'Mind the Gap': The Re-Emergence of the Imperial Past in British Politics
References to empire or the imperial past flourished both during and following the Brexit debate. Boris Johnson was confident about Britain signing new trade deals, since 'we used to run the biggest empire the world has ever seen', and Theresa May underlined the imperative for Britain to 'get out into the world and rediscover its role as a great, global trading nation'. There was an unmistakeable retrospectivity in these words, implying that Britain lost part of its identity when it joined the EEC in 1973. Similarly, media headlines used references such as 'Theresa May's Empire State of Mind' (New York Times, Feb 2017) and 'Post-Brexit Delusions about Empire 2.0' (Financial Times, March 2017) just to name a few.
Allusions to Britain's imperial past in political debate are in themselves not an entirely new phenomenon, especially in connection to the European debate. In the early 1960s, the Commonwealth was the main objection to membership of the Common Market, and during the 1975 referendum anti-Marketeers still preferred the Commonwealth over continued membership of the EC. However, following the 1975 referendum, the imperial aspect of the European debate was seemingly laid to rest. The modern strand of Euroscepticism mostly associated with Thatcher was not infused with of imperial rhetoric, and this feature was also absent during the Maastricht debate in the early 1990s.
From the perspective of politics and the media, this paper explores the remarkable re-emergence of the imperial aspect in the Eurosceptic debate, as well as examines how the question of Britain and Europe developed into a question of leaving the EU rather than reforming it, and if this process overlaps with a growing tendency to talk about the past as a guide for the future.
