When intellectuals fail? Brexit and hegemonic challenge

Abstract

Drawing on a Gramscian understanding of hegemony and the role of intellectuals, the paper examines the contribution of British academics to the politics of Brexit. Why and how did they fail to predict the scale of the challenge to the European Union manifest in the Leave vote of the referendum? Mainly supportive of the hegemony of the European Union and its vision of social progress, social scientists have propagated a view of normality which legitimizes that hegemony through the interpretation of its cultural opposition as irrational, emotional and populist. While the cultural tensions driving the Leave victory have been extensively documented, the implications of this long-standing divide for the UK state, the party system and democratic citizenship have received only limited attention from university intellectuals. In their commitment to the European Union hegemony, they have interpreted the cultural challenge in ways likely only to increase its strength.

Counter-Hegemony with No Outlet: A Neo-Gramscian Perspective on the Brexit Vote

“…A general dissatisfaction, distrust of the authorities, and concern about the economy, underlined the justifications of voters of all three groups (leave, remain, and undecided). Salter (2018) observes an overwhelming division between intellectuals and the larger society as roughly 9 percent of academics supported Brexit compared to a 52 percent of general population (p. Dell 8 468). He also observes that "in common with all the major national and international institutions of government, industry, finance and the media, universities had campaigned vigorously for remaining in the EU.…”

The dilemma of Brexit: hard choices in the narrow context of British foreign policy traditions

“…Of the other three referenced in commentary, populism and nativism are said to favour Brexit but are often deployed negatively to disparage the intellectual and emotional basis of these traditions (Calhoun, 2016;Switzer and Hannan, 2017), whilst anti-elitism is seen as a paradoxical force for Brexit -with figures like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson often railing against elites despite their personally privileged backgrounds (Barnes, 2016;Johnson, 2016;Jahn, 2018). That said, populism, nativism and anti-elitism do constitute political traditions that can be used to rationalise and cohere the articulation of beliefs (Salter, 2018). By contrast, there is a relative lack of expression of equivalent traditions articulating pro-European sentiment (Goes, 2016).…”

Transforming Brexit Britain

“…Migration from within the EU rose from 15,000 individuals in 2003 to 180,000 in 2015. Kaufman (2018) identifies immigration as the principal and most decisive factor for those voting "Leave" in the referendum -33 percent of those who voted Leave thought it was the best chance for Britain to regain control over immigration and its borders (Salter, 2018). Post-industrial austerity-hit communities have been prominent in expressing resentment about migration, in contrast to the enthusiasm about diversity of the more materially fortunate liberal metropolitan elite (Seidler, 2018).…”