Decay, ‘dependency’ and deindustrialization: the evolving discourse of ‘the left behind’

Abstract

This article examines the conceptual evolution of a defining trope of the UK’s Brexit era: ‘the left behind’. Widely used today as discursive shorthand for marginalized post-industrial places and populations, the term ‘left behind’ was initially popularized to describe older white working-class voters alienated from mainstream politics and susceptible to right-wing populism. It has since become a floating signifier for competing conceptions of social inequality. The Left has mobilized it as a counter-hegemonic signifier for the socio-economic and socio-political marginalization seen to affect areas historically scarred by deindustrialization. The Right has weaponized it as a synonym for local values and traditions cherished by such communities – arguing that these have been socio-culturally marginalized by latter-day liberal social mores promoted by metropolitan and/or global elites. But prior to its conceptual capture by political scientists seeking to explain the resurgence of nativist politics, earlier iterations of the ‘left behind’ concept had already begun circulating in the language of press and Parliament. Drawing on critical discourse analysis of Hansard debates and newspaper articles from the years between the formation of Britain’s post-crash Coalition government and the 2016 EU referendum, the article traces the early emergence of ‘left-behind’ narratives in discursive practices spotlighting problematic social groupings: othered communities and areas scarred by ‘worklessness’, underachievement and high ‘dependency’ on social protection.