Abstract
Brexit has continued to capture the attention of International Relations (IR) scholars, where it has been linked to the burgeoning debate on race and postcolonialism. This article adds to this scholarship by historicising the question of imperial nostalgia, which has been central to these intersecting literatures. It re-examines how influential theorists Hall and Gilroy linked the peculiarities of British national consciousness to traumas issuing from the loss of great power status. It emphasises two themes often lacking in recent accounts of Brexit nationalism: namely, the centrality of military mobilisation to national consciousness; and the unevenness between popular and elite sentiment with regards to the imperial dimension. In historicising themes of extroversion and introversion, it reconsiders the significant metamorphoses in post-Thatcherite British nationalism, which had centred on proclaiming a national renaissance founded in foreign policy successes, international moral leadership and a state-led consensus for rolling out globalisation worldwide. The research shows that revisionism about the British Empire played a significant role in foreign policy discourse across this period, as did pro-EU sentiment among the governing and ruling elite. It highlights the mechanisms which allowed UK foreign policy intellectuals to link the military roll-out of ‘postmodern’ social norms with the European project’s end goals. These findings help historically situate Brexit amid a succession of crises for the liberal global order. The research finds that, whereas Brexit appeared initially as a retreat or break from the UK’s post-Thatcherite ‘globalising’ nationalism, subsequent developments highlight significant continuities.
The United Kingdom’s protracted decision to leave the European Union (EU), or ‘Brexit’, has continued to capture the attention of international relations (IR) scholars. 1 It has been a particular focus for the burgeoning debate on race and postcolonialism in IR, as expressed in notions of an ‘Anglo nostalgia’, 2 ‘imperial nostalgia’ 3 or ‘postcolonial melancholy’ 4 operating within the Brexit vote. Unlike associated approaches which theorise Brexit as expressions of whiteness, authoritarianism or simply anti-migrant prejudice – themes which have parallels across Atlantic politics – the notion of imperial nostalgia is founded in theories of a British exception or developmental pathology. New Left ideas about British decline 5 and a specifically British racial dimension 6 thus contributed to a wider (often politically moderate) narrative of resistance to Brexit, with parallels in the wider liberal public sphere. 7 In observing an exceptional developmental pathology in British nationalism, there has been marked by emphasis on introversion, defensiveness and psychological compensation, themes which reflect the peculiar circumstances of Brexit. These topics may appear plausible in explaining elements of Brexiteer Conservatism and perhaps Britain’s post-war experience (whether in terms of national-Keynesianism and in terms of reactions to Commonwealth migration). But it leaves unanswered questions about the intervening Thatcher-Blair period of an expansionist, globalising British ‘renaissance’ nationalism. That phase has received far less scrutiny in the recent literature, even though these phases were central to Hall and Gilroy’s original notions of melancholy and nostalgia in British consciousness, 8 which forms the theoretical roots of this literature, and even though these phases were arguably more explicit in their ‘imperial’ revivalism and revisionism. Addressing this gap would contribute to a more nuanced appreciation of the British case within the wider conception of race and post-colonialism in IR; and a more plausible account of the contradictions of post-Brexit Conservatism.
By historicising the debate on ‘imperial nostalgia’, this research thus aims to reassess the role of Brexit in British nationalism. Firstly, the paper situates discussion of a British national-racial-imperial exception within broader discussions of race and imperialism within international relations. It notes a tension between notions of imperialism as an ongoing practice or structural constraint in global political economy, as emphasised in neo-Marxist approaches, and notions of a discursive construction operating in popular consciousness. Secondly, the research will examine and historicise how theorists such as Hall and Gilroy linked the peculiarities of British national consciousness to traumas issuing from the loss of great power status. This analysis will present two themes often lacking in recent accounts of Brexit nationalism: namely, the centrality of military mobilisation to national consciousness; and the unevenness between popular and elite sentiment with regards to the imperial dimension. 9 Furthermore, by historicising the debate, it will establish the complicated relationship between nationhood, race and foreign policy in governing narratives of Britishness. Thirdly, the research will assess how these analytical themes applied in earlier hegemonic phases of British politics. Themes of British renaissance, either centring around themes of Empire and imperialism, or presenting revisionist accounts of these themes, are shown to have shaped the Conservative-Thatcherite and New Labour-Blairite phases of British leadership. However, while these phases show areas of continuity, imperial themes are framed in qualitatively contrasting ways, with Blairism framing Empire as a precursor to a ‘post-sovereignty’ or ‘postmodern’ order of globalisation. Unlike the preceding Thatcher phase, the Blair era was marked by significant public resistance to the projection of British power overseas. Finally, having historicised claims about imperial nostalgia, the research will assess claims made about Brexit. While the referendum initially generated a panic about introversion, retreat and deglobalisation, the ultimate outcomes have been marked by ironic continuities with the nationalism of roll-out globalisation that dominated preceding decades.
Nation, race and empire in international politics
While the imperial nostalgia thesis is founded in claims of developmental abnormality in British nationalism, the evolution of this discussion, from its beginnings in Hall and Gilroy to the post-Brexit phase, has been shaped by wider shifts in theorising race and post-colonial nationalism in the global north. It is therefore useful to begin from an examination of how these themes have evolved in the international relations literature.
Recently, there has been growing emphasis on the origins of international relations and foreign policy discourse in the practices of colonial management and inter-imperial competition. 10 As Cox observes, the autobiography of IR has moved from the ‘heroic to the critical’: ‘according to a new wave of writers, those who shaped and defined the early subject were less animated by idealism or a yearning for peace. . .and more, it seems, by a desire to make the world safe for empire, white rule and the powerful and the wealthy’. 11 Within critical IR, recent efforts to bring race and imperialism back into the problematic of international politics emerged in two phases. Reflecting the circumstances of the War on Terror, the first was dominated by the problematic of American power considered within the longue durée of Empires and great power hegemony. 12 Strains within this phase range from debates within Marxism (e.g. on US unipolar hegemony vs inter-imperialist competition) 13 to efforts by more mainstream realists to constrain a perceived American imperialistic ambition centring around the Bush-era neoconservatives. 14 A secondary focus, often issuing from the research agenda of critical geography and Said’s discourse analysis on orientalism, was on the colonial imagination of space and power. 15 This centred on problems of the construction and the ‘othering’ of foreign policy enemies, most especially Muslim nations, leaders and communities. Even if such accounts of ‘the imperial’ focused on the stereotypes and ideological legacies of European Empires, their focus was on contemporary practices of geo-political and geo-economic power, linked to American foreign policy and the rollout of neoliberal globalisation. 16
The second phase has been characterised by a shift in problematic, reflecting what Brubaker calls the ‘discursive turn’ 17 and Chibber calls the ‘cultural turn’. 18 In part, this has foundations in changing political pressures, with the decline of activist neoconservatism allied to the rising influence of populist discourse to right-wing domestic politics. 19 However, the new problematic also reflects shifts in social science research, with greater emphasis on themes of social construction, identity and the psychology of prejudice and privilege. While this second phase has provided important comparative insights into nationalist backlashes against globalisation, and the role of status hierarchy between in-groups and out-groups, it has often come at the expense of interest in the political-economic and military foundations of global order.
