Abstract
This article analyses the discursive constitution and contestation of British ‘greatness’ during the campaigns for the 1975 referendum on UK membership of the European Communities and the 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union. It finds that ideas about British greatness formed a central part of the discourse on Britain’s role in the world on both sides in each campaign, joining recent literature on Brexit challenging the view that greatness has been primarily a right-wing preoccupation. By demonstrating the existence of distinct yet overlapping discourses of greatness, the article also adds nuance to accounts of the centrality of greatness to British foreign policy identity. The article employs a discourse-theoretical approach to uncover the central discursive ‘nodal points’ and the ‘floating signifiers’ of greatness claimed by each side. Empirically, it draws on a collection of campaign materials from both referendums.
‘Britain has a great past. Britain has a great future – within Europe’1
britain in europe
‘So let’s go out there and win this battle for the future of a great Britain’2
hilary benn
Introduction
Since 2011, Visit Britain and other United Kingdom (UK) government agencies have run a campaign to promote and attract more visitors to the country: the great campaign welcomes visitors and locals alike at entry points to the UK with idyllic posters bearing slogans like ‘Countryside is great’, ‘Innovation is great’ and, to ram home the message, ‘This is great Britain’.3 Launched before the 2012 London Olympic Games, the great campaign took on renewed symbolic salience after 51.9% of voters opted for the UK to leave the European Union (EU) in the ‘Brexit’ referendum of 23 June 2016, throwing the country into an on-going identity crisis. One of the core questions at stake in this crisis is, we argue, remarkably simple: how to be great (Britain)?
Concern with ‘greatness’ is a well-documented preoccupation in the UK, as in comparable ‘status-obsessed second-tier powers’ such as Russia and France.4 Indeed, in the British case, the idea of greatness is reinforced across national culture by the very presence of the word ‘great’ in the country’s name, lending itself to nation-branding strategies like the great campaign.5 While ubiquitous in the British political discourse, concern for British greatness seems to peak during times of perceived crises or at critical junctures in UK foreign policy, such as the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1968 withdrawal from ‘East of Suez’, or the 1975 referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Communities (ec). Most recently it is the 2016 Brexit referendum that has reignited discussion of Britain’s greatness and its role in world politics.6 Such concerns are often depicted as a particular obsession of the political right, now ascendant in post-Brexit UK. This is particularly true in the public debate, where the right is often accused of nostalgia for the supposedly great imperial past where Britain was a truly ‘global’ power. However, as demonstrated by a growing body of scholarship and by the quotes above, from the main pro-European campaign group in 1975 and the Labour Party’s pro-European shadow foreign secretary in 2016, the reality is more complicated: a diverse range of political actors in the UK have tended to invoke British greatness, albeit with different logics and political purposes.7
This article investigates this discursive contestation over British greatness, seeking to describe and understand the different discourses of greatness which have characterised debates over European integration in post-war British politics, and in so doing to further complicate the idea that greatness is the sole preserve of the pro-Brexit right. To do so, we employ the discourse-theoretical framework of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.8 We draw on the theory’s attention to how meanings are contested through discursive struggles, how discourses form through the linking of signifiers, and how certain ‘floating’ signifiers may be claimed by rival discourses at once, in order to show how rival discourses have conceptualised distinct but overlapping meanings of British greatness.
Drawing on this framework, we conduct a discourse analysis of conceptions of British greatness at two critical moments of national upheaval: the 1975 referendum on ec membership and the 2016 referendum on EU membership. By focusing on these two salient, public-facing moments during which Britain’s identity and place in the world were publicly contested, we are able to capture discourses of greatness across time and across the political spectrum. We show that both the Yes/Remain and the No/Leave campaigns in 1975/2016, respectively, competed to define what it meant to be great in the context of Britain’s relationship with the ec/EU. By highlighting how a diverse range of actors across two distinct points in time deployed distinct conceptions of greatness, we aim to contribute further nuance to debates on British foreign policy discourses.
The argument proceeds as follows. First, we discuss the literature on British ‘greatness’, with particular attention to works that have analysed the seeming resurgence of greatness concerns in connection with Brexit, through concepts like ‘Global Britain’ and imperial nostalgia. Second, we outline our discourse-theoretical framework, with emphasis on the ‘nodal points’ of a discourse and the framework’s value in analysing the ongoing contestation of British greatness. We then outline our methodology and source selection. In the fourth and fifth sections, we explore conceptions of British greatness in the 1975 and 2016 referendums, respectively, before concluding.
Britannia Resurgent? Brexit and Discourses of British Greatness
The UK, by virtue of its former status as a major colonial power and its hegemonic status in the 18th and 19th centuries, has long maintained a concern with its ‘greatness’. The ongoing preoccupation with Britain’s ‘role in the world’ is arguably a symptom of status anxiety induced by the reality of geopolitical decline after (and to some extent before) 1945.9 The combination of this relative decline and continuity in Britain’s great-power status markers, for example its permanent seat on the UN Security Council, has led many scholars to seek to assess the extent of continued British greatness. Morris argues that despite its decline, Britain still possesses significant great power credentials, both material and social, ‘far stronger than is commonly appreciated’.10 McCourt dubs Britain a ‘residual great power’, still with ‘a special responsibility to uphold international order’ and expectations that it will ‘play a part in crisis management … with force where necessary’, but reliant for the fulfilment of this role on, for example, its close relationship with the United States.11 Blagden argues that Britain is both a ‘real’ and ‘residual’ great power, and that British strategy is ‘shaped by the interaction between two conflicting conceptions of ‘greatness’: one willing to bear significant realpolitik-motivated opportunity costs to preserve independent self-protection capability, the other premised on a supporting role in upholding US-led international order’.12
Whether or not the UK still really is a ‘great’ power (something which could only be determined on the basis of capabilities and others’ perceptions), Blagden’s argument points to the fact that the idea that it is (or should be) great is both a continued and contested facet of political discourse. What exactly makes Britain great or what it should do to be great ‘again’ is open for debate, perhaps never more so than during critical moments, such as the 1956 Suez Crisis or the 1975 ec referendum. At junctures such as these, when the UK’s role in world politics is called into question and major policy choices are opened up, political actors have articulated distinct representations of what it means to be great, often in service of highly divergent policy goals.13 Such dynamics persist to this day, as evidenced by arguments put forward in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, in which both sides – Leave and Remain – set out competing visions of British greatness to try to convince citizens of the merits of, respectively, withdrawing from, or remaining in, the EU.
