A ‘people’s Brexit’: An analysis of the role of the people in British politics today in the context of independence.
The people as expressed by the Brexiteers, the Remainers and within the media
This chapter will be based around the idea of ‘the people’ and how it is portrayed by the Leave and Remain campaigns through professional and informal media outlets. The chapter will discuss the tactics used to mobilise the people and stir the melting pot of public opinion.
To start, we must address the questions – who are ‘the people’? Who were each campaign referring to when they spoke about ‘the people’? Did both sides of the Brexit debate have a different view of who ‘the people’ were? And finally, does social background factor into this? If the answer is yes, then how does it do so?
In general terms, ‘the people’ can be defined as the citizens of a country, particularly when viewed in relation to those who govern them. If we compare ‘the people’ to the people that govern them, there is a clear disparity of power between the two groups due to the role the governing body have as ‘rule makers’. So essentially, ‘the people’ are the members of society at large, that conform to the rules as set by those in a higher position. Sometimes ‘the people’ are referred to in the media as the ‘general public’, particularly when it comes to political matters. Generally, it is believed that they don’t hold the same amount of power that the key decision makers do – the power that enables them to enforce their beliefs on the public and introduce changes that have an impact on the lives of others.
The power of the people persists and is primarily expressed through the results of the ballot box and the ‘rule makers’ are dependent on the support of the people as shown through the democratic process of election.
This premise raises the question; does this make the ‘rule makers’ the elite amongst the British population? Do academics fall into this category? How about the top business leaders? What about the highest earners in our society, or the people that we rank as the most intelligent individuals in our community?
The Oxford Dictionary defines the elite as ‘A group or class of people seen as having the most power and influence in a society, especially on account of their wealth or privilege.’ This expresses the idea that the label of being an ‘elite’ member of society is something that a person is born with and is gained through family ties and inheritance. This could be linked to the ‘elite’ governing body of our society because they exude wealth through their level of education, with their upbringing in fee-paying independent schools contributing to their success. A key example for this is our former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who at the age of thirteen, started attending Eton College in Berkshire (Francis & Hanning, 2007). This prestigious boarding school charges up to £12,910 per term and has educated members of the royal family and 18 of our former Prime Ministers (Moss, 2010). In this case, armed with the wealth to afford such a level of secondary education, a question of class would arise. Toby Young, a journalist and co-producer of a documentary based on key political individuals – ‘When Boris Met Dave’, describes Cameron as “upper-upper-middle class” but not exactly ‘out of the real top drawer’ (Popham, 2011). Whether David Cameron is ‘out of the real top drawer’ or not, his wealth and the quality of his education enabled him to attend the top ranking university in the country, propelled him into a parliamentary position at the House of Commons and leader of the Conservative party. Based on his success, he is considered to be one of the British elite on a both a nationwide and international basis.
In order to answer the questions stated in the first paragraph, we must consider the sociological profiles of the voters in order to determine which social category they may fall into and how that links to their presentation within the media on the run up to the Referendum. Factors such as age, gender and class have an impact on what is considered to be their social standing in society and this in turn would determine which campaign they were likely to have supported. According to YouGov contributor Peter Moore, alongside age and level of education; geography has an impact on which way the electorate chose to vote: ‘Geography is not the only fissure in the country. Voters differed significantly according to age and education.’ (Moore, 2016)
For example, it has been observed that the two demographic factors that were most closely associated with support for the Leave campaign were lower levels of education and coinciding within the 45+ age bracket (Ashcroft, 2016). Statistics gained through YouGov prove these demographics to be accurate. The members of the electorate with a GCSE level of education or lower stand at 70% in favour of a Brexit result, compared to the meagre 30% that voted Remain. In contrast, only 32% of the electorate who have been educated at a degree level had voted Leave, with 68% of graduates in favour of Remain. Furthermore, 60% of voters in the 50-64 age bracket voted Leave which, in comparison to the 29% of 18-24 year olds having cast the same vote, shows a particularly large support base for Brexit within the older generation.
In conjunction with this example; the statistics collected by the British Election Study 2016 panel show that there was a higher level of overall voter participation within the age brackets 45-54 up to age 75+ than that of the younger generations. For example, if we compare the 77.9% voting turnout of the age bracket 55-64 to the 73.2% turnout of 18-24 age bracket (Evans et al., 2016), it can be observed that there is an disparity between the to groups regarding voter participation; however it proves that the gap between the older and younger generations when it comes to political presence is not particularly wide at all, especially when compared to the percentage of people that voted during the 2010 General Elections. In 2010, statistics from the British Election Study reveal a reduced turnout of 69.8% for 55-64 age bracket and turnout which stood at just 51.8% for people aged 18-24 (Dar, 2013). The discrepancy of voter participation between the two age categories was far greater at that time, which could suggest that the higher level of voter mobilisation in 2016 was achieved through an increased use of social media and traditional broadcasting by the campaigns. Essentially, the 21.4% increase of young voters can be linked to a greater awareness of current affairs in today’s political scene.