It is important to consider the peculiar implications of this for theorising nationalism in international politics. As Brubaker notes, the discursive turn meant that populism and nationalism could be ‘construed as interpenetrating or even mutually constitutive, highlighting the populist or demotic dimension of some nationalisms and the nationalist dimension of many populisms’. 20 While this brought new insights, it also erased differences: above all, as Brubaker notes, between the horizontal character of nationalist differentiation; and the vertical oppositional character of populist discourse, with its stylised contrast between people and elite. Reflecting the above, many recent approaches to studying nationhood focus on themes of introversion and the retreat from globalisation. Compared to the earlier phase, less attention has focused on elite-led, outward-facing national mobilisation.
In the case of post-imperial states such as the UK, this makes for particular problems. Philosophical nationalism has often centred on the inherent diversity (and thus, for some, the incompatibility) of human cultures. By contrast, British nationalism in its post-Thatcherite form has centred less on inherent difference than on the historic superiority of its liberal traditions and thus its inherent capacity for international leadership. As one study of Thatcherite foreign policy observes, ‘hers was. . .an ideological nationalism which linked the right ideas about how all people should live with the history and genius of a particular people’. 21 This explains Thatcher’s initial positivity towards the European project, seeing the Single Market as a mechanism for exporting Anglophone liberal traditions in political economy, which were not merely ‘best for Britain’ but for everyone. These universalising articulations of national purpose, with their combination of imperial revisionism and neoliberal globalisation, were even more pronounced under the (explicitly pro-EU) New Labour. Conversely, however, the initial burst of popular-imperial nationalism under Thatcher would give way to public war-weariness under Tony Blair’s prime ministership. Ambitions for a militarised ‘Anglobalization’, the dominant strain of post-Thatcherite British nationalism, struggled to find sustained popular expression after the Millennium.
Critical theoretical efforts to understand Brexit have often centred on notions of ‘imperial nostalgia’ and ‘postcolonial melancholy’, drawn from pioneering works by Hall and Gilroy, which aimed to sketch peculiar pathologies of British nationalism. However, given these wider shifts, it is possible to detect a subtle shift in the research problem. The overarching focus has been on British imperial-nationalism as a psychological compensation for loss of overseas power. Research in this vein has thus increasingly centred on the irrational foundations of public attitudes, which are linked, secondarily, to the activities of political entrepreneurs such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, who exploit this reservoir of dejection and prejudice. By contrast, the argument pursued here is as follows. The circumstances that led to Brexit are in significant respects different from those that Hall theorised in the 1980s. There was a significant metamorphosis in British foreign policy throughout the Thatcher-Blair period, which centred on proclaiming a national renaissance founded in foreign policy successes, international moral leadership and a state-led consensus for rolling out globalisation worldwide. Revisionism about the British Empire played a significant role in foreign policy discourse across this period, as did pro-EU sentiment among the governing and ruling elite, as Euroscepticism was forced to the margins, whether of the far-left and far-right, or else as a perceived electoral liability to the Conservative opposition. While some disputed the link, leading UK foreign policy intellectuals explicitly linked the military roll-out of ‘postmodern’ social norms with the European project’s end goals. The two were often regarded as compatible, if not always harmonious, as part of an elite-led consensus for liberal globalisation. Brexit, by contrast, emerged amid a succession of failures for the liberal global order, in both military and economic terms, but also in terms of popular consent and mobilisation. It should be regarded, in this sense, as a temporary point of crisis in established British nationalism, albeit one which culminated in considerable continuity.
Foundations: theories of race and British national pathology
Efforts to understand the specific and pathological nature of race in British nationalism can be traced to the theories of Hall and Gilroy. 22 A re-examination of these critiques can serve to illustrate their context in the longer trajectory of British foreign policy and national consciousness. Historically, most critical scholarship on Hall and Gilroy’s contribution has centred on their claims about black consciousness, subcultures, diasporic communities and the possibilities of a cosmopolitan ideology issuing from these forces. Until recently, less has been said about their contributions to theorising dominant cultures and ideologies. Post-Brexit scholarship on ‘imperial nostalgia’ and ‘postcolonial melancholy’, both terms drawn from Hall and Gilroy, have served to redress this balance. In many respects, their accounts of the racial component to nationalism have wider implications. Hall’s approach to ‘conjunctural analysis’, which centres on mapping the totality of social relations at points of acute crisis, has broad-ranging implications for analysing dominant ideologies. 23 Within the vein of neo-Gramscian IR, there are longstanding efforts to incorporate these insights as part of a study of ‘the international’. 24 However, the focus here is on claims about the peculiarities of British national consciousness.
Hall’s approach echoes the New Left traditions of the Nairn-Anderson thesis of British patrician backwardness, emphasising Britain ‘never ever properly entered the era of modern bourgeois civilisation’. 25 His particular influence on the Brexit debate centres on the notion of imperial nostalgia as a form of racial psychopathology, rooted in a search for compensation for the traumatic effects of the loss of great power status. 26 While his account draws from Gramscian notions of hegemony, 27 it also reflects the post-Althusserian fashion for structuralist accounts of dominant ideologies, which take for granted a psychoanalytic account of unconscious processes. A common sense of loss is said to create an imaginary link between the popular classes and the hegemonic ruling class. For Hall, the Falklands War was thus defined as a ‘return of the repressed’, an appeal to the ‘collective unconscious’ of popular jingoism. 28 Thatcherism’s unexpected success, he argued, reflected its appeal to the ‘bone and marrow’ of British political culture, ‘well below the threshold of conscious awareness’. 29 These claims are often reflected in post-Brexit critical scholarship: for instance, Hall’s psychoanalytic account of ideology has parallels in research which emphasise the roots of Brexit in ‘resurgent reification of colonial imaginaries’ which inspire ‘crippling interior anxieties’. 30
Gilroy further explored the specific pathologies of British national consciousness, and similarly linked this to a mindset of racial superiority that was a leftover from imperialism.
