What are the implications of Brexit for the politics of national identity in the UK?

Rohan Patel 2020

This essay will outline the implications of Brexit for the politics of national identity. I begin with by identifying how identity is made, and then consider how this has was used during the Brexit campaign. I will then explore the implications of this within British politics. This includes the impact of English identity and racial politics, including its’ impact on race hate crimes, electoral issues with voter de-alignment of mainstream parties and the possible break-up of the Union. It will argue for proportionally representative electoral system, and the more global impact of these issue.

On 23rd June 2016, a referendum was held about Britain’s future membership within European Union. The outcome of the referendum was that Britain voted for Brexit, the process of leaving the EU (Mueller, 2020). There was a long back story behind the referendum, which meant that the importance of the vote was heightened, resulting in a huge historic 72.2% turnout (Henderson, 2016).  However, the vote was split 51.9% leave to 48.1% remain, meaning the country was now almost evenly split on the issue (EU Referendum Results, 2016). The vote has caused a divide across Britain (Hobolt, 2016), which has defined much of the politics of today (Axe-Browne and Hansen, 2020). Brexit has also led to broader debate around national identity and what should be Britain’s role within the world (Winder, 2018).

On the first question, around Britain’s national identity, it is worth highlighting that the in the days following the Brexit vote, there was a large increase in the level of racist attacks, with hate crime across the country increasing by over 40% (BBC, 2019). One notorious incident involved the racist murder of Arkadiusz Jozwik in Harlow in September 2016. This followed the earlier murder of the MP Jo Cox in June 2016, which meant that two people had died in Britain over the Brexit debate (Stone, 2016). Furthermore, the scale of hate crime has not dropped in the years after Brexit, with data showing the levels of hate crime in Britain have remained steady. Furthermore, a survey carried out in 2019 found that ‘71% of ethnic minorities faced discrimination’, further highlighting how the issues have not lessened since the Brexit vote in 2016. (Booth, 2019).

Kaufmann (2016), has argued that many of the Leave votes were driven by issues around their perceived identity rather than economics. The Leave Campaign was framed around sovereignty and immigration, and these issues intersect with national identity (Howley and Waqas, 2020). The concepts of both national identity and nationalism are important to the analysis of Brexit.

If we examine the first issue of national identity, we can learn from Stuart Hall that ‘identity’ has complex and interconnecting relationship to ideas not just around race and ethnicity, but also customs, rituals, traditions, values, history and language. He argues ‘identity is not given once and for all by something transmitted in the genes we carry in the colour of our skin but is shaped and transformed historically and culturally’ (Hall, 2017 p154). These issues inter-relate nationally across every community in Britain.

Benedict Anderson argued a nation is ‘an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’ (Anderson, 1983: 5–6). Nations are created, their boundaries can be contested but ultimately, they create a sense of community (Anderson, 1983). From this we can see that not only is individual identity and national identity fluid, but they are also discursive and can alter over time. This suggests that national identity is a two-way process with individuals engaging with both history and culture, and at the same time personal identity is also shaped by discussions by the history and culture around them. In a way, therefore, Brexit has shaped people and we need to understand the political implications of this.

Sobolewska and Ford (2020) argue Brexit was a ‘moment of awakening’ as two vastly different factions split the country and opened the cracks of now clear societal divides. Doring and others have argued the country was split between social conservativism and liberal conservatism, with a stark geographical division between rural and urban Britain (Doring, Stuart and Stubbs, 2016). They argue that Brexit was an inadvertent coalition between wealthy middle people from rural areas, with a poorer underclass, mostly white, from urban areas.  Both seem to point to connection between Brexit and support for the Conservative party, and their sense of Britishness. 

Paul Gilroy’s work explores what it means to be British in the modern age (Dworkin, 2009). Gilroy’s argumentation starts through examining the colonial lens, as he argues, to review the role of race in Britain today, we must understand the histories of the past (Gilroy, 1987). In many respects, immigration represents the movement of people from the Empire to the Empire’s capital, London. Until the end of the British Empire, migration was permitted as everyone belonged to the same Empire, however afterwards the presence of Black and Asian people became a problem. Rather than seeing immigration and Empire as inter-related, British national discourse has tended to keep the history of the Empire out, and therefore people from across the Empire as outsiders. The recent debates around decolonising the curriculum and the role of Empire, and slavery in British History shows how these issues are not resolved. One of the political implications of this is the ongoing arguments around race and empire within education, and other national institutions, such as the British Museum and National Trust (Mitchell, 2020). 

