‘Let’s Take Back Control’ and Other Effective Bullshit: Immigration in the European Union Referendum Campaign

Immigration was central to the EU referendum campaign, and played an important if not decisive role in the outcome. This paper examines public statements on immigration during the campaign through the lens of political bullshit. As defined by Harry Frankfurt, bullshit is a mode of discourse unrelated to truth-values, and it is prevalent in politics. While the liar pays indirect homage to truth by consciously telling untruths, the bullshitter speaks without regard for truth-values. Hopkin and Rosamond argue that political bullshit is often effective because it is difficult to refute empirically. This paper traces the EU referendum campaign from its focus on the Remainers’ preferred territory of the economic effects of Brexit – in which empirical claim and counter-claim predominated – through to a debate centred on the Leave campaign’s key message of ‘taking back control’, which became increasingly focused on immigration control. The paper investigates how the debate shifted not only in terms of issues but also qualitatively: away from empirical claims and predictions, towards an explicitly anti-expert and post-truth form of politics in which the Leave campaign successfully articulated a Brexit narrative in empowering and emotionally reassuring language, largely impervious to factual refutation; in other words, as bullshit. This proved to be an effective strategy for the Leave campaign, while Remain were unable to mount a compelling counter-argument. The argument draws on analysis of a corpus of public statements from the campaign, including speeches and interviews by leading politicians, televised debates, campaign posters and leaflets, and press releases.