31
His account of British melancholy is likewise psychoanalytic, drawing specifically from accounts of German national pathologies after the loss of the Second World War.
32
In defining a pathological strain of nationalism, Gilroy is forced to walk an awkward conceptual path. The problem of linking nationalism with racism had been a persistent issue for a New Left seeking theoretical defence of the pursuit of sovereignty by subject nations. Nairn thus proposed the ‘Janus-faced’ logic of nationalism, which was neither regressive or progressive but simultaneously both.
33
Anderson, by contrast, proposed an alternative account which decouples race from nation: ‘The dreams of racism actually have their origins in the ideologies of class, rather than those of nation: above all in claims to divinity among rulers and to blue or white blood and breeding among aristocracies’.
34
Gilroy’s effort to solve these conundrums centres on the particularity of British national consciousness:
The process of national decline is presented as coinciding with the dilution of once homogeneous and continuous national stock by alien strains. . .The operation of banishing blacks, repatriating them to the places which are congruent with their ethnicity and culture, becomes doubly desirable. It assists in the process of making Britain great again and restores an ethnic symmetry to a world distorted by imperial adventure and migration.
35
To resolve conceptual difficulties, Gilroy’s methodological answer is similar to Hall’s: particular points of national crisis are seen as drawing together disparate and perhaps unlikely narrative elements under a single hegemonic leadership. As with Hall’s account of Thatcherite ideology, Gilroy’s account of New Labour ideology links adventurist warfare to the wounds of diminished status as a global power. 36 Military mobilisation plays a central bridging role, hence both concepts emerged as responses to reassertions of British foreign policy: ‘In a sense. . .when it comes to “race” and nation, we have grown used to living under martial rules’. 37 Both Hall and Gilroy suggest that Britishness involves a peculiar interaction of retreat from cosmopolitan realities (into fantasies of a pre-migration Britain) and outward-facing, adventurist cosmopolitan projects, centring on the overthrow of post-colonial claims for sovereignty as part of the rollout of neoliberal civilisation.
However, linking ethno-nationalism to the cosmopolitan business of Empire-building cannot always erase the theoretical complexities. 38 As Kumar observes, ‘It is one thing. . .to see a connection between nationalism and imperialism, another to conflate nation and empire’. 39 Some of the most notable theorists of nationalism, led by Gellner, 40 have regarded nationalism and Empire as antithetical principles: the latter implies a cosmopolitan culture enjoyed among a remote ruling elite, whereas nationalism serves to unite dominant and popular culture. Kumar examined this claim in depth, aiming to demonstrate the possible overlaps between imperial and national consciousness, in a specifically ‘English’ context. For Kumar, the contradiction can be resolved insofar as certain national groups adopt a ‘missionary consciousness’ aimed at spreading their model of ‘civilisation’: ‘since nationalist ideology often also endows the nation with the sense of its own uniqueness and goodness, its special role in history and its superiority to other nations, it may be fitting to speak of imperial or missionary nationalism’. 41 Nevertheless, this still requires that elites ‘suppress the ordinary manifestations of nationalism’. This may account for many of the specificities of the British nationalism explored below. Indeed, researchers led by Colley have noted that, given the weak ethnic component to British identity, foreign policy has played an outsize role in nationalist mobilisation. However, this also raises trouble in applications to Brexit, particularly if the latter is framed, as in much imperial nostalgia literature, as a ‘return to state-based politics’ as populations, disturbed by processes of globalisation, seek ‘identity security’. 42
The problem of reconciling imperial cosmopolitanism with racial isolation, or nationalism with imperial consciousness, may be addressed by developing Hall’s notion of ‘conjunctural analysis’. This method, as applied in the analysis of Thatcherism or Blairism, centres on qualitative analysis of crisis points in social formations, understood as moments open to a high level of contingency. These form sites of intervention, of organised political agency, in the form of movements and parties. The conclusion of these crises, Hall theorised, may inaugurate a new ‘common sense’. Such notions are conventionally traced to Gramsci, but also echo Marx’s analysis of Bonapartism: central to the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte was an emphasis on how, in a particular national crisis, political leadership can fuse together unlikely class alliances but also reconcile contradictory ideas, that subsequently form the foundation of a new (if unstable) consensus. In this sense, the apparent conceptual confusion is less a weakness than the methodological centrepiece. Notions of ‘imperial nostalgia’ and ‘postcolonial melancholia’ may thus be regarded as concepts of conjunctural analysis, centring on two moments of UK foreign policy reassertion.
However, if this solution applies, it leaves unanswered questions about their application to the Brexit conjuncture. The voluminous literature on these themes post-2016 has not addressed the peculiarity of Brexit with respect to earlier conjunctural crises of the UK state. The continuity of Brexit with earlier British ideologies – or, conversely, the discontinuity – remains indeterminate. If conjunctural analyses uncovers qualitative themes of crisis mobilisation, modern British history has seen considerable variation. To illustrate this, Table 1 applies themes and framings developed in earlier accounts of imperial nostalgia/postcolonial melancholia 43 literature to the emerging Brexit phase. 44
Qualitative shifts in world power, racial and national articulations of British nationalism.
Historicising the debate highlights both continuity and discontinuity. Firstly, themes of decline and loss, which plays a central role in accounts of post-colonial pathology, play significantly varying roles in these phases. The period lasting, at least, between 1982 and 2003 was framed as a triumphant re-assertion of Britain’s role in world affairs. Any jump between post-War fears of migration, with their psychoanalytic link to the loss of colonies, and present-day consciousness must account for this intervening phase of British nationalism. Prior to Brexit, new ‘losses’ were emphasised: the War on Terror’s failure meant a loss of global esteem; austerity emphasised losses relative to earlier modes of citizenship. However, to simply equate the two phases of ‘decline’ raises many questions. Much had shifted under the impact of the two decades of triumphal British nationalism and its post-2003 aftermath. One notable shift was in racism: from anti-Black fears of racial contamination, as highlighted in Gilroy’s earlier work, 45 to civilisational fears of the Islamic Other, related to the millennium phase of foreign policy emergency. 46 Notably, these narratives were a product of centre-left rule and reflected new preoccupations of a ‘globalised’ nature: as will be highlighted below, Muslim communities were framed as ‘tribal’ holdouts against the cosmopolitan mode of European civilisation. This narrative, just as much as the 1950s moment of Commonwealth immigration shock, would be central to the anti-migrant politics of Brexit.
