Redistribution vs. Recognition: How Brexit Split the Left

Abstract

Brexit is typically seen as a canonical example of right-wing populism, yet a third of those who voted for left-of-centre parties at the 2015 UK General Election also supported Brexit one year later. This bloc of 5 million people was around four times the size of the Leave campaign’s margin of victory. This article constructs the first discursive analysis of leftist Brexit support. Drawing on qualitative interviews with twenty-three left-identifying residents of the ‘Red Wall’ region of England, I examine continuities between leftist identities and pro-Brexit discourse. Participants consistently constructed their political identities from ideas that broadly corresponded to Fraser’s folk paradigms of social justice ‘redistribution’ and ‘recognition’. Relations between the paradigms were more complex—and more antagonistic—in participant accounts than Fraser’s ‘distinct but equivalent’ ideal. Three discursive logics promoted leftist Brexit support by (i) counterposing redistribution of wealth against the ‘neoliberal’ European Union, while associating Brexit itself with notions of (ii) ‘underdog spirit’ and (iii) ‘unity’. Each logic shared affinities with the redistribution paradigm, and were often expressed alongside antagonism toward recognition. I conclude that Brexit split the left by exploiting pre-existing tensions between the left’s constituent parts. Leftist Brexit support was thus a partial epiphenomenon of the contemporary left’s dual form. A shift away from Fraser’s ‘perspectival dualism’ may constrain further Brexit-style splits.