The most commonly highlighted such vision is the Leave campaign’s advocation for a ‘global’ role, with Britain acting independently on the world stage. Recent studies have highlighted the distinct worldview espoused by the Leave campaign, and its emphasis on EU withdrawal as enabling a renewed global role for Britain, freed of the EU’s constraints.14 This was allied to a particular view of international politics in general, with Leavers endorsing many of the propositions of political realism, including scepticism towards supranational governance, an emphasis on national power, and a communitarian value-set, in contrast to the liberal internationalism of the Remain campaign.15 The two campaigns also embodied divergent conceptions of sovereignty, with Brexit enthusiasts more supportive of traditional conceptions of national sovereignty, and Remain supporters placing greater emphasis on interdependence, and on sovereignty as control over political outcomes.16 In the Leave vision, then, the EU, with its interdependence, regional focus and post-national sovereignty, represented a brake on British greatness.
The focus on globality continued with the articulation of the Global Britain concept under Theresa May’s administration, and its subsequent embrace by Boris Johnson’s government. However, because the precise meaning of the concept has been difficult to pin down, scholarship has instead focused on its political functions: providing a rhetorical technique through which the EU can be represented as a negative and constraining force on the UK, deflecting public attention away from the deleterious domestic consequences of Brexit and towards a mythologised past in which Britain was an important global actor, and providing a new ‘spatial imaginary’ towards which the UK’s new, independent trade policy goals have been put, effectively allowing post-Brexit Britain to ‘perform’ independence (and, we would argue, greatness).17 Much scholarship has also focused on the difficulties of realising Global Britain outside of the EU and with the UK’s (relatively) diminished capabilities.18 Not only is it asserted that the gains of new partnerships will not balance out the loss of Britain’s EU ties, it is also clear that Britain’s influence outside the EU was bolstered by its membership.19
Several more implicit currents of thought related to greatness can be located within the Leave campaign’s embrace of globality. One is the role of empire, echoes of which can be traced through many of the mentions of the UK’s new global role.20 Indeed, the prominent role of the Anglosphere in debates around the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy is indicative of a clear connection between post-Brexit priorities and areas where the UK formerly held considerable sway by dint of its imperial role, especially Canada, Australia and New Zealand.21 As both a racialised and a linguistic community, the Anglosphere is in many respects the external dimension of the internal dominance of English politico-cultural values in the Brexit debate.22 However, it is far from the only variant of UK globality vying for attention in the post-Brexit discursive landscape, which also include exhortations to step up engagement with the United States, the Asia-Pacific, and other democracies more generally.23 All these various exhortations, we argue, can be read as appeals for ways to fulfil British greatness.
Many of these appeals share a certain temporality, with the Brexit campaign often associated with a specific politics of nostalgia, a yearning to ‘turn back the clock’ to recreate an era where the UK was greater, more relevant in world politics.24 The Leave campaign, it is claimed, relied on ‘negative temporal status comparisons’ with its former self, claiming that Britain’s former ability to ‘rule the world’ had been denigrated through its membership of the EU.25 While such temporal comparisons are evident in the campaign material we analyse, observers have also noted a more complex anti-nostalgic bent to the Leave campaign, with its emphasis on embracing the future and withdrawing from the supposedly outdated EU, as well as a broader politics of post-colonial nostalgia and imperial patterns of thought shared by constituencies on both sides of the Leave/Remain debate.26 It has also been noted that not only is it impossible to re-wind the clock, Britain’s pre-ec status was also not anything near the mythological status the Brexit campaign bestowed on it.27 Nevertheless, the (implicit) call to make Britain ‘great again’ is a recurring discursive feature, usually attributed to the Leave side.
Whether these various visions are best described as invocations to, or of, greatness – as opposed to some more general term such as prestige, status, or even just particular roles or policy options – is, we admit, an open question, which we return to below when discussing our own analysis. We propose that there is indeed a common thread running through these various discursive positions and the ones we present below, namely a concern with ‘how to be great’ – where greatness is taken for granted as a background condition that should be fulfilled but can be done so in various ways, much like in the great campaign. The specific word ‘great’ is not the only signifier denoting greatness.
Contested Greatness: a Discourse-Theoretical Framework
As can be seen from the above discussion, the discourses surrounding Britain’s potential greatness are complex and contested. Greatness is a background preoccupation consistent across the post-1945 landscape, but discourses of greatness can also become more acute and salient at specific times and be subject to change and reinvention over time. Different actors view greatness differently and mobilise invocations to it in distinct ways and in service of very different (and often mutually incompatible) policy goals. Actors also have a complex relationship with greatness, in terms of how normatively desirable they believe it to be, whether they assume the UK to possess it (or to have lost it), and how they think greatness can be obtained. What results is a complex discursive landscape in which greatness is ubiquitous, but also contested.