Thatcher and British adventurism: overcoming the Suez syndrome
Thatcher’s reimagining of British nationhood is a central reference point for Brexiteers and for their opponents. To assess the precise relevance of Thatcherism, it would be useful to review in what terms it transformed Britain’s post-colonial political identity. Thatcherism certainly did not ‘invent’ nationalism where it had not existed before. However, in a reverse of the post-War experience, Thatcher did prove that British overseas adventurism, laced with themes of an earlier imperial standing, could form a popular, cross-class base for power. This was the first suggestion that a chauvinistic military presence could reverse ‘decline’ and even restore ‘greatness’ on the world stage. As Gamble observes, ‘The Falklands war more than any other single episode restored the authority of the state and with it the political fortunes of the Conservatives’. 47 It therefore forms a logical starting point for considerations of the function of ‘imperial nostalgia’ in British politics. 48
Many researchers contest the view that Britain was ‘declining’ during the post-War period. 49 But several factors converged to ensure that an ideology of decline did structure discussions of the UK’s global position. This included the loss of imperial possessions; humiliation in 1956 over Suez; the effects of migration on popular consciousness; working-class militancy in manufacturing; and a loss of relative economic competitiveness to new competitors. Post-colonial foreign policy was thus not the only aspect of ‘decline’. But what Thatcher called the ‘Suez syndrome’ did shape wider attitudes to British ambition. As Freedman observes, the effect of Suez had been profound, as it had ‘damaged the reputation of the military, demonstrated dramatically Britain’s reduced capacity as a major power, for the Americans had an apparent veto over its ability to act independently, and warned generally of the speed with which the country could find itself isolated if it started to give a hint of bellicosity’. 50 It is against this backdrop that Thatcherism developed a new nationalist imaginary which drew on imperial themes to emphasise dynamism, ambition and success. After the Falklands victory, Thatcher spoke of Britain as ‘the nation that had built an Empire and ruled a quarter of the world. . .The lesson of the Falklands is that Britain has not changed’. 51
Hall links this sense of neo-imperial ‘aspiration’ to the process of inventing a populist base for neoliberal reform. And there is significant evidence that would back his claims about British political consciousness during this period. The Falklands intervention enjoyed more than just superficial popularity. 61 percent of voters ranked it as the most serious issue facing the UK during an election year, despite the context of mass domestic unemployment. 52 Support for unilateral military intervention ranked at 85%, while support for a multilateral United Nations effort was far lower. 69 percent backed unilateral British action even if opposed by the US. The issue helped turn what was a small Labour lead in the polls into a famous Conservative victory. Foreign policy, of an explicitly neo-imperial character (‘Britain has not changed’), was thus a salient factor in the Thatcherite reimagining of British nationalism and to the most infamous defeat of the British Left. This overseas intervention was not just supported by a passive public opinion but became an active force in mobilising public sentiment behind a (previously unpopular) national government.
In this sense, as Hall suggested, themes of race, nation and Empire are plausibly playing an interconnected role in shaping Thatcherite popular consciousness. Given the historical context, this nationalist consciousness is often linked to themes of ‘psychic compensation’, with Thatcher’s articulation of national success in war contrasted to the backdrop of preceding decades, where failure and ‘decline’ had been common themes. As Gilroy observed, ‘The solution to it involved making “race” and nation the framework for a rhetoric of order through which modern conservatism could voice populist protest against Britain’s post-imperial plight and marshal its historic bloc’. 53 Equally, the Falklands War spoke to an idea of Britishness which transcended national borders, as the state intervened on behalf of ‘Brits’ thousands of miles away; there is a contrast with its growing exclusion of non-white Commonwealth migrants from nationhood.
Several points can be summarised about the role of ‘imperial nostalgia’ in Thatcher’s nationalism. Firstly, it emerged against the backdrop of themes of ‘decline’ that remained within recent historical memory, and had dominated the preceding period, where Britain had been cast as the ‘sick man of Europe’. This may not prove the need for psychological compensation for national humiliation, but it does add to the concept’s plausibility. Secondly, it was explicitly linked to the assertion of British military power overseas. The ‘new imperial’ reassertion was thus directly linked to old imperial territorial interests. To British elites, including the emergent New Labour, it demonstrated that decisive British agency could overcome a perceived post-colonial cringe about chauvinism. For Douglas Hurd, after the Gulf War, ‘we are slowly putting behind us a period of history when the West was unable to express a legitimate interest in the developing world without being accused of neocolonialism’. 54 Thirdly, the imperial-themed reassertion of British military prowess commanded not just overwhelming public support, but also mobilising enthusiasm. In other words, neo-imperial rhetoric could shift established party allegiances in an electorally significant fashion. Public support could be plausibly linked to tangible political behaviours: it has been considered a salient factor in determining elections.
New labour: problems of national mobilisation in a post-sovereignty order
Relative to Thatcherism, there are areas of continuity and discontinuity in the subsequent period of centre-left electoral dominance. This period has been neglected in many recent accounts of British imperial nostalgia, but in terms of the volume of ‘imperial’ discourse and more especially in terms of its practical relevance, the New Labour arguably rivals both the Thatcherite and the Brexit phase. It is thus crucial to examine its mediating role. On the foreign policy front, there was a notable continuity with Thatcher’s adventurism, especially insofar as it involved proclaiming a British renaissance in world politics, but pointedly as a subsidiary partner of American power. However, this was more explicitly framed as a mission of installing a globalising governance, which meant a friendlier positioning towards the European Union, placing Britain as a ‘pivotal power’, ‘between Europe and America’. 55 British nationhood was likewise reimagined, with history, foreign policy and globalisation again forming central components. Moreover, the link between race and nationhood was reframed, with a growing liberalism towards European migration balanced by a more draconian attitude towards extra-European asylum seekers. 56 Foreign policy and globalisation again would continue to play an interconnected role with racial themes. This was not simply the well-publicised link between the War on Terror and Islamophobia. 57 This itself grew from a more elemental New Labour ideology, which contrasted cosmopolitan, postmodern, European civilisations with ‘traditional’ social orders that had escaped these modernising impulses. The major continuity, which helps define a peculiar post-Thatcher British nationalism, is the belief not in national separateness, but in national messianism: British (or Anglo-American) values as universals, endowing foreign policy actors with a duty to spread them.
