A morphological analysis of Brexitism

Samuel Marlow-Stevens

New Political Economy, 2023, vol. 28, issue 4, 539-553

Abstract: Despite a burgeoning literature on the topic, Brexit has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive ideological analysis. Through morphological analysis we establish an understanding of the concepts and ideas which underpin Brexit’s ideological structure and situate the political event and its aftermath firmly within a political economy context, as a response to the 2008 financial crash. Brexitism is a permutation of Conservatism which seeks to protect the interests of capital by maintaining a ‘state of exception’ characterised by instability and crisis. Political support is mobilised by way of a relentless pursuit of destructive change and innovation combined with a deindividualising concept of sovereignty. Thatcherism’s market justice gives way to a more inequitable and arbitrary concept, manifested in Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda, which legitimises the sustained instability. Traditional Conservative rationality and respect for authority are necessarily eschewed in favour of stronger but more rigid emotional ties. While politically efficacious, Brexitism is inherently unstable and volatile, predicated on a contradiction between the promise of liberty and the maintenance of instability and uncertainty. Without the easy invocation of the ‘EU menace’ the fate of Johnson’s levelling up agenda will decide the longevity of this particular ideological iteration of British Conservatism.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2147495

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