Powellite nostalgia and racialised nationalist narratives: connecting Global Britain and Little England

Abstract

This article explores how a Powellite form of nostalgia – named for the anti-immigration politics of former British MP Enoch Powell – connects seemingly contradictory nationalist narratives known as Global Britain and Little England. While the former is typically aligned with an expansive and buccaneering national biography, the latter is held to operate via a more defensive and exclusionary imaginary. This article challenges such a binary distinction by demonstrating how the two discursive strands are intimately connected by nostalgic views about white English racial dominance, cultivated during Britain’s pursuit of empire. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of verbal and visual sources from the Brexit referendum, plus 13 interviews with Leave campaigners, the article shows how Powellite nostalgia reproduces gendered and racialised colonial images of the nation amid immigration ‘crisis’. Despite the detoxifying effects of much post-referendum Brexit analysis, the article also demonstrates how Powellite nostalgia is shared across the Eurosceptic spectrum and within broader English culture, persisting into the post-Brexit era.

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