The potentially ‘imperial’ character of this national identity was not merely implicit. The surface level of New Labour discourse betrays the influence, not just of post-Thatcherite triumphalism, but more specifically its revisionist approach to imperial history. Blair’s earliest speeches are defined by an assertiveness about Britain’s role; by a willingness to flout post-colonial taboos; and by a determination to confront ‘national narrowness’ by asserting the American (military) and European (trading) alliances as the foundations of globalisation. In a speech as opposition leader, condemning the Conservative government for cutting defence spending, Blair adopted a clear line of British destiny and moral exceptionalism:
Century upon century it has been the destiny of Britain to lead other nations. . .That should not be a destiny that is part of our history. It should be part of our future. We are a leader of nations or nothing.
58
Nonetheless, the Blair era did represent a qualitative shift, which reflected wider mutations in post-Cold War liberalism. Thatcher still operated within a standard notion of national interest as forming the parameters of foreign policy, albeit modified by a pronounced anti-socialist ideology where globalisation would serve to discipline domestic forces of dissent, most notably trade unions. By contrast, New Labour actively embraced this new ‘Doctrine of International Community’ and an attendant ‘responsibility to protect’. 59 They framed their purposes in explicitly ‘ethical’, post-sovereignty terms, as the duty of Western powers to intervene to solve blights on the global conscience, such as weapons of mass destruction, human rights abuses and poverty, regardless of traditional conceptions of national borders. Relative to Thatcherism, New Labour foreign policy thus implied a different conception of world order and the paternal role of European powers and Anglo-America within it. Equally, Empire revisionism was just as pronounced: the sense of duty implied here was explicitly neo-Victorian, recalling its cosmopolitan and humanitarian affectations. Robert Cooper, one of Blair’s senior foreign policy advisors, thus spoke approvingly of ‘the new liberal imperialism’, ‘voluntary imperialism’ or ‘postmodern imperialism’ as the hallmarks of British foreign policy. 60
Overseas projection of military power was central to New Labour’s reimagining of British identity, long before Iraq. In a sense, this may reflect a longstanding feature of British national ideology: Colley’s study of the origins of British identity emphasises that, in a multinational state, overseas projection of power plays an outsize role in forging national unity. 61 Conversely, though, this new assertion of Britishness, a British renaissance that paid explicit homage to Victorian adventurism, reflected wider ideological shifts in foreign policy philosophy. New Labour’s foreign policy drew explicitly from these shifts in Atlantic liberal thinking: an emphasis on global ethical governance, in contrast to Third Worldist themes of sovereignty, brought a new respectability to themes of Empire. These themes are not easily assimilated to traditional left-right distinctions. Ignatieff spoke approvingly of ‘Empire Lite’: ‘The 21st-century imperium is a new invention in the annals of political science, an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has known’. 62 From a more libertarian and conservative standpoint, Niall Ferguson explicitly framed the new order as defined by superpower successorship, speaking of ‘Anglobalization’, and noting that Blair’s policy ‘bears more than a passing resemblance to the Victorians’ project to export their own “civilization” to the world’. 63 This sense of a continuous Anglo-American liberal, civilising tradition was reflected across a spectrum of academia and commentary. 64
Recalling the discussion above, on the potential conflicts between nationalism and Empire consciousness, the New Labour phase saw a growing disarticulation between popular and elite conceptions of overseas purpose. Hall’s studies of Thatcherite ‘nostalgia’ politics had correctly identified its populist component, but also its popular component: military assertion proved decisive in shifting electoral politics to the right. Thus, while Blairite foreign policy reflected a messianic sense of humanitarian purpose with roots in the academy and the state, it never formed a foundation for mass mobilisation. Indeed, the New Labour era exhibited opposite trends: a disconnection between grandstanding ambition at elite level and growing war-weariness at the popular level. Notably, the Iraq War was registered as a humiliation for British national identity, with polling evidence showing that British voters considered it Blair’s worst decision and concluding that Blair had undermined British sovereignty by becoming too close to America. 65 If there is ‘imperial nostalgia’ during this phase, it reflects a post-sovereignty outlook common to educated liberals. Notably, this was also the foundation for a pro-EU consensus that emerged in British party politics.
Europeanism plays a central role in New Labour conceptions of global order, and New Labour cadres would thus dominate much of the anti-Brexit, pro-Remain coalition after 2016. Conversely, Europeanism could become a force of conflict, as when Blair clashed with a neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac over the invasion of Iraq. While most New Labour intellectuals and representatives supported the Iraq War, a minority dissented from the party line and contrasted the neo-imperial pretensions of America’s Republican neoconservatives with the ‘real’ cosmopolitan future of mankind, manifesting in the European Union. 66 Some researchers have even argued that Blair’s government was overly ‘Eurosceptic’. 67 Nonetheless, philosophically, Blair’s key advisors point to the overlap between the European Union and the militarised pursuit of globalisation, with both organised around post-sovereignty themes. For Cooper, who would re-emerge as one of the European Council’s most senior diplomats, the EU is the epitome of postmodern statehood; however, ‘Common European values have grown out of this common historical experience, which, in extreme cases, can provide a justification for armed intervention’. 68 Claims of New Labour’s appeasement of Euroscepticism rest on pathologising the normal, ‘Europragmatist’ behaviour of most member state governments in attempting to reconcile nationalism with transnational governance. 69
In sum, New Labour introduced a conflicted British nationalism that sought to reconcile universal claims of order with the superiority and thus leadership role of certain ‘civilisations’ (British, Anglo-American, European). This would form the basis of Gilroy’s critique of postcolonial melancholy. Blair’s ‘imperial nostalgia’ emphasises wider themes of paternalism, duty and moral burden: ‘Blair’s moralism is more usually associated with Gladstone, but his imperialist poses suggest a view of Britain’s new liberal and cosmopolitan mission in the world, a view animated by some of the same certainties that guided [Joseph] Chamberlain’s plan to awaken the nation to its imperial responsibilities’. 70 There was certainly a pronounced cultural-racial dimension to New Labour’s border and security policy, but this was framed around an equally pronounced Europhilia: draconian measures against extra-European migration were balanced by a liberal approach to economic migration within the EU.
