ABSTRACT
The EU referendum was arguably the greatest political event in British politics since 1945 and the campaign was marked by divisive rhetoric. This paper investigates how Britain’s membership of Europe was narrated as a crisis by both sides of the discussion. I claim that this was a conscious discursive strategy by campaign actors for two reasons. Firstly, by constructing an event as a crisis implies that immediate measures need to be taken (by voters) to correct the situation. Secondly, this discursive strategy allowed actors from Leave and Remain campaigns to suspend partisan political divisions which would normally compromise co-operation. The chosen site of analysis is the televised EU referendum debate, entitled ‘The Great Debate’, which was broadcast two days before the referendum of June 23rd 2016.