To make sense of this contestation, we engage with the poststructuralist discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, the aim being to describe in theoretical terms how such a diversity of competing discourses can emerge from a widely shared concept. Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory has enjoyed increasing attention in ir in recent years.28 It focuses on the (always partial) fixation of meanings, identities, etc., through processes of articulation that form discourses: structures of meaning made up of interconnected networks of linguistic signifiers. These discourses build on the construction of so-called ‘chains of equivalence’ and ‘chains of difference’ through which meanings and political projects are constituted by the linking of certain political demands, signifiers, etc. (equivalence), and their separation from others (difference). Each discourse is structured by certain ‘nodal points’ or ‘privileged/master’ signifiers.29 The construction of meaning never entirely settles, but discourses can stabilise over time to form what appear to be natural political and social categories positioned either in equivalential or antagonistic relationships (e.g. the linking of liberalism and democracy, and/or their mutual antagonism to authoritarianism).
In such circumstances, certain signifiers (e.g. democracy, solidarity) can take on the form of an ‘empty’ signifier – starting to lose its original, particular meaning and instead taking on a broader, ‘universal signification’ representing a variety of demands.30 On the other hand, a ‘floating’ signifier denotes a signifier that is simultaneously claimed by rival discursive projects, floating between them. A floating signifier describes ‘a precise historical conjuncture in which a particular signifier (lodged in-between several opposing, antagonistic, hegemonic projects) is used as part of a battle to impose the ‘right’ viewpoint onto the world’.31 For Laclau, its meaning ‘is indeterminate between alternative equivalential frontiers’; it is ‘suspended’.32 Rather than severing its relationship to any particular meaning, like an empty signifier, the floating signifier is the subject of intense contestation as to which is its ‘correct’ meaning.
In practice, most signifiers are neither entirely ‘empty’ nor entirely ‘floating’ (nor, for that matter, entirely ‘fixed’), but somewhere in between. Taking the example of discourses of British greatness, in times of relatively low contestation and therefore relative hegemony, nodal points may be stable and a particular signifier (‘Cool Britannia’, ‘Global Britain’, etc.) could become increasingly empty, subsuming within itself a whole range of particular meanings. However, during times of change, established systems of meaning become unsettled, and signifiers (including nodal points) increasingly start to ‘float’: ‘the “floating” dimension becomes most visible in periods of organic crisis, when the symbolic system needs to be radically recast’.33 In the context of the UK’s relationship with the world, the two instances focused on here (the 1975 and 2016 referendums) represent such periods of crisis, when one should expect an increased ‘flotation’ in and between discourses.
We thus conceive of British ‘greatness’ as discursively constituted through processes of articulation and the relative stabilisation/destabilisation of nodal points and networks of signifiers. While a certain discourse of greatness may be hegemonic at a certain time, during times of contestation rival discourses vie for hegemony by seeking to establish their version of greatness as the dominant one. In this conceptualisation, greatness itself is – in linguistic terms – the signified, the concept without fixed meaning that the variety of signifiers collectively constitute and seek to claim. These signifiers can be exclusive from one discourse to the other, or they can be ‘floating’ in between discourses, being claimed as part of multiple chains of equivalence. For example, ‘leadership’ may be claimed to constitute greatness by more than one discourse, but linked or ‘chained’ to different aspects in each (institutional memberships, capacity for independent action, etc.).
Methodology
The empirical basis for this article is an analysis of primary documents from the 1975 and 2016 UK referendums on ec/EU membership, collated in the Britain and Europe Archive at the London School of Economics. The campaign materials, which range from single-page flyers to pamphlets and reports, offer an insight into how different political groupings conceived of British greatness at these two critical moments. While the referendums asked about Europe specifically, they functioned as historical junctures within which intense, public-facing discussion took place on the nature of Britain’s global relationships and its status as a world power. They are thus salient moments for investigating rival discourses of greatness.
Of course, much changed between the 1975 and 2016 referendums: the ec evolved into the EU, broader in membership and policy reach, more institutionalised but also more internally contested; Cold War bipolarity came to an end, ushering in an era of American unipolarity followed by a more diffuse multipolar order; the Labour and Conservative parties underwent significant ideological change, converging around classical liberalism and more recently ‘post-liberalism’; the structure of the British economy became significantly more laissez faire, and modes of political communication shifted towards online content. By juxtaposing the two events, we are not suggesting that the contexts were exactly the same, rather that there are meaningful similarities that may still be observed across such junctures. By focusing on similar events at disparate points in time we are able to demonstrate that, despite substantial international and domestic change, common themes can be found in political agents’ claims to greatness. Moreover, while the importance of physical campaign materials like flyers and pamphlets was undoubtedly higher in 1975 that in 2016, the fact that the physical materials from the Brexit referendum mirror much of the available online material – often doubling up as online advertisements – makes them just as appropriate for mapping the discourses.
We analysed a total of 221 documents: 38 from the 1975 referendum and 183 from 2016. We report here just over one-fifth (45 texts) which directly speak to the question of Britain’s role in the world. Within this sub-set both the No/Leave and Yes/Remain campaigns are well covered, as are the distinct partisan and ideological camps within each campaign. The material consists in the most part of flyers posted to the UK electorate, usually of around 2–4 pages, although some were longer in length, essentially comprising short political pamphlets. In most cases the material is from the national-level campaigns, although a small minority of texts included are regional in focus (these tend to toe the organisational line just as strongly). A detailed read of the documents allowed us to reconstruct the distinct discourses surrounding British greatness, identifying the ‘nodal points’ constituting each discourse along with any floating signifiers being claimed by different sides. The guiding questions informing the analysis were whether Britain is presented as ‘great’ and if so, how that greatness is conceptualised? How do the representations of Britain and its international status establish certain differential and equivalent relationships that fix certain meanings? All quotes are rendered as close to the original as possible, with any added emphasis noted.
