Chapter 3 - Disordered Voters: Grieving the Brexit Referendum

Summary

In June 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum on whether to withdraw from the European Union (EU). The protracted Brexit debate that preceded the vote was suffused with negative emotions on both sides, especially anger and fear. Although this may have led some individuals to choose insult over argument, it also generated factors that allowed people to transform their emotions into a public issue, empowering them in ways that many had not experienced before. Among the consequences of this were massive voter turnout, a significant reconfiguration of political allegiances, and one of the biggest upsets in British political history.

The Remain side lost. The morning after the referendum, like many others, I woke up to a result that transformed my understanding of the United Kingdom and my place within it. As an EU citizen resident in the United Kingdom, I had a special stake in the election, and that stake had just been driven into my chest. A new emotion flooded into me, mixing with the fear and anger of the Brexit debate: grief. I had lost. The country had lost. The EU had lost. We had lost. We European denizens of Britain, who had no right to vote in the referendum, were not the only ones experiencing these losses and their attendant emotion. British citizens too expressed an overwhelming sense of grief. Many were grieving more than just a defeat at the polls. They were grieving the impending loss of rights and collectiveness that membership in the EU entailed. They were grieving the loss of a particular understanding of their country and the loss of the identity this understanding had supported (Browning 2018: 341–5). Crucially, though, it was a grief with political potential. Vital questions about Brexit remained unsettled. For a while, it even looked like a second referendum or a legal recourse to prevent Brexit might be possible. The grief could and, to an extent, would be channelled into political action to shape these issues. The medicalisation of negative emotions was an obstacle to these efforts.

In this chapter, I will explore the medicalisation of grief in the context of the Brexit referendum. I will show that the grief of the referendum's losers, who supported remaining in the EU, became subject to medicalising attacks.