Some days after the referendum Helene Guldberg (2016), co-founder and director of the online magazine Spiked, decided to test the stereotype of the Leave voter.
The EU referendum result exposed the enormous disconnect between the pro-EU views of the political class, and its affluent, metropolitan supporters, and the anti-EU views of the rest of the UK. It also exposed an enormous amount of elite snobbery towards ordinary voters. Many Remainers have been quick to dismiss those who voted to leave the EU as ignorant, foreign-hating, nationalistic bigots. They have also suggested that the issues at stake were too difficult for ordinary voters to comprehend. It’s clear that many Remainers have never stepped foot in strongly pro-Brexit areas, let alone tried to find out what Leave voters really think.
So, being based in the West Midlands, an ethnically diverse region in which almost 1.8 million people voted to leave the EU compared to 1.2 million who voted to remain, I decided to meet with Brexit supporters from Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country. I discovered that the Remainers’ caricature of the Leave voter as a racist ignoramus was very far from the truth. The Leavers I spoke to were reasoned, sensible and motivated primarily by a desire for more control over their lives and more of a say on political issues.
Guldberg’s interviewees were particularly indignant about the accusation of racism and all insisted that the referendum campaign had not stirred up racial tensions in their area. She quotes Richard from Birmingham, who has a French partner, describes himself as ‘a big black man with dreadlocks’ and believes linking Brexit to racism is ‘all propaganda’. Similarly, Tanveer Khan insists that there is no more racism today than when he came to Britain twenty years ago and blames the media for ‘creating divisions’.
It is possible that Remain’s stigmatization of Leavers as racist chavs eventually made Brexit supporters even more determined to send a clear message to those telling them how they should think, and if that was the case it was yet another tactical error committed by the pro-EU side. Campaign is the trade journal of the advertising industry, and shortly after the referendum a number of advertising agencies took the unusual step of using this journal to publish a series of adverts that the Britain Stronger In Europe group had commissioned but then elected not to use. Claire Beale (2016) for Campaign notes that Stronger In ‘had some of the country’s best creatives and stategists to hand’ and then chose to ignore their ideas. While the experts urged a switch to more positive campaigning, Stronger In was reluctant to abandon the Project Fear approach that had worked so well in Scotland but was clearly losing credibility in the EU debate. The result, according to Beale, was that, ‘While the Leave campaigners were able to talk up all the good things about quitting the EU, Stronger In’s agenda was unrelentingly negative and undynamic.’ She also quotes an unnamed creative saying that there were too many decision-makers within Stronger In, too many opinions, with the consequence being ‘a complete clusterfuck’.
Two days later, The Mirror gave further examples and details of the rejected adverts (Mullin 2016). Some were negative in the Project Fear tradition, such as a photo of a girl standing on the edge of a cliff with the question ‘What will life be like, if we leave?’ Others, however, reflected the focus on positives that the advertising agencies recommended; to present EU membership as beneficial to future generations, one advert showed a pregnant woman with a speech bubble coming out of her swollen tummy saying ‘I’m in’.
One poster that was used, and used extensively, was produced by the pro-EU campaign group We Are Europe. It portrayed two men with idiosyncratic hairstyles engaged in a passionate kiss, and the style was sufficiently realistic for us to recognize them as caricatures of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. A similar personal attack on a less robust operator than Johnson might have provoked outrage, but BoJo’s reputation as a political bruiser meant that he was considered fair game, and he was frequently presented in cartoons and photographic mock-ups as a buffoon, while in his case typical premodifiers were joker and clownish.
The Kiss of Death poster attack on Johnson was effective; verbal attacks on him were liable to backfire because he tended to turn them to his own advantage. In a televised debate in June 2016 Johnson had three feisty women lined up against him: the energy secretary Amber Rudd, the leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon and the Labour MP Angela Eagle. The Sun called them ‘the Gang of Three’ and used the ambiguous headline ‘Fighting Off The Girls’ (Hawkes et al. 2016) to report on their strategy of attacking Johnson’s character and motives. They accused him of having belatedly converted to Brexit as a tactic he hoped would enable him to replace Cameron in 10 Downing Street, while Rudd said that although he was the life and soul of the party he was ‘not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening’. The strategy failed: Johnson, clearly enjoying the verbal tussle, used their attacks to adopt an untypically statesmanlike style as he warned against the danger of resorting to personal jibes.
