While extant work on British Euroscepticism has highlighted vestiges of historical empire imaginaries in discourses opposing EU integration, the emotional dynamics of such frames remain curiously underexplored. The diluted quality of these Eurosceptic histories, with their distinctive interplay of past and future, has led some to reject their nostalgic emotional credentials altogether. This article challenges such assumptions of emotional absence through a qualitative discourse analysis of the 2016 EU referendum Vote Leave campaign's materials, and interviews with 13 former campaigners. By unpacking Vote Leave's preference for an anti-nostalgic form of empire nostalgia, central to its vision of a past perfect post-Brexit future, this analysis contributes primarily to literatures on British Euroscepticism and Brexit, revealing the counterintuitive nostalgic politics and persistent cultural appeal of ostensibly forward-looking discursive stances. The analysis also has broader relevance, particularly for advocates of an 'emotional turn' in EU Studies and scholars investigating escalating nationalisms beyond Britain.

This article explores how a Powellite form of nostalgia – named for the anti-immigration politics of former British MP Enoch Powell – connects seemingly contradictory nationalist narratives known as Global Britain and Little England. While the former is typically aligned with an expansive and buccaneering national biography, the latter is held to operate via a more defensive and exclusionary imaginary. This article challenges such a binary distinction by demonstrating how the two discursive strands are intimately connected by nostalgic views about white English racial dominance, cultivated during Britain’s pursuit of empire. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of verbal and visual sources from the Brexit referendum, plus 13 interviews with Leave campaigners, the article shows how Powellite nostalgia reproduces gendered and racialised colonial images of the nation amid immigration ‘crisis’. Despite the detoxifying effects of much post-referendum Brexit analysis, the article also demonstrates how Powellite nostalgia is shared across the Eurosceptic spectrum and within broader English culture, persisting into the post-Brexit era.

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