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Half-Full Or Half-Empty? Framing of UK–EU Relations During the Brexit Referendum Campaign

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Half-Full Or Half-Empty? Framing of UK–EU Relations During the Brexit Referendum Campaign Journal of European Integration ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/geui20 Half-full or half-empty? Framing of UK–EU relations during the Brexit referendum campaign Tatiana Coutto To cite this article: Tatiana Coutto (2020) Half-full or half-empty? Framing of UK–EU relations during the Brexit referendum campaign, Journal of European Integration, 42:5, 695-713, DOI: 10.1080/07036337.2020.1792465 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2020.1792465 Published online: 19 Aug 2020. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 182 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=geui20 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 2020, VOL. 42, NO. 5, 695–713 https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2020.1792465 Half-full or half-empty? Framing of UK–EU relations during the Brexit referendum campaign Tatiana Coutto Centre D’études Européennes Et De Politique Comparée (Cee/Sciences Po), Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This article analyses the political construction and politicisation of UK– Framing; content analysis; EU relations by British parliamentarians in Westminster and in the Brexit referendum; European European Parliament (EP) between May 2015 and May 2017. Using Union computer-assisted content analysis techniques and qualitative analysis of sampled speeches, we investigate how parties used frames and emotions in order to mobilise voters. Results indicate that the ‘Leave’ campaign succeeded in triggering sentiments of distrust and anger against the establishment and mobilizing voters while, economic arguments used by ‘remainers’ failed to convince citizens from deprived areas of the benefits of EU membership. Intra-party divisions were stronger among Westminster members than in the EP, but the visibility of the ‘Leave’ discourse in the EP was disproportionately higher to the number of pro-Brexit parliamentarians. Polarisation and values-based arguments are observed in the EP early in the campaign, suggesting that the process initiated at the European level and then migrated to the national level. Introduction: the construction of the ‘referendum crisis’ ‘The British people have made a choice. That not only needs to be respected – but those on the losing side of the argument, myself included, should help to make it work.’ With these words Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged the result of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum (‘EU referendum’) and announced his resigna­ tion. The narrow victory of the Leave camp reflecteda deeply divided country (Hobolt 2016): euroscepticism became more socially distinctive and widespread (Goodwin and Heath 2016, 331), populism was encouraged and a sense of ‘ontological anxiety and insecurity’ emerged among Remain supporters (Browning 2018, 341). The referendum raised questions about ‘British identity’ and imperial nostalgia, and brought up concerns about the relation­ ship between England, Scotland and Northern Ireland (Shannon 2015; Clarke and Newman 2017; Kenny 2017). The campaign catalysed the politicisation of UK–EU relations and exposed the pitfalls of EU polity system, which was in turn instrumentalised by illiberal figures in the continent. The events in the UK compromised even more the legitimacy of the EU, which was already regarded as uncapable of addressing economic, social and security challenges (Dinan, Nugent, and Paterson 2017; Genschel and Jachtenfuchs 2018). CONTACT Tatiana Coutto [email protected] Centre D’études Européennes Et De Politique Comparée (Cee/Sciences Po). © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 696 T. COUTTO Politicisation and contestation of EU (of which Brexit is an acute manifestation) brought up the risk of the emergence of a disintegration dynamic (Rosamond 2016, 868). The possibility of a referendum, raised by Cameron in his Bloomberg speech in 2013, initiated a crisis in British politics that deeply affected UK–EU relations. By ‘crisis’ we mean a socially constructed and highly political period of instability and transition when a decisive intervention becomes not only possible but necessary (Hay 1996: 254). The speech opened an avenue for overt contestation of ‘common-sense’ policy prescriptions from challenger parties (Laffan 2014, 266), exposed deep divisions within the Conservative and Labour groups (Lynch and Whitaker 2018), and lead to a ‘drama of accountability and blaming’ typical of moments of crisis (Boin et al. 2010, 706). UK politics entered a state of exception and social panic that justified decisions that would not seem feasible