Half-full or half-empty? Framing of UK–EU relations during the Brexit referendum campaign

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the political construction and politicisation of UK–EU relations by British parliamentarians in Westminster and in the European Parliament (EP) between May 2015 and May 2017. Using 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Framing
• content analysis
• Brexit referendum
• European Union

Acknowledgments

Research for this article has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant project No. 841111. I would like to thank the editors of this special issue, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their comments. I gratefully acknowledge the input provided by participants of the international workshop on “The Framing of Crises in Europe” organised by Benedetta Voltolini in 2017 as well as those who attended the ECPR/SGEU conference in Paris in 2018, in particular Sara Hobolt, ÖzlemAtikcan and Colin Hay. I would like to thank Ben Farrand (Newcastle Law School) and the participants of the workshop on Communicating Europe, which provided me with useful insights regarding this research work. I also thank Roland Rathelot for the help with the data collection. All remaining errors are the author’s own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FP7 People: Marie-Curie Actions [MEDPOL/841111].