The Social Consequences of Brexit for the UK and Europe
Euroscepticism, Populism, Nationalism, and Societal Division
in The International Journal of Social QualitySearch for other papers by Steve Corbett in
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Abstract
This article examines the 2016 Referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union and draws on initial research into the reasons that the UK voted to leave and demographics of the leave vote. This initial analysis suggests that the Brexit (British Exit) vote reveals wider and deeper societal tensions along the lines of age, class, income, and education (Goodwin and Heath 2016). By providing an account of the background and events of the referendum, this article asserts that the vote was a case study in populist right-wing Eurosceptic discourse (Leconte 2010; Taggart 2004), but it also reveals strong elements of English nationalism (including British exceptionalism and social conservatism) in parts of British society (Henderson et al. 2016; Wellings 2010). Given this, the article begins to make sense of Brexit from a social quality perspective and outlines a possible social quality approach to the UK and Europe post-Brexit.
Contributor Notes
Steve Corbett is a Lecturer in Social Policy at Liverpool Hope University, UK. His research interests include participatory democracy and social quality (in particular the concept of social empowerment), political ideology, and critical social policy analysis. He has written on the UK government’s “big society” idea and a qualitative study of how workplace democracy and local community democracy can improve social quality. His forthcoming work includes an account of the concept of “the social” in social policy, co-authored with Alan Walker, and research into regional film policy and self-organization of film clubs in northern England, co-authored with Bridgette Wessels.