Both sides in the referendum campaign sought celebrity endorsements, and on 9 March 2016 The Sun claimed to have the biggest British celebrity of all on its side when it used the headline ‘Queen Backs Brexit’. Buckingham Palace tends to avoid getting involved in controversies with the media but in this case a complaint was lodged with IPSO, which was duly upheld in July of that year. The full text of the adjudication is available on The Sun’s website, along with the original article and the political editor’s defence of its publication (Newton Dunn 2016). The article refers to a lunch at Windsor Castle during the 2010–2015 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, and quotes ‘a highly reliable source’ and ‘a parliamentary source’ claiming that the Queen made her views known at length and with great passion to Nick Clegg, at the time Lib-Dem leader and deputy prime minister. IPSO ruled that the headline breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice; while the content of the article is conjecture based on unnamed sources, the headline presents the Queen’s pro-Brexit position as a hard fact.
It is quite possible that Queen Elizabeth has her doubts about the EU – if anyone should be concerned about the question of sovereignty it is surely the sovereign – but it is difficult to believe that a monarch with her long record of correct observance of protocol would commit the crass error of expressing her views in public. The Sun’s headline falls into the category of dirty tricks because the Queen, unlike a Boris Johnson who can and does respond in kind, is bound by her constitutional role to be above politics and to avoid controversy. The Sun made a claim about her that she was powerless to refute personally. When her grandson, Prince William, referred in a speech to Britain’s tradition as ‘an outward looking nation’, Victoria Murphy (2016) for The Mirror had the good sense to include a verb in her headline that made it clear that she was not stating boldly on record that he wished people to vote to remain in the EU: ‘Prince William wades into the EU debate by hinting Brits should vote to stay In’. Unlike Victoria Murphy, The Sun, as we have already seen, is not unduly concerned about incurring the displeasure of IPSO.
And UKIP did not hesitate to make use of The Sun’s dirty trick. Among the campaign posters the party invited supporters to print and distribute or download and repost was one featuring a photograph of the Queen with the caption ‘I’m voting UKIP’.
The closer we got to voting day the more the polls indicated that the Leave camp had chipped away at Remain’s early lead. A close result was predicted, but when 23 June came round, many people, myself included, still could not really imagine that a majority of voters would choose to leave the EU. And when it sank in that they had done precisely that, the country was revealed to be even more divided than we had thought.
14
The Day After: How could this happen?
The headlines and leads in the 24 June predawn editions of the three most committed pro-Brexit tabloids were predictably triumphant and linguistically predictable: The Sun used a pun, the Daily Mail recycled the shackles metaphor and the Daily Express remained true to the theme
of an appointment with history.
SEE EU LATER!
Britain waking to an EU exit Leave claims win in huge poll
(The Sun)
WE’RE OUT!
• After 43 years UK freed from shackles of EU • PM in crisis as voters reject Project Fear • Leave surge sends pound to a 31-year low
(Daily Mail)
HISTORIC DAY FOR BRITAIN
Nation decides as Boris and Gove ask Cameron to stay on
(Daily Express)
The Sun’s front page featured an image of Leave supporters celebrating their victory, underlined the legitimacy of the vote by drawing attention to the size of the turnout and also promised readers a ‘big brexfast’ of eight more pages of referendum coverage.
A fall in the value of sterling in the event of a vote for Brexit had been predicted by both sides and the Leave camp, judiciously selecting economists to cite, had maintained that a weaker pound would give a boost to Britain’s economy, so in its lead the Daily Mail did not try to hide or downplay the markets’ reaction to the referendum result. The ‘We’re out!’ headline was accompanied by a photograph of Nigel Farage with arms raised in triumph.
