Not now! Construction of the “now-is-not-the-time” discourse of Theresa May and Boris Johnson vis-à-vis the second Scottish independence referendum

Abstract

Between 2016 and 2021, in response to calls for a second Scottish independence referendum, two British Prime Ministers—Theresa May and Boris Johnson—adopted a holding position, at the core of which was the “now-is-not-the-time” argumentative scheme. As a particular expression of strategic ambiguity, this delay discourse was intended to fulfil a specific political function: to postpone the second plebiscite sine die. As such, it marked a stark difference to the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign and provided the anti-independence camp with a new rhetorical resource. Having adopted the general orientation of the Discourse-Historical Approach to discourse analysis, and working with a dataset of May’s and Johnson’s public utterances on the second Scottish referendum, this article investigates how exactly this discourse of referendum delay was constructed in prime ministerial rhetoric. It concludes that some differences notwithstanding, the two PMs managed to create a largely consistent argumentative scheme.