Brexit and Trump: contesting new cleavage formation

ABSTRACT

The 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU and the election of Donald Trump in the US are seen to have exposed fundamental social divisions and acute political antagonisms. While each reflected the idiosyncrasies of their domestic political scenes, these events pointed to transnational trends and developments that were shared across and beyond Anglo-America. In the Brexit and Trump votes, the anger and frustrations of being ‘left behind’ was considered to have translated into a politics of social conservatism, exclusive nationalism and populist anti-elitism. The forces of globalisation seemed to have split national communities into two distinct social worlds with irreconcilable interests and values. This article examines whether these significant political events can be explained in terms of cleavage formation. The evidence from the Brexit referendum and Trump election points to a complex picture of voting in which social groups express multiple and intersecting identities and experiences. The article emphasises the universalising processes of individualisation and fragmentation in globalised societies underlying new forms of political conflict. Finally, the article assesses the role of racism in generating political divides in contexts where identities are fractured and uncertain and a new politics of exclusion has taken hold.

KEYWORDS:

• Polarisation
• cleavage
• populism
• racism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Similarly, Eatwell and Goodwin (2018) examination of national populism as the legitimate expression of values ignored and held in contempt by liberals, received considerable media attention as it aligned with the dominant media framing, despite claims to challenge conventional orthodoxy.

2. Regional divisions are presented as simple binaries between East/West coast and the Deep/South, Mid-West in the US and the North and South of England in the UK.

3. http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-34/immigration.aspx