Some of these issues keep recurring. In 2020, in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in the US and the focus in race relations in the UK, in Britain, the debate was epitomised by the pulling down of the statue of Edward Colston, a slave trade owner and characterise the racialised divide we see present today (Parkes, 2020). The Black Lives Matter UK organisation, gained traction causing a debate on rethinking our histories and identity (Hirsch, 2020). However, with the critiquing of Britain’s past came a backlash against how remember Britain and draws similarities with the Brexit debate around racial issues (Edwards, 2020). What is clear is the lack of colonial history presented within our educational systems (Goodfellow, 2019). If Brexit has unleashed a new divide, to heal these divisions, it needs to revisit its national identity and have a coherent debate around memory and the past.

To understand the national identity in the UK, it is therefore important to look at the history. Britain’s origins begin in early 1700s, with the four nations of England, Scotland, Wales joining together through three key elements ‘Protestantism’, ‘The Empire’ and Wars against other nations. (Colley, 2003). However, even this was fractured, and the United Kingdom we understand today was only created in 1922, consisting of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (Curtice, 2013), four vastly different countries tied in a common union (Crick, 1988). Using Colley’s (2003), foundations of British identity, the factors that bound Britain together have started to unravel in recent years, and this partly blamed on immigration.

The British Empire disbandment and growing immigration, led to questions of what it meant to be British in the Post-wars world (Parekh, 2009). Since then we have witness the ‘decline of Britishness’ and the growth of individual nation identity, due to cultural and historical significance of the four nations (Kerr, 2012). ETHNOS (2006), completed a study exploring the ‘British identity crisis’ and found many people felt there previously was a ‘solid’ idea of what Britishness meant but now this is not clear. Further, the strong sense of identity the home-nations has proven challenging for the Union, displayed by Scotland’s attachment to its own identity, as ‘62% feel Scottish only’ (Scottish Census, 2011).

In recent times, there has been effort to unify the Union through ‘liberal-democratic values’, Kerr (2012). The attempt to bring people with different histories, and sometimes languages together has been done through policies around multiculturalism. However, multiculturalism within Britain has divided opinion (Farrar, 2012), and in recent years’ issues around race has come to dominate narratives around various social issues (Shankly and Rhodes, 2020). Although this is by no means a new phenomenon, as historically an influx of immigration has been met with hostility (Conway, 2007).

Many commenters have argued that the linking of social problems to race has led to a shift to towards right-wing politics. For example, whereas in the early 1990s it was only the far-right British National Party (BNP) who would argue that Islam conflicted with British values, this view is now largely mainstream (Fekete 2017). UKIP’s ability to portray multiculturalism as a failing within the mainstream has been critical to politics of identity. UKIP has shifted the debate of identity into ‘us vs them’ and weaponising immigration (Durrheim et al., 2018).  Wellings (2019), argues that anxiety around English identity has fuelled growing questions around nationalism and this caused the growth of Euroscepticism, the foundations Brexit is built upon.

Here we should clarify the how national identity and nationalism interconnect, that is the difference between using nationalism joining the people of a nation together and nationalism as tool to promote hatred is important when exploring national identity. This difference is defined by the terms ‘civic nationalism’, promoting and celebrating the shared culture of a nation, and ‘ethno nationalism’, the use of xenophobic rhetoric to distinguish between the ethnicities within of a nation (Roshwald, 2015). Brexit utilised parts of Britain’s toxic nationalism, which often looks to the dark racist past for identity (Bandyopadhyay, 2018).

It is interesting that the Brexit campaign was not widely seen as racist, or fascist, in tendencies. One reason is explained by Hesse (2004) who argues that the term racism came into the mainstream within the 1930s, becoming synonymous with Nazi Germany and therefore distancing the West from the idea.  For example, Nigel Farage posing in front of the ‘Breaking Point posters’, not too dissimilar to Nazi-like propaganda (Durrheim et al., 2018). Then Farage later giving a speech including references to Churchill’s fight them on the beach’s speech is projected to display his sense Britishness rather than racism, and hatred of foreigner, even if the story about Turkey joining, and its citizens coming to the UK was untrue (Valdés-Miyares, 2018).

Rather than view this type of Britishness as racism, or even intolerance of foreigners, it is framed with the narrative of ‘British tolerance’, that exceptional British characteristic to tolerate others, often people from their Empire, being pushed to its limit. (Tilford, 2017). We can see this issue when we consider how some people from ethnic minority backgrounds also voted for Brexit, that former immigrants, or even refugees such as the Home Secretary Priti Patel, see this not in terms of racism, but tolerance. Anderson (1983) makes a distinction between nationalism and race, justifying that a common language can be learnt, and this is what joins various ethnic communities of the nation together (Gilroy, 1987).