Articulating Brexit: populist disjuncture, nationalist continuity
The most notable feature of Brexit, in historical terms, is that it constituted an intrusion of popular sovereignty into a system defined by parliamentary supremacy, in the specific arena of foreign policy. 71 No party with significant representation in Westminster campaigned for a Leave vote. Notably, a significant bloc of ‘traditional’ Labour voters broke with the party and its leadership on this question. Mass political attitudes thus play an outsize, intrusive role, even more than in preceding conjunctures such as the Falklands and Iraq. To some extent, there is an unusual extent of popular control: the referendum mandated a reluctant parliament to act. This imposed difficulties for the left-wing of British nationalism, but also philosophical dilemmas for the post-Thatcherite Conservatives: a referendum itself was a violation of Thatcher’s commitment to parliamentary sovereignty; more importantly, it imposed uncomfortable dilemmas of incorporating public weariness with the consequences of globalisation into a vision centring on British global leadership. Nonetheless, defining the vote’s ‘meaning’ was a question for political representatives, which accounts for 3 years of subsequent parliamentary difficulties. Since Brexit involved an unusual split between popular and parliamentary sovereignty, much depended on how parliamentary leaders should assign meaning to the agglomeration of voting behaviour. Here there are three questions to consider. Firstly, the ideological foundations of the Eurosceptic outsiders who would emerge into the post-2016 interregnum. Secondly, the meanings these intellectuals and leaders attempted to assign to this conjunctural crisis. Thirdly, the degree to which these leaders would express a disjuncture in British nationalism or, conversely, would use the crisis to reinforce the post-Thatcherite consensus.
Eurosceptic foundations
Thatcherism led to an ideological divergence in British nationalism, with the supplanting of earlier themes of decline and retreat in favour of a spirit of reawakened expansionism, boosterism and ambition (albeit adjusted to American hegemony). As a nationalism, its peculiarity needs emphasis. Given the UK state’s composite form, incorporating several national identities, cultural nationalism (the relativism which emphasises the inherent diversity of national worldviews) was supplanted to a more pronounced civilisational supremacism. This explains Thatcher’s initial positivity towards the European project, seeing it as a mechanism for exporting Anglophone liberal traditions in political-economy. 72 Elements of continuity persisted under New Labour, insofar as that phase of nationalism embodied a simultaneous enthusiasm for British assertion overseas; a revisionist reimagining of imperial history; and competitive adjustment to global market forces. The composite phase was thus defined by a hegemonic outward-facing, expansionist British nationalism, within which (relative to its history) Labour showed growing enthusiasm for the European Union.
However, Labour’s enthusiasm was counterbalanced by dissensus within Britain’s Conservative right-wing, emerging from within an ideologically hegemonic Thatcherism. This took concrete political expressions within the Conservative Party in the leadership victories of William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith; equally, it was expressed in efforts to form party-political alternatives, as with the Referendum Party and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). While these parties never gained significant electoral representation in the UK Parliament – despite significant financial backing, in the particular case of the Referendum Party – their pressure was felt in the fragmentation of the Conservative electoral base. 73 Relative to Thatcher’s more established successors, such as New Labour and the John Major/David Cameron-led Conservatives, the Eurosceptic wing emphasised three themes of dissensus. Firstly, the Eurosceptic right stressed the persistence of national sovereignty (and, more particularly, parliamentary sovereignty). Thatcher, one of the originators of the European Single Market, had sought to reconcile competitive adaptation to globalisation with a strong, unitary state authority. Indeed, the two were interrelated, insofar as forces of global competition served to strengthen state authority against the influence of organised working-class social forces. 74 Her evolving and complex relationship with the European authorities were products of that contradiction. New Labour accepted the diffusion of state authority within a globalised order (embracing, in line with that, the devolution of the UK state); but compensated with a more expansive ‘post-sovereignty’ leadership for the British state overseas, and a border policy that discriminated against culturally non-European migrants. Eurosceptic critics of post-Thatcherite hegemony emphasised preserving the legal institutions of British authority, based on an idea of sovereignty as indivisible and a rejection of the notion of ‘pooling’. 75 However, symptomatically, British sovereignty was framed in opposition to a very particular set of governance agents; conversely, it was premised precisely on accepting the governance of British institutions by the impersonal authority of markets. It would thus be misleading to present a simplistic contrast between authority as personhood (sovereignty) versus the impersonal authority of Europeanised governance. Reflecting the post-Thatcherite conception of nationalist purpose, British Eurosceptics sought to restore sovereignty precisely to pursue a project of competitive market discipline.
Secondly, the Eurosceptic right sought to subordinate foreign policy to the pursuit of national interests. This, again, was a Thatcherite theme that could form a critical stance on the post-Thatcherite nationalism of New Labour the more liberal stands of Conservatism. One representation is the longstanding hostility to overseas aid in right-wing British politics, a tension which exhibits the internal tensions between Thatcherite nationalism and the use of British state power as a force of global order. However, any emphasis on national interests was always qualified by an acceptance of (Cold War and post-1989) American hegemony. In practice, therefore, the Eurosceptic wing of the UK Conservatives broadly supported the ‘internationalism’ of the New Labour phase: only a small minority of Conservative MPs, for example, opposed the Iraq invasion, despite its nebulous link to British interests. Iain Duncan Smith, the Eurosceptic Conservative leader during that phase, thus succeeded in offsetting scepticism about overseas adventurism: notably, Duncan Smith’s own philosophy was shaped both by his military background and by personal links to American neoconservatism. 76 Theoretical contradictions between liberal internationalism and national sovereignty were thus, in most practical circumstances, resolved into a foreign policy consensus centring on the Anglo-American ‘Lockean heartland’. 77
Thirdly, right-wing Eurosceptics laid particular stress on the politics of migration, including opposition to migration within the EU. However, prior to 2015–16, they struggled to operationalise this theme as a platform for challenging for government: the space was restricted by the surrounding migration consensus. New Labour had, in practice, a draconian and securitised approach to extra-European migration, with attendant concepts of ‘bogus’ migration. This was combined with themes which reflected a contrast between the postmodern, globalised consensus of British politics, as against the need for ‘modernisation’ within the domestic Muslim community: ‘it is a global fight about global values; it is about modernisation, within Islam and outside of it; it is about whether our value system can be shown to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing that it beats theirs’. 78 In other words, there often appeared little conflict between pursuing British overseas interests, including within the EU; conducting the domestic ‘war on terror’; and engaging in anti-migrant appeals, which also included the Cameron era ‘hostile environment’. Much of Eurosceptic agitation therefore centred on anxieties about economic competition within the Single Market, particularly following the ‘big bang’ accession of Eastern European economies. Research suggests that UKIP successes in the 2009 European Elections was partly a reflection of fears of labour market competition from the Single Market. 79 However, there were tensions inherent to this form of national appeal. Moderate UK leaders, seeking support for the War on Terror and for a more limited role for European federalism, were courting the leaders of ‘New Europe’ as ballast against the ‘old Europe’ of the Franco-German type. Moreover, this brand of anti-migrant lacked the cultural and racial fears that were attached to the dominant Islamophobia. This stresses the need to understand the conjunctural nature of Brexit. There was a historic coincidence between the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, which centred on extra-European migration; and fears of reductions in living standards, issuing from the post-2010 governing class consensus for austerity.
