Time for Brexit? Temporalities in the 2019 UK European election campaign

Abstract

Although the importance of time in political discourse cannot be denied, few recent studies address the representation of time as a factor in election campaigns. This discourse analytical study focuses on the role of time in the campaign literature produced by the nine main parties in the 2019 EU election in the UK, which resulted in a landslide victory for the newly-formed Brexit Party. The corpus consisted of the manifestos or leaflets produced specifically for this election by the nine parties in question, amounting to 57,226 words. The timelines of the different parties are analysed, showing how the parties envisioned different timelines: some capitalized on public frustration by offering immediate satisfaction, while others legitimized their aspirations through timelines that reached across and beyond the uncertainties of the Brexit phase. Representations of linear time, cyclical time and radical rupture are contrasted, and the key significance of time in the populist performance of crisis is discussed.