otherwise (Roitman 2013). The period between General Elections (GE) of 2015 and 2017 reflects also an European crisis, marked by the intensification of politicisation of EU membership and polarisation of political discourse. This context gave visibility and legitimised, to a certain extent, the emotional populist-authoritarian rhetoric that mobilised a share of voters by bringing together the fear of the foreigner, the anger against the elites and a ‘concrete’ alternative to restore not only the economy but above all the national pride (Levinger 2017; Warren 2018). A similar phenomenon had been observed by Wendler (2014) when analysing other National Parliamentary Debates on EU Treaty Reform. This article seeks to investigate how UK–EU relations have been framed by British representatives in the House of Commons (HoC) and in the EP, and how these frames relate to the increasing politicisation observed along the referendum process. We focus on the following questions: when and how have social, economic, institutional and security issues been used by representatives to justify their stance (leave or remain)? How may the patterns of politicisation of these issues vary according to political party, stance and institutional setting (Brussels or Westminster)? Finally, drawing on Atikcan (2018) and Bennett (2019), we verify the blurring of party lines – that is, whether representatives were loyal to their party or personal beliefs. Following Entman’s (1993) definition of framing as a process of selection and emphasis of perceived aspects of reality as well as on Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) typology, we identify the dominant frames and study their evolutionary process. Furthermore, we explore the use of emotions in the construction of UK–EU relations since they (like frames) are ‘intensifiers’ of ideas and attitudes that may render salient aspects that would be otherwise neglected by the public (Freeden 2013, 7). Our results confirmthe hypothesis that anger, triggered mainly by ideas of patriotism, pride and sovereignty, proved to be a more powerful driver in the refer­ endum, thus shedding light on the process through which narratives about the EU evolve in periods of crisis. Media and Parliamentary discourse on UK-EU relations Political communication literature indicates that the historically embedded narrative that opposed British interests to those of a Germany-controlled ‘Europe’ was still present in certain political and media discourses, and particularly strong among challenger parties and tabloid press (Semetko and Valkenburg 2000; De Vreese 2005; Daddow 2012). Press coverage of the referendum was marked by low visibility of analysts and academics (11% JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 697 of the articles) and Labour politicians (17%), as opposed to the high exposure of Leave campaigners (74%) (Levy, Aslan and Bironzo 2016). The economy was by far the most covered issue, followed by immigration (the most prominent issue among voters) and health (Hobolt 2016, 1262). In the week before the referendum, ‘Brexit’ and the ‘EU’ were the subject of 77% of all newspaper articles on UK political issues (Moore and Ramsay 2017, 14). We also observe a higher visibility of migration issues, and its securitization as freedom of movement was linked to terrorist attacks (Vasilopoulou 2016, 222). Poor knowledge of EU institutions coupled with the weak presence of everyday symbols such as flags and Euro notes have limited individuals’ identification with the Union and contributed to low public support for integration in the UK (Cram 2012; Startin 2015). The two main parties have historically approached EU politics in an ‘indirect and potentially less electorally risky manner’ by focussing on general views rather than specific policies (Sherrington 2006, 70), thus helping party leaders from providing clear cues to their voters (Curtice 2015). Pro-remain politicians were careful to overtly support the EU, while Eurosceptics of varied political leanings frequently spoke against it (Forster 2003; Startin 2015) – a trend confirmed in Wenzl’s (2019) analysis of MPs’ speeches given in Westminster between 2015 and 2016. As shown by Clarke, Goodwin, and Whiteley (2017), the association of EU membership and negative emotions might have played a critical role in the narrow victory of the Leave camp. While parliamentary debates gained visibility during the campaign and after the referendum, analyses comparing the discursive practices in Westminster and in the EP remain overlooked. Cross-country analyses have shed light on patterns of politicisation and polarisation of national parliamentary debates about the EU (Hutter and Kerscher 2014; Wendler 2014), but the specificities of each national context limit the explanatory power of these studies. The focus on British politicians
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