Internal contradictions of post-Thatcherite nationalism
The intellectual outriders of British Euroscepticism, centred on the European Research Group (ERG), emerged to a position of influence having been a minority within the parliamentary Conservative Party. They would be presented with the opportunity to assign meaning to the referendum result. However, their radical free market ideology suffered from the absence of a popular mandate, especially as the social and geographical base of Conservative voting shifted to take advantage of Brexit. Their influence was thus mediated through the figure of Boris Johnson, who combined elements of their post-Thatcherite ideology with economic populism and promises of a new regional politics centring on Northern development. The post-Brexit leadership bloc was thus forced to unite an established ruling bloc surrounding their party, high in economic capital and sympathetic to great power pretensions, with an anti-establishment popular base, less interested in great power pretensions but open to anti-migration appeals. 80 The threat of Brexit, as presented by Bank of England governor Mark Carney, was that the backlash might augur realignment towards ‘deglobalisation’. 81 Phrases such as ‘global Britain’ were thus designed to offer reassurance that continuity would prevail, narrating the chaotic referendum vote in terms of wider ambitions for existing British economic interests, which traditionally aligned themselves to the European Union. This is reflected in one of the most important findings about post-Brexit foreign policy: its ‘disoriented’ nature, formed of a desire to avoid being forced by events into an ‘unwanted isolationist role’. 82
Given the disoriented nature of the crisis, the ideological grassroots of the Brexit camps were more complex than academic literature is inclined to admit. In terms of ‘imperial nostalgia’, polling evidence on the comparative attitudes of Leave and Remain voters highlights the concept’s internal ambiguity. On the abstract question of the historical British Empire, Leave voters have a more favourable impression than their Remain-voting counterparts. There are similar findings on themes of race and immigration. Conversely, on concrete questions of Britain’s recent pursuit of world power, there is often an opposite pattern. In the most specific case study since Brexit, just 23% of Remain voters supported the withdrawal from Afghanistan, compared to 34% of Leave voters 83 ; Leave voters (41%) were also more likely than Remain voters (34%) to say that the NATO alliance should never have invaded in the first place. 84 This captures the ambivalence of the ‘postcolonial melancholy’ framing, which had, after all, initially referred to the War on Terror and the pursuit of overseas aggrandisement. On the one hand, as Flemmen and Savage’s research shows, Leave voters may appeared more sympathetic to appeals to ‘British greatness’; conversely, Remain voters appeared more liable to another narrative of power: the notion of great power responsibility, a notion that was itself tied to notions of moral burden with roots in the imperial past. 85
Narratives presented by the Brexiteer leadership, such as the notion of ‘Global Britain’, were thus less a thought-out neo-imperial fantasy than an effort to solve the contradiction of an increasingly isolationist Conservative voting base with the sense of ambition demanded among the UK’s foreign policy and economic elites. In some ways, the ‘Brexiteers’ are a product of foreign policy retreat. Even prior to their ascension to power, pro-Brexit cadres express a reticence about British power pretensions, a realism that was not inconsistent with a neoliberal outlook, and indeed parallels much of American libertarianism. This is clear even in the documents such as the infamous Britannia Unchained, 86 which critics misleadingly cite as evidence of a neo-imperial strategy. 87 Curiously, the text makes very limited mention of the European Union, and far from emphasising the type of British global ambition that triumphed under Blair, it focuses on the neo-Thatcherite virtues of small countries in open trading spaces: the most frequent citations are to Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Israel. Britain’s own culture is condemned not for insufficient geopolitical ambition, but rather for bloat, risk-averseness and a tendency to be work shy: ‘Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world’. 88 These narratives, in fact, can be linked to another strain of free market philosophy in British thinking, which has linked the overarching influence of imperialism and socialism to an insufficiently industrious national spirit. 89 It most plausibly appears as an acknowledgement of Britain’s diminished status, albeit framed in neo-Thatcherite terms. Kwarteng’s book-length text on the British Empire is likewise framed as a libertarian denunciation of unwarranted state power. 90
Conversely, the reality of post-Brexit foreign and border policy has involved both unexpected continuities and changes which mitigate against polarised narratives. Far from marking moves towards deglobalisation or isolation, Brexit era Conservatism tended towards an expanded geopolitical and military role, centring on growing competitive rivalries with Russia and China. One of the first major breaches with EU foreign policy was thus the signing of a trilateral US-UK-Australian security pact for the Indo-Pacific region, where the UK would support Australian purchases of nuclear-powered submarines. As a Commons report noted, ‘it is a clear reflection of the UK’s tilt to the Indo-Pacific, articulated in the Integrated Review of security, defence and foreign policy’. 91 Moreover, despite narratives painting the Brexiteer Conservatives as agents of Russian foreign policy, the trend of policy, even prior to the Russia-Ukraine War of 2022, was towards competitive rivalry. Post-2022, the UK has been second only to the US in provision of military aid to Ukraine, outweighing French and German combined spending, and nearing the total spending of all EU countries. The post-Brexit phase has thus involved a revival of US-UK leadership of a Western military alliance, built on nationalist themes of Anglo-American leadership that would be familiar from the Thatcher and Blair phases of foreign policy. The conflict with Russia has also introduced a new dimension of energy insecurity which has sharpened domestic class antagonisms, with successive Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss calling for British citizens to endure higher energy bills as the price for defeating Putin.
