A tale of two narratives

Abstract

Coleman’s chapter sets the context for the rest of the book by setting out how two radically different narratives were forced to compete with one another for credibility in the 2014 European parliamentary election. On the one hand, both politicians and journalists adhered to a conventional narrative of the election as a predictable event in the cycle of emergent and irresistible transnational democracy. On the other hand, the election became a focus for popular scepticism towards ‘politics as usual’, the elite defenders of which were deemed incapable of addressing the profound social challenges emanating from politico-economic turbulence of the years that preceded it. Coleman explores this moment of narrative volatility through a detailed analysis of the BBC election-night results’ programme in the United Kingdom and a more comparative account of responses emerging in the hours and days after the election from elite actors in the other countries considered within this volume.