ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the political logics – the logics of equivalence and difference – at play in constructing the campaign for Brexit as a popular movement able to sew together various disparate interests and sub-populations to create a ‘leave’ majority – however contradictory, unstable and temporary – on 23 June 2016. In terms of political logics of the pro-Brexit discourses, immigration served as a key nodal point in the construction of an equivalential chain in which the interests of the people were identified as synonymous with those of the Brexit elite campaigning to leave the European Union. Vote Leave commentators repeatedly and explicitly declare that they are in favour of immigration and extol its benefits. The issue of immigration was discussed through the lens of class politics in which the interests of the ‘remain elite’ are identified as being in diametric opposition to those of ordinary people.