By using this type of material, we are focusing exclusively on discourses as ‘sold’ by political agents, rather than their reception by the intended audiences, or how they compare with more ‘popular’ discourses of greatness in the media or among the population. Such questions are beyond the article’s scope. Nevertheless, political and popular discourses are intimately connected, and one would not expect one to differ too much from the other – while political agents are obviously in a position to shape popular discourses more than vice-versa, they have to take account of what will ‘sell’ when formulating their campaign positions, by tapping into established representations.
There is always a risk in such interpretive exercises of conflating different concepts, or of stretching the meaning of greatness as a term. We are attuned to the risk of conceptual stretching. However, given the potential for multiple signifiers to refer to the signified ‘greatness’, we do not rely exclusively on mentions of the word ‘great’, but also include references to Britain as a ‘leading’ nation, a ‘global’ player, and suchlike. Since our primary aim is to show the diversity of discursive representations involved, our aim has been to maximise the amount of relevant material. Indeed, our overarching claim is that the ubiquity of such appeals in the material highlights the premise of our argument: that greatness is a background condition of British-identity discourses. Repeated claims that a country should ‘lead’ or be ‘global’ is, we would argue, evidence of a certain taken-for-granted notion of elevated status – call it greatness – that the speakers think the state should or must live up to. At the same time, we are not out to prove our interpretation conclusively, or to suggest any causal link between the discourses we propose and individual policy outcomes.
The 1975 Referendum
The referendum on continued membership of the ec, also commonly referred to as the Common Market, took place in June 1975. The UK had joined the ec under a Conservative government in 1973, amid some controversy, and the referendum had been an election promise of Harold Wilson’s victorious Labour Party in the (second) 1974 general election. The vote followed a renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership by the Labour government, which had produced concessions on several issues, including Commonwealth trade and contributions to the community budget.34 In the event, more than 67% of voters agreed with the government’s line and supported continued ec membership.
The Yes Campaign
The Yes campaign brought together those who supported continued ec membership. It drew upon majorities of opinion within the major political parties and had the support of cross-party elites. We highlight four distinct nodal points of the campaign’s discourse related to the question of British greatness, in order to identify core claims to which we refer back in later sections.
If we left [the ec] we would not go back to the world as it was when we joined, still less to the old world of Britain’s imperial heyday. The world has been changing fast. And the changes have made things more difficult and more dangerous for this country. It is a time when we need friends…Outside we should be alone in a harsh, cold world, with none of our friends offering to revive old partnerships.37
The focus was on revival through adaptation to new realities – as the same pamphlet argued: ‘The safety and prosperity of this country demand that we stay in the European Community. So do our duty to the world and our hope for the new greatness of Britain’.38
The second nodal point, which as we will see has been a ‘floating’ signifier between different discourses, was freedom to act independently and effectively. For the Yes side, this freedom to act and to influence world affairs was strengthened by ec membership. The Liberal Party’s pro-ec campaign claimed that: ‘Alone, Britain can no longer influence world events … In the European Community we can’.39 The government’s own messaging noted that ‘in the modern world even the Super Powers like America and Russia do not have complete freedom of action. Medium-sized nations like Britain are more and more subject to economic and political forces which we cannot control on our own’.40 The reference to how not even the superpowers had complete freedom to act indicates the perceived importance of this characteristic to greatness – great countries should be able to act alone. The closely related aspect of being able to act effectively was tightly intertwined in the discourse. Asking (rhetorically) ‘Why do we want it?’, a pro-ec Conservative Party communique answered: ‘Because we want Britain to have real influence in the world through our membership of the Community’.41 Conservative mp Anthony David Steen noted in his letter to constituents that membership offered ‘a chance to exert influence which no single country Britain’s size could exert alone’.42 The Liberal campaign echoed these sentiments, noting that the ‘Community’s strength will ensure Western Europe’s views are listened to in world discussions’.43
The emphasis placed on European interests rather than the amplification of British interests highlights a third nodal point, namely the mutual reinforcement of influence. The campaign pointed out that British accession mutually benefited the UK and the ec, with one document noting that ‘Europe wants Britain in because it helps to make the Community stronger. Being in helps Britain to become stronger. We all gain’.44 Showing the close relation with the above argument about effective action (and the inability to act independently alone), the pamphlet claimed that with Britain in, ‘the European Community of 250 million people is big enough, rich enough and strong enough to count in this world of super-powers’.45
A final, closely related nodal point was that this influence was often presented as leading to a particular goal, thus having a purpose, whether moral (peace, development) or economic (prosperity). One pro-ec student group argued that: ‘Our prosperity, our employment, our environment and the way Britain faces up to the future all depend on our staying in. But apart from these direct benefits, a united Europe can help to break down the old prejudices which have prevented international co-operation in the past. A new Europe with Britain can establish stronger relationships with other parts of the world’.46 The Liberal Europe Campaign, for instance, claimed that ‘the Community has a vital part to play in world peace’, while Steen, the mp, depicted the Community as ‘a co-operative effort to build a just, peaceful and prosperous world’.47
The No Campaign
Unlike in the 2016 referendum on EU membership, Euroscepticism was more dominant on the left of the Labour Party than among Conservatives. Opposition to membership thus spanned a considerable ideological gulf, with both left-Labour supporters and right-wing Conservatives urging withdrawal. And yet, as the discussion below shows, the discourse of both sides was not all that different. We begin by discussing the position of the left – comprising the left-wing of the Labour Party, a sizable share of the trades union movement, and left-allied ngo s, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – since anti-ec activism was more prominent on this end of the political spectrum.
