This article analyses the claims for national sovereignty made in the British Conservative and Labour parties. In Britain, national sovereignism has been embedded within an entrenched tradition of Euroscepticism, whereas populist claims have periodically punctuated the discourse of both main parties, before emerging with more vocal tones during the discussion on Brexit. While most sovereigntist claims share some degree of populism, we reserve the populist label for what we identify as explicitly populist claims (as opposed to four other categories of sovereignism). After presenting a historical recall of the main dynamics of sovereigntist claims in British politics, we hypothesise that different types of sovereigntist discourses feature in the major British parties. While 'nationalist-populist' sovereignism should prevail in the Conservative party, we expect 'economic' sovereignism to be the form mainly used by the Labour party. Systematically analysing the debates in the House of Commons on all divisions on the EU from the 2015 General Election to the end of October 2017, we show that significant differences on the use of sovereignist claims exist both within and across British parties. We find that national populist claims dominate among Tory MPs and civic sovereignism prevails over economic sovereignism among Labour members.
This paper draws on the literature on party competition and issue ownership to assess whether political membership on the right-left dimension explains party stances on migration. While some scholars argue that on this issue a clear distinction between left and right exists, some more recent quantitative and fine-grained analyses show a more nuanced picture. According to them, a clear difference in narratives exists only when the salience of the issue is high, under pressure of the electoral success of a far-right party or about specific policy issues. This paper further investigates this aspect in the context of the 2015 refugee crisis. It looks at the positions held by the main centre-left, centre-right, Radical Right, and Populist Parties in the Italian, British, and European Parliaments. The content analysis shows that centre-left parties frame the refugee crisis mainly as a humanitarian emergency and held pro-European Union (EU) positions, while centre-right parties differ substantially between Italy and the United Kingdom. Both radical right and Populist Parties exploit the political-opportunity offered by the refugee crisis to foster their anti-establishment claims. Moreover, Radical Right Populist Parties stress the need to secure external borders and restore national sovereignty, against further integration. At the EU level, left- and right-wing groups (Socialist and Democrats Party, European Conservatives and Reformists Party, and European People’s Party) are cohesive, while the populist group (European Freedom and Direct Democracy Party) is not. This paper adds on the academic debate on the refugee crisis, showing how the immigration issue can impact on domestic and European party politics, challenging party identities and alliances.
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