When intellectuals fail? Brexit and hegemonic challenge

Abstract

Drawing on a Gramscian understanding of hegemony and the role of intellectuals, the paper examines the contribution of British academics to the politics of Brexit. Why and how did they fail to predict the scale of the challenge to the European Union manifest in the Leave vote of the referendum? Mainly supportive of the hegemony of the European Union and its vision of social progress, social scientists have propagated a view of normality which legitimizes that hegemony through the interpretation of its cultural opposition as irrational, emotional and populist. While the cultural tensions driving the Leave victory have been extensively documented, the implications of this long-standing divide for the UK state, the party system and democratic citizenship have received only limited attention from university intellectuals. In their commitment to the European Union hegemony, they have interpreted the cultural challenge in ways likely only to increase its strength.