Prefiguring later Labour opposition to Britain’s EU membership, the slogans of the left’s anti-ec campaign emphasised the distinction between ‘Europe’ and ‘the world’, calling on voters to ‘Leave the Market and Join the World’ or ‘Quit the market and join the world’.48 Tony Benn, a leading anti-ec Labour Party figure, argued in a letter with other prominent Anti-Marketeers that their opponents were ‘conducting an almost hysterical campaign on the basis of fear, despondency and gloom’ and that they ‘insist that we have no future as an independent nation outside the Market’, going on to claim this is ‘nonsense’, since ‘the rest of the world did not cease to exist after we joined the Common Market’.49 The Communist Party also criticised the association between withdrawal and isolation, arguing that it was ‘nonsense to say that Britain will be ‘isolated’ if we withdraw from the Market. It’s the other way round’, claiming that the UK outside the Common Market could expand trade with socialist countries, Third World [sic] countries, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and the efta countries.50 The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament claimed in a similar vein that: ‘Little Englanders or Little Europeans – they’ve both got it wrong. Britain must look outside itself and outside Western Europe. We must develop our relations with Eastern Europe and the Third World without being tied down by the political restrictions of the Treaty of Rome’.51 This rhetoric points to the first nodal point of the No discourse, namely an inverse of the freedom to act independently argument made by the Yes side – in this argument, ec membership restrains Britain’s independence.
While from a contemporary perspective the left’s anti-ec discourse appears similar to forms of messaging associated with the political right, there is a consistent thread of leftist internationalism running through it that distinguishes a particular ‘left-wing’ version of the above nodal point relating to the purpose of such independent action. Engagement with the wider world is justified on the basis that it will increase engagement with the socialist world and undermine Cold War divisions while also protecting UK industry. A pamphlet from the London Co-operative, under the heading ‘How to co-operate with other nations’, claimed to want ‘co-operation, trade and friendship – but with countries all over the world not just a few nations in one part of Europe. We want to remain a democratic self-governing country not become a province of a continental super state with complete loss of control over our domestic affairs’.52 Meanwhile, a students’ organisation pamphlet argued ‘for real internationalism’, noting that: ‘The Common Market will only harden divisions both between the peoples of Western Europe and, particularly, the whole of the rest of the world. The ec in relation to the third world is an exploitative unit’.53 A recurring theme, evidenced in a pamphlet from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, is the overlap between the ec and nato, with the consequence that the Common Market ‘brings closer together the well-armed nato countries and thus worsens the existing division of Europe’.54 For the left, then, Britain’s independence should be used to break out not just from the restrictions of the ec but those imposed by wider structures such as the Cold War division and nato alliance.
The truth is that we are not only European and we are not at all Continental. We have never been landlocked. As an island people we are a world trading nation, looking outward to the open seas. We have developed world-wide links, spread our language and founded or helped to found other nations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand.57
The British people have fought to remain free and independent for centuries. They will never accept alien rule. We are rightly members of the United Nations, its various agencies and many other international and European organisations. These are genuine international bodies, in which we maintain friendly and useful relations with other countries. But we keep the right to rule ourselves. Good fences make good neighbours.59
The Anti-Common Market League, a Liberal anti-ec grouping, argued similarly that: ‘The better alternative for Britain is to govern her own internal affairs by her own elected Parliament, and to co-operate in international affairs with the United Nations, the Commonwealth, nato, the World Bank and all the other international bodies of which Britain is a member’.60
In sum, the Yes side’s discourse of greatness had four nodal points: decline/revival, with the point being that British decline could be forestalled by remaining in the ec; freedom to act independently; mutual reinforcement of influence between the UK and ec, and finally the idea of a purpose for this influence. The No side’s discourse was more focused, with the clear main nodal point being freedom to act independently, but with two inflections as regards the purpose of this freedom: for the left, it should be used to bridge East-West divides; for the right, it was worth pursuing for Britain’s own self-interest. Independence or freedom to act independently was thus a ‘floating signifier’, claimed by both sides – for the Yes campaign, such independence was enhanced by ec membership as the UK could no longer be guaranteed its former freedom of manoeuvre on its own, while for the No campaign ec membership restrained the UK from either pursuing international solidary (left) or being independent for its own sake (right). As noted above, this preoccupation with independence has clear connotations with greatness, in terms of the expectation that great countries have the ability and freedom to influence international politics. Finally, it is notable how the specific term ‘great’ was mostly used on the pro-ec Yes side. Thus, while both sides deployed language associated with international status, it was the Yes campaign that spoke most explicitly about British greatness, contrary to the standard assumption of this being a particular Eurosceptic preoccupation.
The 2016 Referendum on EU Membership
The 2016 referendum that resulted in Brexit was driven primarily by internal disagreements in the Conservative Party between its pro- and anti-EU wings, combined with concerns over how to respond to the electoral threat of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (ukip).61 Having unexpectedly won a majority in the 2015 general election, the Conservatives under David Cameron had to act on their manifesto promise to hold an in/out referendum on EU membership. Despite the much-changed global circumstances, similar discursive themes and nodal points recurred on the opposing sides of the campaign, with British greatness, power and prestige still going concerns.
The Remain Campaign
The Remain campaign comprised the leaders of the major political parties in the UK – Conservative, Labour, Scottish National Party, Liberal Democrats, and the Green Party – and various pro-European groupings and ad hoc campaigns. While most of the parties held broadly pro-EU positions, the diversity of preferences among members and some mp s meant specific groupings were founded within the individual parties to communicate specific Remain positions, alongside the broader cross-party groupings such as Britain Stronger In Europe, the official designated Remain campaign.
