‘Not an International Health Service’: Xenophobia, Brexit and the Restoration of National Sovereignty

Abstract

The chapter explores the role of xenophobia and nationalism within the media rhetoric mobilised during the EU referendum campaign. It examines how the rhetoric of the Leave campaign attempted to restore a perceived lost national sovereignty and agency, imagined as a simple intuitive equivalence between national citizens, national taxpayers, and national public services. The chapter explains how, through neoliberal reforms, the welfare state was transformed according to the principles of competition, individual consumer choice and conditional entitlement to benefits. It also focuses on the framing of the European Union as taking taxpayers’ money which could otherwise be used to fund national public institutions.