The Daily Express showed Chelsea pensioners in full uniform queuing to enter the polling station, an image of tough old patriots determined to play their part on the historic day for Britain. The headline about the historic consequence of the result was juxtaposed with a lead about the internecine struggle within the Conservative Party and Gove and Johnson’s improbable hope that David Cameron might continue as prime minister even with their knives still buried in his back.
Although the Daily Telegraph energetically supported the Leave campaign, on 24 June it differed from the pro-Brexit tabloids in that it acknowledged that the voters had ‘upset predictions’ and used the word ‘shock’, which, as we will see, was a lexeme that frequently occurred in the Remain-supporting newspapers’ reports of the referendum result. Over the following days, prominent Leavers did indeed give the impression that they had not really expected to win and were not quite sure what to do with their victory, but on their front pages immediately after the result was known the three tabloids neglected this aspect.
A fourth pro-Brexit tabloid, the Daily Star, has rarely been cited in this work since it is primarily concerned with celebrity gossip, breasts and buttocks, the royal family, UFOs and the supernatural, with its minimal coverage of politics scarcely worth commenting upon. Its headline and lead of 24 June are given below for contrastive purposes; unlike its tabloid competitors, it went to press before the result was known, so, lacking the one news item everyone wished to know about, had to resort to a ludicrous story about an MI5 plot to erase the pencilled crosses for leaving the EU from ballot papers. A photomontage shows David Cameron holding a gigantic and decidedly phallic-looking pencil.
Britain backs Brexit
Shock for Cameron as Labour heartlands upset predictions to leave country facing the exit door
(Daily Telegraph)
BREXIT FIX FACTOR
Pencil conspiracy as result is neck and neck
(Daily Star)
The pro-Remain press opted for stark headlines and leads that focused on the fall in the value of the pound and the likelihood that the prime minister would resign.
UK out. PM out
• Cameron to quit by October after Britain votes by 51.9% to 48.1% to leave EU • £120bn wiped off shares as pound sinks to 31-year low • Johnson and May favourites to lead Brexit negotiations
(The Independent)
Cameron faces fight for survival as Britain sets course for Brexit
• Pound plunges by 9% to lowest level since 1985 • Farage claims victory as leave stretches ahead • Tory leave MPs pledge to back PM come what may
(The Guardian)
WE’RE OUT
» Britain votes to quit the EU » Pound goes into freefall
(The Daily Mirror)
Britain’s Brexit revolt
• Huge gains for Leave campaign in referendum • Nail-biting finish as Farage warns ‘genie out of bottle’
(The Times)
OUT Global shock as Britain quits EU
» Britain votes to leave EU in stunning blow to Europe » Sterling suffers sharpest fall since 2008 financial crisis » Pressure on PM to quit despite support from Eurosceptics
(The i)
The pro-Remain Times used a photograph of jubilant Brexit supporters very similar to that on the front page of its fellow News Corporation newspaper The Sun, as did The Telegraph. In keeping with its headline The Independent published a photograph of a glum-looking David Cameron while The i, a newspaper not cited previously, gave us a satellite image of Great Britain and north-eastern France in which the former’s literal insularity could be interpreted as a visual metaphor for its post-referendum political isolation. The i aims to adopt a politically neutral stance (in the 2015 general election it did not advise readers on how to vote) but on the morning after the referendum manifested the same surprise and disappointment as the overtly pro-Remain press.
When Leave’s victory was not yet confirmed but looking highly probable, The Guardian’s 4.45 am edition had a front-page photograph showing three people before empty wine glasses with expressions of dismay tinged with disbelief. The occasion is a results party organized by Stronger In at London’s Royal Festival Hall, and the photo was obviously taken when results from around the country were making it clear that the expected celebrations would not happen. It is an image that encapsulates the division that post-referendum analyses examined in detail: wine-drinking metropolitans at a venue that symbolizes high culture in the capital city who were totally unable to comprehend why working-class beer drinkers in the north and midlands had decided to ignore their Labour MPs’ advice and vote to leave the EU.
