scholarly journals It’s the EU immigrants stupid! UKIP’s core-issue and populist rhetoric on the road to Brexit

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceri Hughes

The 2016 vote to leave the European Union was one of the biggest developments in recent United Kingdom political history. Only one political party was wholly united for Brexit – the United Kingdom Independence Party. This research finds that in the years leading up to Brexit, the United Kingdom Independence Party presented itself as a rigid core-issue complete-populist party. Content analysis shows how pervasive the European Union was in much of the party output and in the contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the party. The party also utilizes complete-populist rhetoric, with ‘othering’ populism as the most prevalent form. The consistent concentration on the European Union collocated with populist messaging, in both news releases and select newspaper coverage, may have helped afford the United Kingdom Independence Party issue-eliteness in the referendum campaign. But this same work may have also ultimately contributed to make them irrelevant by 2017, and possibly moribund by 2018.

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-151
Author(s):  
Andrea Circolo ◽  
Ondrej Hamuľák

Abstract The paper focuses on the very topical issue of conclusion of the membership of the State, namely the United Kingdom, in European integration structures. The ques­tion of termination of membership in European Communities and European Union has not been tackled for a long time in the sources of European law. With the adop­tion of the Treaty of Lisbon (2009), the institute of 'unilateral' withdrawal was intro­duced. It´s worth to say that exit clause was intended as symbolic in its nature, in fact underlining the status of Member States as sovereign entities. That is why this institute is very general and the legal regulation of the exercise of withdrawal contains many gaps. One of them is a question of absolute or relative nature of exiting from integration structures. Today’s “exit clause” (Art. 50 of Treaty on European Union) regulates only the termination of membership in the European Union and is silent on the impact of such a step on membership in the European Atomic Energy Community. The presented paper offers an analysis of different variations of the interpretation and solution of the problem. It´s based on the independent solution thesis and therefore rejects an automa­tism approach. The paper and topic is important and original especially because in the multitude of scholarly writings devoted to Brexit questions, vast majority of them deals with institutional questions, the interpretation of Art. 50 of Treaty on European Union; the constitutional matters at national UK level; future relation between EU and UK and political bargaining behind such as all that. The question of impact on withdrawal on Euratom membership is somehow underrepresented. Present paper attempts to fill this gap and accelerate the scholarly debate on this matter globally, because all consequences of Brexit already have and will definitely give rise to more world-wide effects.


Author(s):  
Alma-Pierre Bonnet

The decision by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union came as a shock to many. A key player during the referendum campaign was the Vote Leave organisation which managed to convince people that they would be better off outside the European project. Their success was made all the easier as Euroscepticism had been running deep in the country for decades. It is on this fertile ground that Vote Leavers drew to persuade people of the necessity to leave. Using critical metaphor analysis, this paper examines the way Vote Leavers won the argument by developing three political myths, which, once combined, conjured up the notion of British grandeur. Drawing on Jonathan Charteris-Black’s seminal works on the relation between metaphors and the creation of political myths in political rhetoric, this paper posits that the Brexit debate was not won solely on political ground and that the manipulative power of metaphors may have also been a key element. This might explain the current political deadlock, as political solutions might not provide the answers to the questions raised during the campaign.


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Ring ◽  
Roddy McKinnon

Across the European Union, national governments are re-assessing the institutional mechanisms through which pension provision is delivered. This articles sets the debate within the wider context of the ‘pillared’ structural analysis often adopted by international institutions when discussing pensions reform. It then sets out a detailed discussion of developments in the UK, arguing that the UK is moving towards a model of reform akin to that promoted by the World Bank – referred to here as ‘pillared-privatisation’. The themes of this model indicate more means-testing, greater private provision, and a shift of the burden of risk from the government to individuals. An assessment is then made of the implications of UK developments for other EU countries. It is suggested that while there are strong reasons to think that other countries will not travel as far down the road of ‘pillared-privatisation’ as the UK, this should not be taken as a ‘given’.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-154
Author(s):  
João Gualberto Marques Porto Júnior

A relação entre o Reino Unido e os países do continente foi marcada ao longo da história por diversos desencontros e disputas. Não foram poucas as guerras travadas entre os britânicos e outras nações europeias. A própria integração europeia inicia-se sem o Reino Unido que apenas na década de 1960 decidiu integrar as comunidades, sendo durante anos impedido pela Franca de Charles de Gaulle. A adesão tardia em 1973 não minimizou as diferenças, tendo novamente havido tensões na década seguinte durante a gestão Margaret Thatcher. As diferenças do casal estranho continuaram após a criação da União Europeia em 1992 e tiveram na decisão do Brexit apenas o desfecho de uma relação distante e tumultuada.ABSTRACTThe relation between the United Kingdom and the countries from "the continent” has been characterized by several disputes and differences along history. A large number of wars were fought between the British and other European nations. Even the European integration started without the United Kingdom, that only decided to take part in the communities in the sixties, being, however, blocked by de Gaulle’s France. Britain’s late accession to the European Communities in 1973 did not reduce the differences with its European neighbors and several tensions emerged during Margaret Thatcher’s government during the eighties. The differences between the odd couple continued after the creation of the European Union in 1992 and the “Brexit” simply represents the natural outcome of a distant and tumultuous relationship.Palavras-chave: Integração europeia, Reino Unido, BrexitKeywords: European integration, United Kingdom, BrexitDOI: 10.12957/rmi.2015.24641Recebido em 08 de Julho de 2016 / Received on July 8, 2016.


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