The great moving Boris show: Brexit and the mainstreaming of the far right in Britain

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the Brexit campaign and subsequent rise of Boris Johnson to Prime Minister has seen campaigns and assumptions (such as anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism) that were previously associated with far-right groups and parties enter the mainstream political discourse. It suggests that this has been due to an organic crisis that has been prevalent within British political civil society since the Brexit vote. A crisis that has seen socialist, free market and popular nationalist projects all stake claims to develop competing visions of post-Brexit Britain and which has been intensified by the success of Celtic nationalism. This article will suggest that Boris Johnson’s government is attempting to co-opt such right-wing forces by engaging with much of its rhetoric as he attempts to construct his own post-Brexit reality – a reality that is fraught with inconsistencies and contradictions.

KEYWORDS:

• Britain
• far right ideology
• Brexit
• organic crisis
• wars of position

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This can also feature in Gramsci’s account of passive revolution whereby societies alter and metamorphosise over time, yet class relations are re-aligned, maintained and restored. Gramsci himself saw the war of movement as facilitation a key role within the wider historical processes of passive revolution (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 119–121). For an overview on the application of passive revolution see Morton (2010), whilst for a wider understanding of Gramsci’s view on passive revolution and the specific emergence of Fascism see Roberts (2011).

2 This has been seen both with individual free marketers such as John Redwood and Daniel Hannan, business leaders such as Arron Banks and Tim Martin and groups such as Economists for Brexit, who all maintained that their primary focus was economic but who have been increasingly defending the economic reality of increased regulations post Brexit.

3 UKIP contested over three times both seats in the 2005 election but only gained slightly more than twice as many votes. In 2010 the BNP again put up considerably less candidates (338 to 558) but marginally achieved a high percentage of vote in those they contested.

4 See for example the obsession with eugenics and biological science (and in Cummings case Physics) as a form of superior science within studies around the European race (Cummings, 2018).

5 These include Richard Tice; co-founded of Leave.EU Andy Wigmore, director of communications for the group and Gerry Gunster, an American strategist who was used during the referendum. Arron Banks set up the alt-right new media site Westmonster, whilst several media figures such as Katie Hopkins, Paul Joseph Watson, Milo Yiannopoulos and Raheem Kassam gained short term notoriety within alt-right cricles.

6 It is not the place here to fully examine the composition of the left as a hegemonic alternative. For broader accounts see Worth (2019b) and Dean (2020).

7 James Bickerton is a journalism for the Brexit-supporting Daily Express, a tabloid owned by tycoon Richard Desmond and has been – more than any other – quick to facilitate populist right-wing material and the sympathetic to far-right figures. He is head of the new media campaign ‘Oppose Corbynism’.

8 Cummings finally left his position as advisor to Johnson at the end of 2020. In 2021 he led a series of attacks on Johnson, accusing him of incompetency and being unfit for office.

9 Yes Cymru is the main grassroots umbrella movement in support of Welsh Independence. Keen to avoid political stigmatisms it is not linked to any political Party as is the case with the SNP in Scotland. Support for Welsh Independence has risen to over 30% with an increase in ‘undecideds’. Recent polls have suggested that 51% of Labour Voters now favour independence (Nation.Cymru, 2020).

10 Included here is the constant utilisation of the Union Flag on every governmental interview or press conference, the attack on the EU when the government’s own protocol on Northern Ireland becomes unsustainable after Brexit and the underlying nationalistic zeal in which the COVID vaccine was rolled out.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Owen Worth

Owen Worth is Head of Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick. He has published widely in the areas of International Political Economy and International Relations and is a frequent contributor to Globalizations. His last book was called Morbid Symptoms: The Global Rise of the Far Right (Zed Books, 2019).