Throughout the referendum campaign the Daily Mirror was the pro-Remain newspaper that made the most creative use of visual metaphors. After the early results suggested a narrow victory for Remain, it produced a front page showing a young woman with the EU flag superimposed upon her face kissing a young man with a Union Jack face. The only text was the headline ‘Project Reunite’ (2016) plus a wish for an end to the bitterness of the preceding months: ‘As Farage all but concedes defeat . . . and after the fear & hate . . . Britain needs Remain & Leave supporters to start the healing process. . .’ (The Mirror’s ellipses). When subsequent results showed that it was actually Leave who had secured a narrow victory, The Mirror published its ‘historic 5am edition’ with its ‘We’re Out’ front page (2016) – The Mail used the same headline with the addition of an ecstatic exclamation mark – with an image of just the young man with the Union Jack face. This time the flag is in a less than pristine state, the flaking blue and red paint symbolizing different things to different people but, given The Mirror’s clear pro-Remain stance, unlikely to be interpreted in a positive way.
What the referendum made abundantly clear was that Great Britain and Northern Ireland was a kingdom that was far from united. Even before all the votes were counted, The Economist spelt out the divisions in the country in an unsigned article entitled ‘The Brexit vote reveals a country split down the middle’ (2016):
First returns and television interviews with voters and (slightly shell-shocked) political grandees painted a picture of a United Kingdom divided sharply along lines of region, class, age and even – in the case of Northern Ireland, where such Roman Catholic areas as Foyle voted Remain while Protestant areas like North Antrim went for Leave amid much higher turnout – by religious denomination. If the public had quietly weighed the costs and benefits of EU membership, it was often hard to hear that analysis through a din of stuff-the-lot-of-them rage from the Leave camp, and the first growls of mutual recrimination among Labour and Conservative politicians backing Remain.
The ‘stuff-the-lot-of-them rage’ described in The Economist was more conventionally termed ‘a popular revolt’ by Elliott and Coates (2016) in The Times in an art
icle depicting a nation with such deep divisions that it risked disintegration:
Britain is heading out of the European Union today after a referendum result that remakes the country’s political landscape and shatters the continent’s post-war settlement.
Swathes of England and Wales ignored David Cameron’s warnings on the economic consequences of Brexit to express their anger over immigration and inequality in a popular revolt that has left the country deeply divided.
The pound plunged to a 31-year low as global markets reacted to the prospect of years of uncertainty, including over the future of the UK itself.
Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, said he was certain that his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, would demand a second independence referendum.
Nicola Sturgeon did indeed call for a second referendum on Scottish independence, the future of the open border between Eire and Northern Ireland became an issue, while the strong Remain vote in London highlighted the rift within England itself. On this third point, Lara Prendergast (2016) for The Spectator noted that two days after the referendum more than 120,000 signatures had been added to a petition circulating on Facebook calling for London to become an independent city state within the EU (which Prendergast considers a ‘Little Londoner mindset’).
Throughout this work it has been argued that the pro-EU camp did not match Leave’s passionate campaigning and powerful language but when the final result was known Remainers seemed to find their voice at last, and it was an angry one. A number of polls showed that young people had voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, and as soon as they realized what had happened they bombarded social networks and microblogging services to express their anger and their sense of having been betrayed by middle-aged and elderly people. From early morning on 24 June the hashtags #NotInMyName and #WhatHaveWeDone were trending on Twitter, with the past participles shafted and screwed among the politer terms to describe what had been done to young people by those who had far less of a stake in the future. The Guardian used the Tumbir platform to set up 75percent (so-named because a YouGov poll indicated that 75 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds had voted to stay in the EU), and collected the distraught, embittered and often genuinely fearful complaints of both young voters and those 16- and 17-year-olds who had not been permitted to vote on an issue of such importance for their future. The under-18s were well represented in a hastily organized but peacefully conducted anti-Brexit demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on the day after the momentous vote.
THE LANGUAGE OF BREXIT Page 16