For many writers, especially Black writers these issues are connected to race. Gilroy (1987) argues that British nationality ultimately tied to race, with ideas like sense of national belonging being rooted deep within personal identity. Gilroy, identifies the Immigration acts of 1968/1981 which excluded Black immigrants on the assumption that grandparents were not born in United Kingdom despite their British Empire-statehood and their common English language (Gilroy, 1987). ‘The Windrush Scandel’, whereby West Indian Immigrants came to into Britain as British citizens under Empire, but many have been deported for papers they do not have as they were children when they came to the UK in the 1960s (Reddie, 2020), has been discussed as an administrative mistake, but not racism.

Therefore, to contextualise the implications of a Post-Brexit national identity, we must first understand the colonial framework the identity is built upon (Winder, 2018). Gilroy argues that Post-World Wars Britain never addressed its crimes of the Empires and instead look to victories of these wars to construct an identity of hope to embrace the national unity of this time. This has hidden aspects of British history from the national narrative. It was forgotten that Britain enslaved the people of the Empire and later the colonies, which created British dominance on the world stage (Gilroy,2005). The fixation with the war derives from it being ‘Britain’s finest hour’ but also the point where we lost global dominance (Wellings, 2019). The Second World War is therefore the turning point in Britain’s fortunes.

Gilroy’s arguments resonate with the Brexit campaign through references of the Second World War through the campaign. Exemplified by Farage’s victory speech, references Churchill’s renowned ‘fight them on the beaches speech’ (Valdés-Miyares, 2018). The discourse of the speech demonstrates Gilroy’s ‘post-colonial melancholia’ argumentation around Britain’s fixation on the Wars. Farage’s ‘warlike tones’ could allude to a time before immigration tones’, and explain the re-emergence of ‘jingoistic patriotisms’ within Brexit (Ballantyne, 2018). Additionally, using this language fabricates history as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘boarders’ are tangled to endorse ‘ethnic-based exclusion’ to exclude immigrants (Valdés-Miyares, 2018)

Some have argued that the recent discourse has shifted from rational politics towards an emotional rhetoric, where defined cultural differences are segregated as the significant factor in politics (Ahmed, 2014). The campaign embodied a turn in political rhetoric, a movement towards ‘post-truth politics’, with the ‘£350 million a week’ slogan on the red bus citied as an exemplifier (Rose, 2017). The Politics of emotion was utilised throughout Brexit through the phrase ‘Take Back Control’. The phrase because it implied that that there was previously a sense of control and now this has faded (Glendinning, 2019).

The Brexit campaign overplayed the immigration debate and normalised the link between ethno nationalism and our national identity (Corbett, 2016). Brexit was labelled ‘Empire 2.0’ by the government, implying we yearn for global dominance once again, a rhetoric built on nostalgia a philosophy that carried throughout the Brexit campaign (Clini, 2020).

There are various implications for these issues we need to consider. Firstly, Dunin-Wasowicz (2017), argues Brexit is a result of an identity crisis by unanswered questions of its history, it ‘is not only an expression of nostalgia for empire, it is also the fruit of empire’, and this has led to some of the debates around British history as I explained earlier. 

Secondly, the arguments around globalisation and industrial decline in Britain have led Bhambra (2017), and others to argue that Brexit is a new strand of ‘persuasive methodological whiteness’, misleading the social sciences into investigating specifically the white working class rather broader structural debates around the histories of these nations. Bhambra argues we now have a much narrower version of ‘Britishness’, than during the Empire. The implications for this is that working class is mostly white, and not only does this support the sense Britishness being more aligned to Englishness than ever before, but also that the white working class are a particularly distinct disenfranchised group, different to Black or Asian working class communities (Bhambra, 2017).

Some of these issues have resulted in the growing dissatisfaction for the traditional Parties and electoral system, particularly with the Labour party in some working-class areas. In the late 90’s Labour tried to reinvent themselves, though they were very popular in the short term, it has caused many traditional voters to become dissatisfied and caused a split in the party causing Party crisis on who to represent (Sobolewska and Ford, 2020). Utilising the middle-class vote, Labour consumed the centre ground to build strong mandate to push a reformist policy through Parliament easily (Shaw, 2016). Up until this point, Labour were traditionally the Euroskeptic Party, and in combination with embracing immigration and decreasing emphasis on a strong working-class identity, often built on national unity, has slowly deterred traditional working class voters away (Heath, 2000). Therefore, Brexit became a challenging task for Labour, as the new metropolitan liberal voters would not accept embracing their Euroskeptic working class roots (Hayhurst, 2020). Brexit has prevented Labour from gaining popularity in recent years, as their inability to take a position without losing some members of the core voters, which has resulted in no position, a far less popular for the undecided voter (Harrop, 2017). The recent debate about the loss of vote in the ‘Red Wall’ regions is one longer term implication of Brexit (Cutts, Goodwin, Heath and Surridge, 2020)

