At 4:00 a.m. on 24 June, when the definitive result of the referendum was not yet known but Leave’s victory was practically certain, Nigel Farage announced to cheering supporters: ‘This will be a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people. We have fought against the multinationals, we fought against the merchant banks, we fought against big politics’ (Peck 2016). Throughout the referendum campaign the leader of UKIP presented the central issue as one of honest, hardworking people wresting back control from a self-serving elite in the worlds of finance and business whose path to ever greater wealth and privilege was favoured by the political establishment in Brussels. To cultivate his personal image as an ordinary bloke he frequently had himself photographed in a pub, holding a pint of real ale (never Eurofizz lager) and chatting amicably with fellow customers. Farage’s CV, however, is hardly that of a typical Occupy Wall Street protester. The son of a stockbroker, he chose not to go to university but went directly from his independent school, Dulwich College, to the City of London, where he had a modestly successful career as a commodities broker until he became a full-time politician. Over the years he has flirted with economic ideas hardly designed to benefit low-wage earners, such as the proposal to introduce a flat-rate tax for all regardless of a person’s income.
Other prominent leaders of the Leave campaign are even less likely candidates as champions of the common man. The Conservative MP and former mayor of London, Boris Johnson, comes from a wealthy, upper-middle-class background, was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, and had a successful career as a journalist at The Times, the Daily Telegraph and then as editor of The Spectator. Although he takes a liberal stance on many social issues, in economic matters he is an orthodox free-market Conservative.
Another product of Eton and Oxford is Jacob Rees-Mogg, pro-Brexit Conservative MP and son of the late William Rees-Mogg, who was editor of The Times. He combines his work as an MP with professional activity as a fund manager in the City and running his company, Somerset Capital Management, which he set up in 2007. He supports the controversial zero-hours work contracts currently being used in the UK and opposes same-sex marriage.
Michael Gove is not from a privileged background and to earn a place at an independent school in Aberdeen had to win a scholarship. He then followed a path not dissimilar to that of Boris Johnson: Oxford, followed by journalism, a post at The Times and selection as a candidate in a safe Conservative seat. In 2005 he co-authored with other Conservative MPs Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party, which advocates, among other things, the dismantlement of the National Health Service (Michael Gove 2017). During a controversial spell as Secretary of State for Education in David Cameron’s government he managed in a single year (2013) to collect motions of no confidence at the conferences of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the National Union of Teachers (a unanimous vote) and, crucially, the National Association of Head Teachers. In 2009 the New Statesman estimated his personal wealth at about £1 million, which makes him rather hard up by the standards of Johnson and Rees-Mogg but very rich indeed compared with the overwhelming majority of people who voted Leave in the referendum. The same article revealed that though an MP (but not yet a minister), Gove continued to receive £5,000 per month from The Times for writing a weekly column, a task that he claimed to complete in an hour (The new ruling class 2009).
This is not to say that all Brexit-supporting Conservatives MPs are wealthy, Oxbridge-educated white men (Priti Patel, for instance, is the daughter of Ugandan Asians expelled by President Idi Amin in the 1960s), but it is nevertheless extraordinary that certain newpapers managed to present such obvious establishment figures as those described above as tough little Davids with the spunk to take on the Goliaths of the banks, the multinationals and the Brussels bureaucracy. This was achieved in various ways, but the most basic linguistic technique employed was clever use of the word we.
Some languages have two first-person plural subject pronouns, one that includes the addressee and one that does not. For example, Tok Pisin (which derives from ‘Talk Pidgin’), a creole used as a first or second language by more than five million people in Papua New Guinea, has the inclusive pronoun yumi (‘you + me’) and the exclusive mipela (‘me + fellow’, but not you), a neat division that removes any risk of ambivalence (Crystal 1994: 183). English only has we and the addressee has to infer from context whether the pronoun is being used inclusively or exclusively, something that rarely creates difficulties. Margaret Thatcher (1988), in her address to the College of Europe on 20 September 1988, which immediately entered the political lexicon in the UK as the Bruges Speech, switched repeatedly between the two types of we:
•‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.’ (Clearly an exclusive we that refers only to the speaker and her government);
•‘We must ensure that our approach to world trade is consistent with the liberalism we preach at home. We have a responsibility to give a lead on this, a responsibility which is particularly directed towards the less developed countries.’ (Inclusive we urging the member states of what was then the European Community to work together to encourage global free trade).
A feature of the way Brexit-supporting newspapers reported on the key issues was the repeated use of inclusive we. To a certain extent this is understandable since a great many people only read newspapers that reflect their own beliefs, opinions and prejudices, but for the significant minority who also like to read opinions contrary to their own, the we that implies all of us pulling together for the good of the cause is bound to grate.
