casting a vote 🙂 Although I guess we could also break this down further to the invisible power of the elderly! …with 90% of over 65s turning out to vote in June. We best make sure our campaign messages are not just online.

No point in having an opinion unless you share it :)

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