For me it is a choice to continue to play a leading role, working with our friends and Allies in our ambition to build an even more peaceful and prosperous future for our children or whether to gamble that this country’s interests are best served by leaving decisions about our continent to others and withdrawing from the largest and most powerful economic group. Today Britain is one of the world’s great powers – admired and respected.64
As with the 1975 material, the temporal aspect here is also evident: Britain would not still be a global leader without having acceded to the EU. The cross-party Stronger In campaign argued – quoting singer Paloma Faith – that ‘being part of the EU bolsters Britain’s leading role on the world stage’, urging: ‘Let’s not become an outsider shouting from the wings’.65 Under the heading ‘Our place in the world’, they claimed that ‘Britain’s influence in the world would be undermined if we left the EU. Our leading diplomats warn that outside Europe we would lose influence around the world’.66 Alan Johnson, Chair of the Labour In for Britain campaign, argued that ‘Britain is more prosperous, better protected and more relevant in the modern world because of our membership of the EU. Leaving risks choosing the past over the future. It’s the gamble of our lifetime’.67 The UK’s EU membership, it was variously claimed, ‘helps us negotiate better trade deals’ and ‘makes us a major player in world trade’,68 ‘enhances our wealth, security and ability to influence world events’,69 ‘helped prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons; and [leads] the world on tackling climate change’,70 and assists with ‘[e]verything from climate change, cross-border crime and counterterrorism to global trade, economic prosperity and the refugee crisis’.71 Thus, the nodal point of mutual reinforcement was present in 2016 just like in 1975, as well as decline, through the focus on how much power and prestige Britain stood to lose if it left the EU and therefore how EU membership continued to forestall the decline of British power.
The discursive emphasis on power, influence and leadership was noteworthy for its ubiquity across the political spectrum, with both the left-wing Labour Party and centrist Liberal Democrats mentioning such themes frequently, but the centre-left discourse had an additional normative tinge focused on the purpose of power, just like parts of the Yes campaign in 1975. Labour stated that ‘[e]ngaging with our neighbours is vital to tackle climate change, fight poverty and have an even louder voice on the world stage’.72 The Liberal Democrats echoed those who in 1975 had focused on the ec’s role in promoting peace and prosperity, claiming a leadership role for Britain in this project: ‘the case for the UK to stay in the EU is as much emotional and patriotic as it is pragmatic. As an internationalist party, we believe in cooperation, diplomacy and dialogue over confrontation, isolationism and nationalism. Leading in Europe provides us the opportunity to exercise leadership on the global stage and tackle major international crises effectively’.73 Catherine Bearder, a former Liberal Democrat mep, argued that: ‘In Europe, Britain can thrive. Working alongside our neighbours, we can continue to prosper and be seen as a leading player on the global stage, respected all over the world’.74 Under the heading ‘Leadership’, one party activist was quoted as saying: ‘I’m IN because I believe the kind of caring, confident and ambitious Britain we all want to live in ought to lead the European Union through the challenges of the 21st Century, and not abandon its friends and neighbours when they need us most’.75 Chiltern Remain, a community organisation in the Home Counties, saw the EU as ‘a beacon of peace, democracy and human rights’, noting that ‘Brexit would threaten all that. Together we have more power to act on every issue that really matters’.76 This purposive, internationalist focus is perhaps best contrasted with the government’s, which also spoke about the UK as a leader but with a much more utility-maximising bent, noting that one of the benefits of EU membership was: ‘The UK as a leading force in the world. The UK is a strong independent nation. Our EU membership magnifies the UK’s ability to get its way on the issues we care about’ – rather than on issues that ‘really matter’.77
Britain as a global power. Britain is a member of more international organisations than any other country. We sit at all the top tables; UN, nato, EU, Commonwealth, G8, imf, World Bank, etc., and we are able to use our unique network to influence the course of world events…If we leave the world’s most powerful economy we must ask ‘Will this damage our standing, reduce our influence?’78
Stronger In, as part of its allotted space in the Electoral Commission’s own publication, claimed that ‘Britain is stronger, safer and better off in Europe’, arguing that the UK could get ‘Stronger leadership on the world stage – shaping our future by sitting at the top table’.79 Considerable emphasis was also placed on strength as a function of cooperation. Stronger In argued – quoting Association of Chief Police Officers Chief Sir Hugh Orde – that ‘we have strength in numbers and that Britain is safer and more secure in Europe than we would be out on our own’.80 Megan Dunn, the President of the National Union of Students, claimed that: ‘Students in Britain fear isolation, not internationalism. While we recognise the world is a complex place, the answer is to campaign for change together, not quit and walk away’.81 Stronger In also quoted Sir Stephen Hawking on the need to ‘be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security and our trade’.82
In sum, the nodal points of the Remain campaign were similar to the 1975 Yes campaign, with some minor variations. British greatness was emphasised, often explicitly, with a focus on how EU membership forestalled threats to this greatness, mutually enforced the capacity to act independently, effectively (whether on issues that mattered in general or for the UK specifically), and – a new point – globally.
The Leave Campaign
The Leave campaign was supported by Eurosceptic groupings within the major political parties, each of which had their own individual campaign, by several Eurosceptic think tanks, including the Bruges Group, by ukip, and by the cross-party groups established for the campaign, including Vote Leave (the officially designated group) and Leave.EU. As with the 1975 campaign, because Eurosceptics tended to be located at the ends of the ideological spectrum (the hard left and the Conservative right), two distinct discourses can be identified in the Leave campaign; a dominant one influenced by thinking on the right, and a subordinate one associated with the push for a left-wing Brexit (or ‘Lexit’). Given the extent to which the right-wing campaign dominated the discourse, we focus on this first.