Where accounts of Brexit are not concerned with imperial psychopathology, the most frequent variables are socio-economic: austerity, regional decline, democratic deficits, disenchantment and feelings of being ‘left behind’. 92 Cruder arguments centre more narrowly on claims of ‘white working class’ disenchantment, which underestimates both the ethnic and the class complexity of the Brexit vote. 93 However, the analysis above suggests the relevance of a third factor: the structural absence of a common foreign policy enemy. This marks out the post-2008 period from the earlier Cold War and War on Terror eras. Moreover, the Brexit period was defined not just by an absence of clear enemies, but also by the inability of elites to lead or renew a project of civilisational struggle, given the negative perceptions surrounding longstanding Middle Eastern occupations. This arguably unmoors the composite ‘transatlantic ruling class’ 94 from earlier eras; but most especially the British bloc, for whom foreign policy leadership played an unusually pronounced role in nationalist mobilisation.
Conversely, promises that ‘taking back control’ would lead to a renewed focus on domestic development have been harder to sustain. The Brexiteer Conservatives came to power with an electoral base formed of formerly Labour-voting, post-industrial regions of Northern England: Brexit saw significant Conservative losses in London and Southern England, which had formed the electoral foundation of earlier phases of neoliberalism. Johnson’s government thus promised a ‘levelling up’ agenda, aimed at addressing the regional economic inequalities inherited from the Thatcher era, which had been exacerbated by post-2010 austerity measures. However, this agenda came into conflict with the longstanding Conservative social and geographical base: its economic populism was also at odds with the free-market ideas promoted by the Eurosceptic right, led by the authors of Britannia Unchained, who would exploit discontent at Johnson’s handling of the covid-19 pandemic to assume government power. Conservative economic populism would be a casualty of the fall of Boris Johnson’s government, and its replacement by the explicitly neo-Thatcherite Liz Truss administration, who professed a more serious commitment to ‘Singapore on Thames’.
The argument pursued above highlights that the central limitation on the Truss/Britannia Unchained model was its weak popular mandate, having come to power in an internal party coup; and its failure to address either of the established modes of British nationalism. It spoke neither to the Great Power pretensions of the post-Thatcherite, Blair era ‘renaissance’; nor to the rhetoric of prioritising domestic development and ‘levelling up’, which were pillars of Johnson’s unstable coalition. Even the racialised, anti-migrant politics of an earlier era played a more limited role. Instead, post-Brexit Conservative sought to recreate a Thatcher-style ‘shake-up’, drawing on the nimble, competitive neoliberalism of smaller countries in the globalised marketplace. Given that it esteemed neither established mode of nationalist rhetoric, it was never likely to gain mass consent, hence its dependence on crisis dynamics and internal Conservative politics. Moreover, whereas Thatcherism had offered a disruption to an earlier consensus, post-Brexit Conservatism presented ‘radical’ prescriptions which merely recapitulated the dominant ideological themes of an earlier era. This meant they were consciously pursuing national greatness by acting on behalf of global market forces, which, in turn, rejected their proposals. If the nationalism of imperial nostalgia is conceived as a peculiar combination of inward-facing ‘retreat’ and outward-facing pretensions to greatness, the post-Brexit Conservative cadres presented proposals that spoke to neither vision.
Concluding discussion: insular Britains, global Britains and Brexit
This paper has emphasised the qualitative gap between earlier phases of ‘great power’ ideology and Brexit-era nationalism, which subsequently resolved into ironic continuities. On the one hand, the legacy of a previous great power status has continued to shape Britain’s ideologies of nationhood, race and foreign policy, particularly at elite level, with sporadic intrusions (both supportive and critical) at the popular level. On the other hand, the articulations of that history have varied considerably: partly because periods of melancholic ‘decline’ are followed by periods of ‘renaissance’; but also because the theme of Empire has an uneven and inconsistent relationship to notions of race and nation. These themes are rarely absent from Britain’s hegemonic ideologies. But they assume inconsistent forms: under New Labour, a Europhile, globalising, cosmopolitan outlook proved consistent with a (sometimes explicit) notion of hierarchies of civilisation, positioning ‘great powers’ with the burden of agency. In its practical outcomes, this was arguably the most consequential in its mobilisation of Empire history: the Arab world’s disordered state structure is testament to its permanent consequences. It also had the most consistent intellectual outlook, partly because Britain’s internal politics was unusually pacific during the New Labour period. Conversely, the Eurosceptic bloc was forced to articulate a foreign policy outlook that offered reassurance to the existing ‘open society’ narrative promoted by British elites, while also addressing the more isolationist sentiments inherent in the vote. After the extraordinary successes of the 2019 General Election, it was ultimately incapable of satisfying either impulse.
Hall and Gilroy highlighted the role of race and Empire in defining the specifics of British national consciousness. This linked, via a psychoanalytic account of ideology, compensation for diminished status to two apparently contradictory phenomenon: the pursuit of adventure via mobilisation for war; and the pursuit of cultural control via crackdowns on Commonwealth migrants. ‘Imperial nostalgia’ and ‘postcolonial melancholy’ were thus said to define British nationalism. However, British neo-imperial mobilisation never again reached the peaks of mass popularity it enjoyed in the 1980s. New Labour would experience the contradictions of a revived adventurism: the consequences lasted for decades, with the Scottish nationalism and the Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon taking root in the anti-war movement. The ‘Brexiteers’ were thrust into leadership during a period of populist mobilisation and Anglo-American realignment towards Russia and the Pacific. Accounts which link the Brexit phenomenon to ‘imperial nostalgia’ rarely focus on the contradictions between the popular sentiments expressed in the vote – regardless of their moral character – and the persistent themes of British foreign policy. An over-emphasis on the cultural prejudices of Leave voters (and an under-emphasis on the ideologies inherent among Remainers) thus risks obscuring the likely consequences of the vote and its implementation, which have tended towards ideological continuity, in response to the rupture and discontinuities experienced across the global system.
Methodologically, the focus on conjunctural analysis on crisis situations can offer insights into the variability of nationalist mobilisation. However, there is a risk in overestimating the coherence of dominant nationalisms, most especially in postulating their popular roots. While the Brexit crisis allowed a temporary fusion of jumbled narrative elements, relative to the earlier phases, it never gained the coherence of a lasting governing philosophy. This research has thus demonstrated the limits of examining the various themes of a conjuncture in a manner that assumes their internal coherence.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
