Arguing About Britain and Europe in Parliamentary Discourse

Since the fateful referendum in 2016, Brexit dominates British politics. This book focuses on the parliamentary discourse of the allegedly most pro-European British political party, the Liberal Democrats. Combining a political discourse analysis with a Cultural Studies perspective, it scrutinises the party leaders' contributions to parliamentary debates on European integration regarding the arguments they advanced to justify their position from 1997-2010 and the verbal images they used to describe both Europe and Britain. The study's results contribute to understanding the current dynamics in British politics: sending mixed messages at best, the pro-European actors failed to make a convincing and coherent case for a common European future in the past.