In a speech delivered at Landudno in North Wales (Burrows 2016), Nigel Farage emulated Mrs Thatcher in switching between inclusive and exclusive we. The latter is used to claim that the very fact that a referendum was going to be held was a concession forced upon the government by Farage himself and UKIP activists: ‘We have forced our political class into giving us this referendum that they never wanted us to have.’ In reality a government with a comfortable majority in Parliament was not pressurized by UKIP or anyone else into allowing the referendum; it was a monumental political error by David Cameron who, following the disastrous advice of the American strategist Jim Messina, chose to use a referendum he was confident of winning as a tactic to take the wind out of UKIP’s sails.
Inclusive we is evident in the UKIP leader’s claim that the mismatch between official immigration statistics and the number of National Insurance numbers issued to migrants suggested that the entire population of the UK was being lied to by the British government and, because of EU membership, was powerless to avert a demographic calamity.
I do not believe that we are being told the truth about the number of people coming to this country. I believe that the true figures would shock us. It is not good for our quality of life, it is not good for our social cohesion in our society, and our population headed inexorably towards 70 or 75 million will not make this a better, richer or happier place to be. But as EU members there is nothing we can do about it.
In the same speech, the sense of inclusivity is reinforced by Farage’s assertion that 23 June could become the UK’s ‘Independence Day’, an expression that implies self-determination, a universally desired outcome achieved by a population all pulling in the same direction.
Interference, or perceived interference, by outsiders is always likely to unite people in a short-lived manifestation of national identity, and in April 2016 President Obama’s rather cack-handed attempt to support David Cameron probably did the Remain cause more harm than good. His warning that Britain outside the EU would go to the back of the queue for trade deals provoked indignation, not least because his use of the word queue rather than the American equivalent line made it rather obvious that his statement had been prepared for him by Downing Street. Carole Malone (2016), an outspoken political comment
ator and TV personality, expressed her outrage at this unwelcome interference in the pro-Remain Daily Mirror. The following extract quotes the opening sentences of her piece and her splenetic reaction to Obama’s intervention, and the concluding sentences in which she reminds the president of what happened when Piers Morgan, a British journalist and former editor of the Daily Mirror, expressed his opinion of America’s gun laws.
How dare Barack Obama tell the British people we must stay in the EU and threaten that if we don’t he’ll make sure we’re shoved ‘to the back of the queue’ for any new trade deals?
Is this the act of an ally or is it a bully telling a country he clearly thinks he has under his thumb to do what he says – or else?
How dare this outgoing president, who very soon will be politically defunct, ask us to do something he’d never in a million years ask his own people to do permanently relinquish their sovereignty? (sic)
. . .
Remember what happened when our own Piers Morgan dared to tell America to change its gun laws?
There was a petition to deport him because the people’s attitude was: ‘How dare an Englishman interfere in our constitution?’
The Yanks don’t take kindly to being told what to do in their own country.
Neither do we!
Carole Malone makes repeated use of inclusive we – and most emphatically in her concluding sentence – as if she speaks for the entire nation in giving voice to a collective fit of pique afflicting men and women the length and breadth of the land. A similar tone of indignation marked reports of Obama’s comments in the pro-Leave Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph, and the fact that such responses were published on St George’s Day (23 April), the day on which England’s patron saint is remembered, was not lost on some observers. In all likelihood the US president’s intervention in the Brexit debate was not the main topic of conversation in British homes, workplaces, cafés and pubs on 23 April 2016, but his warning of the consequences of leaving the EU was grist to the mill for Brexit supporters wishing to present themselves as plucky little battlers taking on the mighty forces of the political and economic establishment led by the most powerful man on the planet.
The idea of we the people against the elite was taken up by The Sun in two pieces published in June 2016. In the first – an unsigned editorial entitled SUN SAYS We urge our readers to beLEAVE in Britain and vote to quit the EU on June 23 (2016) – the exclusive we of the headline is immediately replaced by inclusive we in the opening sentences, the components of the elite are clearly identified, and the concluding sentences are a Trump-like appeal to restore greatness.
SUN SAYS We urge our readers to beLEAVE in Britain and vote to quit the EU on June 23
This is our last chance to remove ourselves from the undemocratic Brussels machine . . . and it’s time to take it
We are about to make the biggest political decision of our lives. The Sun urges everyone to vote LEAVE.
We must set ourselves free from dictatorial Brussels.
Throughout our 43-year membership of the European Union it has proved increasingly greedy, wasteful, bullying and breathtakingly incompetent in a crisis.
Next Thursday, at the ballot box, we can correct this huge and historic mistake.
It is our last chance. Because, be in no doubt, our future looks far bleaker if we stay in.
. . .
The Remain campaign, made up of the corporate establishment, arrogant europhiles and foreign banks, have set out to terrify us all about life outside the EU.
Their ‘Project Fear’ strategy predicts mass unemployment, soaring interest rates and inflation, plummeting house prices, even war.
The Treasury, the Bank of England, the IMF and world leaders have all been wheeled out by Downing Street to add their grim warnings.
Nonsense! Years ago the same politicians and economists issued apocalyptic predictions about our fate if we didn’t join the euro.