To further address the questions raised at the beginning of this chapter, we must analyse how the people are represented within the discourse used by the Remain and Leave campaigns during the EU Referendum debates. In order to tackle this subject, we must firstly address which political parties were endorsing which campaign and who the political representatives refer to when they talk about ‘the people’.
Using statistics accumulated by Peter Moore on the YouGov website, it can be determined that the vote on Britain’s membership of the European Union had largely divided the main political parties internally in terms of opinion. The majority of the Conservative party voted Leave, with 61% in favour of independence and 39% against it; however the party were generally portrayed as neutral during the Referendum debates. Conversely, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats were generally more in favour of the Remain side – with 65% of the Labour party and 68% of the Liberal Democrat party voting to remain a member of the European Union. However it is also mentioned that important minorities within the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties voted Leave, so therefore the opinion on independence from the European Union was not as one-sided as it was for other parties like UKIP and the Green Party. The UK Independence Party were keen supporters of the Leave campaign, with a staggering 95% of the party voting in favour of UK independence. In contrast, the Green Party were supporting the opposing side of the debate, with 80% of their vote being in favour of Britain sustaining their membership within the European Union. (Moore, 2016)
The political figureheads at the forefront of each campaign were Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage representing Leave and David Cameron, John Major and Tony Blair representing Remain. So for example, with Boris Johnson promoting the Leave campaign and being a key member of the Conservative party, he would be more likely to gain the support of the white, English middle class adults aged 45+ as they are more likely to vote Conservative than the working class and people aged 18-24. On the other hand, Labour leader Ed Miliband supported Remain and was more likely to attract the attention of hard working families and the younger generation due to his party’s more left wing and liberal values. This party polarisation will be addressed further in chapter 4.
The importance of social media and how it played a fundamental role in mobilising the voters in the run up to the EU referendum needs to be addressed. On the whole, Twitter has become one of the most prominent social media websites within the political sphere (Vergeer, Hermans & Sams, 2013) and has been the leading social media platform covering the Brexit debate throughout Referendum talks and beyond the announcement of the pro-Brexit result. After measuring the user-base, it has been recognised as the third most popular social media outlet; with Facebook ranking as the most popular website and YouTube taking second place (SimilarWeb, 2016). Although Twitter may not be the most popular social media outlet, it earns its success by pushing the agenda of the political elite into the public domain. This is achieved through the use of hashtags, analytics and trends which sets it apart from other social networks (Porter, 2009). Since Twitter established itself as a primary gage of public opinion, Facebook has adapted its platform by also including the hashtag in an attempt to generate a similar level of discussion; however it remains to be a single-stranded broadcast medium during political campaigns (Larsson, 2016). Research pioneers Howard and Kollanyi have been studying the role of automated bots in the cyber world and they have noted that automated social media posts from even a small number of Twitter accounts have played a significant role in the EU Referendum discourse, where the Remain side was largely overshadowed by a more eurosceptic stance (Howard & Kollanyi, 2016). A possible reason for this disparity in media coverage between the Leave and the Remain sides can be explained through the events that led up to the Referendum. In 2015, Europe was overwhelmed by a wave of asylum seekers and economic migrants from countries plagued by war and poverty and the event swept the news headlines for the entire year.
Assisted by the extensive coverage on the migrant crisis, the people formed strong opinions on immigration; in some cases, they established preconceived prejudice against the refugees due to tabloid broadcasters printing numerous negative headlines about the influx of immigrants being a threat to the UK job market. Overall, an increased sense of public unease regarding immigration gripped the British populace, especially after an intense period of voting during the 2015 General Election. It became a common fear that migrants are ‘stealing our jobs’ as seen in the following headlines:
‘The true cost of our open borders revealed: EU migrants are MORE likely to have a job in the UK than British citizens’ (MailOnline, 2016)
‘Migrants DO take our jobs: Britons losing out to foreign workers, says official study’ (Express, 2014)
This suggests that the media were using fear as a tactic to mobilise the voters. Oisín Share argues that coverage in the British press brought about dialogues of conflict built around the ‘symbolic migrant’ debates during the run up to the 2016 Referendum (Ridge-Newman, 2018). This evidently had an impact upon the Referendum result because the initial predications forecasted a result in favour of Remain. To illustrate this point further, a discourse analysis by Higgins, Ridge-Newman and McKay concludes that there is also evidence of narrative construction in the Scottish and Welsh press that focused on discourse relating to danger and fear regarding the prospect of Brexit (Ridge-Newman, 2018). This coincides with the outcome of the Welsh vote, with 52.5% of the vote in favour of Leave (BBC News, 2018); however the it was a slim victory for the Leave side in this instance, much like the collective result of the EU Referendum. On the other hand, the danger-related discourse did not resonate on the same level within the Scottish electorate – with 62% of the vote in favour of Remain (BBC News, 2018). A link can be drawn between this result and the outcome of the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, where Scotland chose to remain part of the UK largely due to our membership within the EU.