For the Conservatives Brexit is also divisive (Lynch and Whitaker, 2018). Brexit was called due Cameron’s concerns of UKIP beginning to take Conservative votes away (Hayton, 2018). When Cameron lost, the Conservatives have slowly moved further to the right to deal with the large leave vote to maintain a majority. This has led many liberal Conservatives isolated as the party is increasingly leaning towards the far right (Gamble, 2019).

However, this shows the ineffectiveness of the First-past-the-post voting system, as both should split into separate parties to solve electoral issues and allow clear policy positions to be laid out for voters. The consequences of the UK’s ‘winner takes it all’ First-past-the-Post voting system is a lack of Party choices, as two large parties who compete against each other. Although this brings stability to politics, it silences the ability for minority parties to gain traction and can be unrepresentative of many electorate’s views (Mohazeb, 2020).

Sobolewska and Ford (2020), argue that Conservatives largely have benefited from the identity politics of Brexit, by pulling away traditional white Labour voters through their harsh stance on immigration, strong nationalism and anti-Europe rhetoric and has allowed them to gain a large majority in 2019. But electoral problems are coming with rise of both the ‘ethnic minority vote and identity liberals’, who mostly disagree with these stances, they will need to heal these divisions to ensure they can maintain a future mandate. However, for Labour these votes are too ‘geographically concentrated to win an election’. Therefore, both parties will meet electoral challenges and must extend to a broader group of voters, which will split the vote and most likely will lead to ‘less stable electoral coalitions’ (Sobolewska and Ford, 2020).

Brexit could be the result of our unrepresentative electoral system which often responds poorly to the problems brought by big economic and social change (Becker, Fetzer and Novy, 2017). The European Elections are carried out under a proportionally representative system. The 2019 Elections showed despite living under a Conservative government, the majority party only held 4 out of the 73 seats within the European Parliament (The House of Commons Library, 2019).

Brexit has shown our current system has the incapability to deal with issues which split the major parties, as it cannot facility representation outside these parties (Mohazeb, 2020). Therefore, a shift towards a proportionally representative system would allow the true understanding of the electoral position of the nation. This could unite the country, as there would be clear understanding of national concerns and all voices would feel equalised (Khaitan, 2019).

However, a report generated by the government in 2019 found only ‘35%’ of participants asked would change the voting system, compared to ‘55%’ who argue it should remain as it is. Despite this, within a Single transferable voting system using the 2017 election projections, Labour would gain 35 seats totally 297 and the Conservatives loosing 35 totally 282 (House of Commons Libray, 2019).

Within Labour, there are sub-groups to push policy towards a more representative electoral system, with ‘76%’ of Labour voters being in favour of a Proportional Representation (Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, 2017). Further, pressure could come from the Lib Dems, Greens and UKIP who all put it within their 2019 manifesto’s (Local Government Association, 2019), however this is due to these parties being the beneficiary of the electoral change (House of Commons Libray, 2019). But if all several parties agreed to back this change, it could be plausible to pass Parliament within the future. The dissatisfaction within the political system has grown since the COVID-19 crisis and reform could help heal the wounds to build trust again (Evans-Pritchard, 2020)

Lastly, a major implication of Brexit is encouraging the British Union to split apart, completely fracturing British identity (Meagher, 2017). Sobolewska and Ford (2020) argue that Brexit ‘is very much an English and Welsh story’, referencing the minority vote in both other nations, with Scotland voting ‘62%’ remain and Northern Ireland ‘55.8%’ (EU Referendum Results, 2016).

Scotland held a referendum on independence back in 2014, voting ‘NO’ to independence by 55% to 45% (BBC, 2014). Many Scotts see have a ‘shifting’ view of national identity as they feel both Scottish and British (Keating, 2010). The difficulty of balancing these dual identities meant they did not leave the Union in 2014, but Brexit required a more challenging choice ‘between Britain and the EU’, presenting attachments to identity to be fragmented (Sobolewska and Ford, 2020).