The first nodal point of the Leave campaign discourse was its emphasis on independence – a continuation of the right-wing discourse in 1975 that saw EU membership as a constraint on Britain’s ability to act independently. Leave.EU, under the heading ‘VISION. Let’s leave the European Union’, claimed it would enable Britain to ‘[b]uild stronger ties with the rest of the world’.83 The Bruges Group, under the heading ‘What we achieve by voting to leave’, listed ‘A better vision for Britain’s future, in control of our own global affairs’.84 They claimed that, as the fifth-largest economy in the world: ‘We should speak for ourselves’, labelling the EU a ‘stagnant old system’.85 Unlike the Remain campaign, which had sought to portray Britain’s EU membership as an enabler, one that had allowed the UK to maintain its global role, the Leave campaign saw EU membership as having prevented Britain from assuming its proper global role. Eurosceptic Conservatives, in this vein, suggested they took ‘an optimistic global view of Britain, and believe we would both gain influence and prosper outside an unreformed EU’, echoing the point about an ‘anti-nostalgic’ nostalgia.86 One pamphlet claimed as a myth the idea that Britain has more influence within the EU, noting that the shift to qualified majority voting means that the UK can be outvoted and thus undermines its voice.87
The Leave campaign also sought to juxtapose the EU and the wider world, with a particular nodal point being the UK’s ability to act globally, both bilaterally and multilaterally (in keeping with the later ‘Global Britain’ emphasis of the post-Brexit governments). Globality was thus a floating signifier, claimed by both sides. However, whereas Remainers emphasised the EU as a facilitator of globality and a means of bolstering other institutional ties, Leavers tended to frame the EU as connoting merely regional ambitions and as a threat to Britain’s other ties. Campaign for an Independent Britain argued it was a ‘myth’ that ‘the referendum is about British influence and sitting at the ‘top table’’, arguing that ‘if we leave we shall take our proper place at the top global tables’, since the EU ‘long ceased to be the ‘top table’ and is nowadays more of a transmission belt for regulation from global bodies’.88 Vote Leave argued that the UK should be ‘Free to trade with the whole world. At the moment, the UK has no trade deals with important countries like China, India and Australia’, and claimed that if Britain voted to leave ‘we can have a friendlier relationship with the EU based on trade, as well as regain our seat on global bodies like the World Trade Organisation’.89 In response to the question ‘Won’t we have less global influence?’, Leave.EU argued the ‘EU takes the UK’s place in many global bodies and overrules Britain in most of the others: climate change, the environment and standards are just a few examples. Once freed from the EU’s gagging order, Britain will be able to capitalise on its enormous cultural, political, economic, scientific and business clout in global affairs’.90
The messaging of the ‘Lexit’ campaign, while arguably marginal overall, was quite distinct, and lacked the self-conscious support for Britain’s global role and the ‘threat’ presented to it by EU membership. Rather, the campaign emphasised the EU’s protectionist nature and the harm for producers outside, as well as the EU’s support for the interests of big business rather than for citizens. The Lexit campaign also criticised the UK’s imperial past and made a clear effort to articulate a distinct voice in the campaign from that of right-wing Brexiteers, thus being the only discourse to deny or at least question British greatness. But this is not true of all leftist positions on Brexit, some of which articulated a discourse similar to the broader campaign and its themes of globality and independence. The Labour Leave campaign, for instance, presented the referendum choice in stark terms, claiming: ‘It’s time to leave the EU and join the world’.91 Labour mp Kate Hoey claimed that: ‘Outside the EU we would be a proud country freely co-operating and trading with our neighbours without unelected Commissioners telling us what we can do’.92 In other words, while there was a distinct Lexit campaign which eschewed positive mentions of globality (unlike the far-left campaign in 1975), many on the pro-Brexit left did present Brexit as an opportunity to reclaim a global leadership role.
In sum, the nodal points of the Leave discourse in 2016 were also similar to the 1975 No campaign, with an emphasis on the UK’s ability to act independently both for independence’s sake (as something great nations do) and with the aim of fulfilling its ‘global’ potential, and with an emphasis on how EU membership was constraining rather than enhancing this ability, thus reducing potential British greatness.
Conclusion
Concern for greatness has a lengthy history in post-war British foreign policy, with status questions a dominant concern during the period of gradual decline post-1945 and with much discussion of Britain’s global status at key historical junctures. The recent Brexit referendum was no exception to this, with talk of Britain’s global future and the articulation from 2017 onwards of the Global Britain concept. Yet the discourses of greatness witnessed in the Brexit debate are complex, with different actors deploying distinct conceptions of greatness for a variety of policy goals, divergence in the temporality of status concerns and the precise nature of the claims made, and the simultaneous existence of broad support for the idea of British greatness alongside high levels of political contestation. The aim of this article has been to explore the complexity of such discourses of greatness in relation to two key moments in Britain’s relationship with Europe: the 1975 referendum on ec membership and the 2016 Brexit referendum. Drawing on discourse theoretical perspectives, we showed how rival conceptualisations of British greatness were constituted and contested through sometimes overlapping discursive nodal points. While (almost) all groupings endorsed the proposition that Britain should be great (or become so again), they represented greatness in different ways and recommended divergent means of maintaining and/or renewing British greatness, thereby differing on ‘how’ to be great.
