The post-referendum reconfigurations of conservative cleavages around black and Asian minority ethnic MPs

Abstract

ABSTRACT At the level of the Conservative parliamentary party, one of the main effects of Brexit has been a realignment of party cleavages. While the old cleavage between Europhiles and Eurosceptics is no longer relevant and a new cleavage has appeared between soft and hard Brexiteers, this political upheaval has thus restructured Conservative ideological pluralism in the parliamentary party. Following a study of the 2015 intake of MPs who were supposedly ‘less stale, male and pale’ and their attitudes to the 2016 British referendum on the EU, this article will take a specific interest in all Conservative Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) MPs who turned out to be more active on the ‘leave’ side of the referendum campaign. They arguably embody a new feature of Conservative pluralism by operating a synthesis between inclusive modernisation and hard Brexit. Although the party should capitalise on this group of MPs to rid itself of its persistent image of a ‘nasty’ party pervaded with anti-immigration sentiment and hard Eurosceptic populism – an expression used by Theresa May in 2002 -, the strategy of ‘detoxifying’ the Brexit brand did not seem to have ever been part of her priorities as Prime Minister.