However, Post-Brexit, many argue the circumstances have changed, urging for a potential future vote (Sturgeon, 2021). Johnson has decided that leaving the European Union is more important than maintaining Britain as we know it, by agreeing to a Brexit which priorities ‘English nationalism’, and pushing Scotland towards independence (Stephens, 2020). The Scottish Government (2020), put out statement regarding Johnsons agreed deal branding it a ‘Bad Brexit deal for Scotland’ and ‘Independence only way to regain full benefits of EU membership’. Further, the report lays out all the negatives effect on Scotland, like losing ‘£16 billion in exports’ and the economy will shrink by ‘estimated 6.1% of GDP’ as well as the positive impacts of European migration has had on Scottish culture (Scottish Government, 2020).

Data shows that support for another referendum on Scottish Independence has risen since both Brexit and Boris Johnson took office (Gilbert and Clark, 2020). If Brexit has not pushed Scotland towards independence, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown Scotland’s ability to govern alone. Nicola Sturgeon, has often been ahead of curb in adapting policies to fit with the science according, whereas Boris Johnson has been much slower (Stephens, 2020). Data gathered by BBC Scotland shows, only 25% feel UK government is handling the pandemic effectively in Scotland, whereas 72% feel Scottish government has handled the crisis efficiently, with 39% feel an independent Scotland would be far better off within the pandemic (Curtice, 2020). Further Johnson’s recent comments on devolution to individual nations within the Union being a ‘disaster’, stirred up possible break-up of the Union (Brooks, Parveen, Carroll and Morris, 2020). A recent poll shows that 58% of Scots would vote to leave the United Kingdom if a referendum was held (Langfitt, 2020).

However, Scotland’s biggest issue with independence is the inability to carry out another referendum without Westminster’s agreement, otherwise the result would be ‘ruled unlawful by UK Supreme Court’ (Institute for Government, 2019). Boris Johnson has outlined he would not approve a second Scottish ‘referendum until 2055’ (Simon Johnson et al., 2021). But, the SNP could push towards a position of pressuring Westminster for a referendum within the ‘second half of 2021’ (McCall, 2021). If Scottish nationalism continues to rise and Sturgeon continues to handle the COVID-19 pandemic effectively, the likeliness of Union breaking up could become ever more likely.

Furthermore, the issue of Northern Ireland was a challenging talking point within the trade talks with the EU, due to historical difficulties around the boarder with the Republic of Ireland (Berberi, 2017). Data shows that Northern Irish Brexit voting patterns largely followed pre-existing divided lines, with Nationalists who support a United Ireland voted ‘88% remain’, whereas Unionists who want to remain part of the UK voted ‘66% to leave’ (Keating, 2018). These alliances have deep historical roots based around religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants and various stances between remaining part of UK and those who want to Reunited with Ireland. The conflict goes back centuries and was finally reached peace in 1998 with The Good Friday Agreement, where boarders were not checked (Perry, 2010).

Brexit causes difficulties for Northern Ireland by pushing towards a hard boarder between the Republic of Ireland which remains in the EU and Northern Ireland is no longer in the EU. The extra boarder checks would breach the Good Friday agreement and therefore could escalate prior conflicts (Berberi, 2017). Therefore, within the deal we have agreed a temporary boarder within the Sea, which allows imports coming from mainland Britain to be checked without an Irish boarder (BBC, 2020). However, it is unsure at this present time to see how these issues will devolve. But what is clear, is Brexit has certainly pushed the future of the Union into a limbo of uncertainty (Doyle and Mayes, 2021)

Lastly, it must be pointed out that Brexit will massively impact our position on the global stage (Adler-Nissen, Galpin and Rosamond, 2017). The UK must make concessions to get the most beneficial trade deals (Tisdall, 2021).  For example, India have highlighted their desire to get more visas for Indian workers within the new system (Partington, 2019), or Australia asking for free movement (Jones, 2020). All possible plans, however the talks will only determine actual policy outcomes.

But Britain must learn to accept immigration as inevitable outcome within a globalised world, even if that may shape or shift our own national identity and there must be conversations around its own identity exterior to the immigration debate (Kaufmann, 2017).

Overall, we can see Brexit having major impact on politics of national identity, it is altering the meaning of Britishness and creating divisions between racial groups in a multicultural society. We can see that the Brexit campaign created a narrative built on Britishness in a time before, where identity was fixed and there seemed to be universal truths. They politics of national identity which links our global dominance to ethno-nationalism, forgetting our imperial influence of the time. Contextually this is key as we cannot understand the Britain today without looking at the Empire, which controlled almost half the world until very recently.

The implication of the Brexit campaign using a nationalism without this framework, is creating a divided society, which observes racial issues entirely differently. To heal these divisions, we must separate leaving the EU as a political and economic decision, respecting this democratic choice, and the fact racial identity is being used to push the Brexit agenda. We must build towards a more inclusive multicultural society, where Brexit is not politicised through a racial identity. 

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