While our aim has been primarily empirical – to account for and to chart the variation in discourses of greatness in debates over Europe – there are nonetheless some broader implications of our findings. First, they highlight the existence of partisan divergence over what it means to be great. This is noteworthy both because the left is often associated with the rejection of such thinking and because it unearths another area – status claims – on which partisan politics can be shown to influence foreign policy questions.93 Second, and related, the findings indicate that the current emphasis on greatness as a contemporary concern of the Eurosceptic right offers only a partial reading of greatness discourses, since they show that concerns for greatness were present not only in the pro-European campaigns of the right, but also the political messaging of the left (both pro- and anti-integration) in both referendums. Third, and finally, our findings have implications for how we understand questions of time and temporality in the politics of foreign policy, demonstrating not only the significance of critical junctures and political agency in reinterpreting the meaning of core concepts like greatness, but also the distinct temporalities put forward in different discourses: ‘keep Britain great’ versus ‘make Britain great again’.94
Acknowledgments
The idea for this article was first conceived as part of the panel ‘Make ____ Great Again’ at isa 2018 – many thanks to Filip Ejdus for organising and Iver Neumann for discussing, as well as to the audience and fellow panellists for comments and questions. Thank you also to participants at the ewis 2019 workshop ‘Conceptions of Greatness in the Foreign Policy of Major Powers’ and the History and Theory of European Integration chair group research seminar at the University of Groningen in February 2022, to the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and constructive critiques, and to eris’s editors for their comments and support.
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If this is a case of nominative determinism, it is inadvertent: the ‘Great’ in Great Britain was originally a purely geographical term, distinguishing the island of Great(er) Britain (encompassing England, Scotland and Wales) from the French region of Brittany and – in some readings – the island of Ireland.
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Hill, ‘Turning Back the Clock, p. 190.
See Stengel and Nabers, ‘Symposium’, for an overview, and Hawkins, Deconstructing Brexit Discourses, for an application to Brexit.
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, pp. xi, 112.
Laclau, On Populist Reason, pp. 71–72.
Farkas and Schou, ‘Fake News as a Floating Signifier’, p. 302.
Laclau, On Populist Reason, p. 131.
Laclau, On Populist Reason, p. 132.
Saunders, Yes to Europe!, p. 81.
Britain in Europe, ‘Before you make your mind up’.
Britain in Europe, ‘Our Europe’.
Britain in Europe, ‘Why you should vote YES’.
Britain in Europe, ‘Why you should vote YES’, emphasis added.
Liberal Europe Campaign, ‘A united Europe’.
hm Government, Britain’s New Deal in Europe, p. 11.
Conservative Party, ‘Europe: In or Out?’, emphasis added.
Steen, ‘Letter from Anthony D. Steen’.
Liberal Europe Campaign, ‘A united Europe’.
Britain in Europe, ‘Having our say’.
Britain in Europe, ‘Having our say’.
Students for United Europe, ‘YES!’.
Liberal Europe Campaign, ‘A united Europe’; Steen, ‘Letter from Anthony D. Steen’.
Communist Party, ‘Vote to Quite the Market’; Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, ‘Vote NO’.
Benn et al., ‘Common Market Referendum’.
Communist Party, ‘Vote to Quit the Market’.
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, ‘NO to the Market!’.
London Co-op, ‘Brussels – the new capital of Britain?’.
Students Against the Common Market, ‘Why every student should vote no in the referendum’.
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, ‘NO to the Market!’.
National Referendum Campaign, ‘Why You Should Vote NO’.
National Referendum Campaign, ‘Vote NO to Secure our Future’.
National Referendum Campaign, ‘Referendum News’.
National Referendum Campaign, ‘Why You Should Vote NO’.
National Referendum Campaign, ‘Vote NO to Secure our Future’.
Anti-Common Market League, ‘Vote No to Common Market’.
McCourt, ‘Domestic contestation over foreign policy, role-based and otherwise’.
Labour In for Britain, ‘Britain is Better Off in Europe’.
Labour In for Britain, ‘Labour says Britain is Better Off in Europe’.
European Movement, ‘EU Basics: Your Guide to the Referendum’.
Britain Stronger in Europe, ‘Your Future at Risk’.
Britain Stronger in Europe, ‘Referendum Communication’, 2016a.
Labour Party, ‘On 23 June you face a big decision about our future’.
Labour Party, ‘Letter from Jeremy Corbyn’.
Welsh Labour, ‘Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney: Better off IN Europe’.
hm Government, Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK.
Liberal Democrats, Ad Lib, p. 3.
Labour In for Britain, ‘Labour News’.
Liberal Democrats, Ad Lib, p. 3.
Quoted in Liberal Democrats, Ad Lib, p. 11.
Liberal Democrats, ‘Focus on Haringey in the EU’.
Chiltern Remain, ‘Dear resident’.
hm Government, Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK.
European Movement, ‘EU Basics: Your Guide to the Referendum’, p. 11.
Electoral Commission, ‘The 2016 EU Referendum Voting Guide’, p. 4.
Britain Stronger in Europe, ‘Referendum Communication’, 2016b.
Quoted in Britain Stronger in Europe, ‘Your Future at Risk’.
Britain Stronger in Europe, ‘From Lord Alan Sugar’.
Leave.EU, ‘It’s Time to Leave!’.
Bruges Group, ‘Briefing Paper’.
Bruges Group, ‘Leave the European Union’.
Conservatives for Britain, ‘Britain needs a better deal from the EU’; Melhuish, ‘Euroscepticism, Anti-Nostalgic Nostalgia and the Past Perfect Post-Brexit Future’.
Read, ‘The Choice’.
Campaign for an Independent Britain, ‘5 mistaken assumptions of the EU referendum battle’.
Vote Leave, ‘5 positive reasons to Vote Leave and take back control’.
Leave.EU, ‘Know the Facts!’.
Labour Leave, ‘Vote to Leave the EU’.
Quoted in Grassroots Out, ‘We want to leave the EU’.
Hofmann and Martill, ‘The Party Scene’; Raunio and Wagner, ‘The Party Politics of Foreign and Security Policy’.
Hom and Beasley, ‘Constructing Time in Foreign Policy-Making’.