The Populism of Brexit: ‘the People’ and ‘the Elite’

This paper explores the role of populism in the debates concerning Brexit and other nationally-based anti-EU movements (i.e. Hungary). Drawing on the work of the early Frankfurt School, Hannah Arendt and C.Wright Mills among others, it argues that a key component of such debates is a reconfiguring of the rational concepts, practices and institutions of representative democracy into the irrationality of ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’. It argues further, that this reconfiguration is a danger not only to the EU as a whole, but also to the individual nation-states that fall under its sway. These dangers include the undermining of democratic processes and institution and the rise of xenophobia and racism at both the European and at the domestic levels. It argues, finally, that it is an error to believe that the populism of the anti-EU movements, including Brexit be understood as a conflict between a given nation and the EU, but, rather, be understood as competing views as to the meaning of ‘Europe’.