A Revolutionary Moment Founded on Forgetting: How Narratives of the UK’s Place in Europe and the World made Brexit Possible

Abstract

This article examines Brexit from the perspective of the role played by multiple historical narratives about the UK and its place in Europe, as well as the wider world. Existing accounts associate the 2016 referendum result with the rise of popu⁠lism and the spread of particular anti-EU narratives grounded in Englishness, the Anglosphere and, more problematically, nostalgia about former national glories. The analysis shows that these different historical narratives served to delegitimise European integration as inimical to UK democracy and sovereignty. Equally importantly, narratives of delegitimation in turn depended on a highly selective reading of British history and convenient acts of forgetting or misremembering the role of economic or political borders. It was precisely this combination of selective historical memory and a narrative of EU oppression that created a revolutionary moment. Brexit was thus founded on multiple acts of forgetting.