Workington Man, Brexit and populism: discussions of politics, identity and class among rugby league fans online

Abstract

In the run-up to the 2019 UK general election, Conservative think tank Onward identified Workington Man as the voter the Conservatives had to target to win seats in the Labour dominated, leave-voting north of England. Workington Man is white, working-class, with no university education, voted Leave in 2016, and he is a fan of rugby league. In this research, we explore how rugby league fans and journalists responded to this during the election period, thorough a content analysis of public websites rlfans.com, comments below-the-line in The Guardian's story about Workington Man. and discussions in rugby league magazine Forty-20. In looking at the debate about the legitimacy of the stereotype, we also widen our research to explore how fans online have talked about Brexit and Europe in the context of the General Election. We show that although most rugby league fans online and journalists held left-wing, progressive views situated in their belief that rugby league is a site of counter-hegemonic, working-class resistance to the southern English Establishment symbolised by rugby union, some rugby-league fans online were aligned with populism and right-wing beliefs about liberal elites and the European Union. The success of the Conservatives on 12 December in most of these rugby league seats demonstrates that the tactic worked, and that the views of fans online was not representative of the wider electorate.