Thank God we stopped that. The single currency’s stranglehold has since ruined the EU’s poorer nations and cast millions on the dole.
. . .
Our country has a glorious history.
This is our chance to make Britain even greater, to recapture our democracy, to preserve the values and culture we are rightly proud of.
A VOTE FOR LEAVE IS A VOTE FOR A BETTER BRITAIN.
The we of the headline refers to the owner and editorial board of The Sun, but thereafter the pronoun is used inclusively. With imagery that borders on the militaristic, we are depicted as freedom fighters taking on a sinister coalition of powerful interests mobilized by Downing Street to ‘terrify us all’ into toeing the establishment’s line. It is not difficult to challenge the accuracy and/or credibility of certain assertions: ‘our 43-year membership of the European Union’ overlooks the fact that the EU was not established until 1993 following the Maastricht Treaty, and while David Cameron obviously exercised a considerable degree of control over the treasury, he could not dictate policy to the Bank of England and it beggars belief to think that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would do his bidding. The use of the comparative adjective in ‘our chance to make Britain even greater’ implies that the UK is still a great power, which conflicts with most people’s perception of a nation that has been steadily losing influence on the world stage for at least a century. It is likely that many British citizens would prefer not to be included in a we associated with patriotic references to ‘a glorious history’ given that the glory was underpinned by imperial expansion.
On the eve of voting day The Sun invited three experts (Lord Green et al. 2016) to explain the case for leaving the EU, including the Conservative Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Daniel Hannan, who focused on wresting power from the elites and restoring sovereignty.
British history is the story of how we gradually took power away from the elites.
As power spreads, the people in charge find it harder to rig the rules. The country as a whole becomes freer, fairer and richer.
Countries around the world have flourished by copying the British model. But we are losing it at home.
Power is shifting to Brussels, from people we can sack to people we can’t.
. . .
It’s a similar story when it comes to the economy. What’s at stake isn’t just which policies we follow, it’s who gets to set them.
Plenty of groups have suffered from EU rules, including steelworkers. In each case, Britain is forced to apply laws which damage us.
Who does best out of the system? Those lobbies and vested interests that can get their way in Brussels without having to worry about the voters. Look at who is funding Remain: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank and Morgan Stanley.
The multinationals and megabanks have spent millions pushing through EU rules that suit them.
No wonder they’re terrified of leaving. So are the failed British politicians who turned to Europe after losing here.
Here the Conservative David Hannan is straying into Lexit territory in focusing on matters such as the fact that the most important figures in the EU power structure are unelected and unaccountable, EU regulations that prevent national governments from saving jobs by aiding companies in difficulty, and the cosy relationship between Brussels and the giant corporations and banks. The points he makes can be documented by referring either to the EU’s internal rules or to the legislation it has passed. The weakness in his power-to-the-people appeal, however, is that very similar criticisms could be levelled at a succession of UK national governments, in particular those led by the Conservative Party to which Hannan belongs. The process that has led to the UK ranking fourth in the income-inequality league behind Singapore, the United States and Portugal (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010: 17) began in 1979 with the election of the Eurosceptical Margaret Thatcher. The European Community of the time did not have a great deal of control over the economies of member states. Today the Conservative Party, which has MPs who have worked for the likes of Gold
man Sachs and JP Morgan, does not espouse policies aimed at saving Britain’s steel industry or making a serious attempt to prevent corporate tax avoidance, so while David Hannan’s criticisms of the EU have a certain ring of truth about them, it is difficult to believe that a British government free from EU interference and dominated by the Brexiteers of 2016 would be any better. Indeed, if we return to the articles by George Monbiot and Adam Ramsay analysed in Chapter 1, we see that both are more scathing about the EU than Hannan is, but both conclude that the alternative, a right-wing Conservative government without the restraints of European regulations, would be worse. Paul Mason (2016), writing in The Guardian, takes the same view, first noting that ‘The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy’ before warning that ‘If Britain votes Brexit, then Johnson and Gove stand ready to seize control of the Tory party and turn Britain into a neoliberal fantasy island.’
As noted earlier in this chapter, the backgrounds and the policies of prominent Leave campaigners place them clearly within the establishment. As things turned out, The Sun and other newspapers were right to detect a groundswell of opinion against the elite, but many of those who led the protest were actually part of that elite, not representatives of a classless rebellion of the ignored and the marginalized.
The two pieces from The Sun cited above feature short sentences, direct questions and simple, non-technical lexis. Nick Cohen (2017), consciously or unconsciously, adopts a similar style of prose in pointing out that the very simplicity of such language should put us on our guard, while accusing one’s political opponents of elitism is an easy, no-risk but often hypocritical strategy.
Propaganda hides best behind simple words. The plainer the language, the more devious it can be. A speaker’s apparent lack of pretence promises the audience that in front of them is a man of ‘the people’, who scorns political correctness, and ‘tells it like it is.’
THE LANGUAGE OF BREXIT Page 6