Moving Forward to the Past: Fantasies of Nation within UK Political Culture

Abstract

Throughout 2014 and in the lead up to the 2015 UK General election, much press coverage was given to the success of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and its charismatic leader, Nigel Farage. Often pictured outside a traditional English pub, with a cigarette in one hand and a pint of beer in the other, Farage’s ‘blokey’ image is awash with signifiers of a particular unreconstructed English masculinity, which, according to researchers, appeals to a constituency defined as ‘left-behind voters’ who feel alienated by mainstream politics (Ford and Goodwin, 2014, loc. 3001). Those sentiments are also fuelled by what UKIP voters see as high levels of immigration to Britain, which they say is caused by the imposition of laws by Brussels (Ford and Godwin, 2014). These fears, which signal a defensive, reactionary turn in political culture, also seem linked to wider anxieties about the pace of social and cultural change and the ‘risks’ (Beck, 1992) associated with the forces of globalisation and late modernity.